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Question OEM Video Cards... Bad?

ibex333

ibex333

Diamond Member
Are OEM GPUs significantly worse on average?

As an example, if you look at my sig, would you say my Dell GTX 3070 is not going to perform as well as if I was to buy this GPU from Asus or Gigabyte? If so, just how much difference are we talking?

What are some other drawbacks of OEM cards?

Thanks
 
"OEM" cards are often built to base specs, and have "inferior" components (cost-cutting applied to PCB and cooling).

PNY is the exclusive OEM for Quadro cards.
 
I have not seen an OEM consumer card that I considered to be of good quality. If somebody is giving you a 3070 that came in a Dell, then sure, run it. But I would never spend money on it when you can get an AIB 3070 for not much more most of the time.
 
In my experience OEM cards - especially those that have the full coolers and backplates, etc. have the same performance as AIB cards that are clocked to the default.

Nicer AIB cards *might* have better components and more headroom, but retails AIBs want to make money too. The default specs are the same, and if the cooler is up to the challenge, the performance is the same.

Most of them probably come from the same facilities but built to differing ODM specs.
 
ibex333 said:
Are OEM GPUs significantly worse on average?
Click to expand...
It would be more accurate to say they are average.

ibex333 said:
As an example, if you look at my sig, would you say my Dell GTX 3070 is not going to perform as well as if I was to buy this GPU from Asus or Gigabyte? If so, just how much difference are we talking?
Click to expand...
Yes.
But Asus or Gigabyte are going to be above average.

The performance differances are going to be in noise levels, tempatures. FPS differances will be less the 10%.


ibex333 said:
What are some other drawbacks of OEM cards?
Click to expand...
Cooling inferior, especially on the memory.
Fans will be ball bearing, last a long time but noisy.
The above two things multiple off of each other. Inferior cooling makes already noisy fans spin faster.

VRMs will be cheaper, more prone to coil whine, less tolerate of overclocking.
More difficult to repair.
BIOS firmware unavailable. BIOS chip corrupts and its dead.
BIOS updates unheard of. Typically not an issue.
 
OEM for nvidia means founders edition, which are high quality cards for 3xxx series and use good quality components (they will last well) but they are not designed for heavy overclocking. The reason Dell use the cards they use is for reliabilty - returns and warranty callouts are expensive to Dell, so they are going to be careful to pick cards that won't break. However unless explicitly advertised Dell aren't going to give you a card designed for heavy overclocking - both because they cost more money to buy and because they are more likely to be abused, break and get returned which also costs Dell more money.
 
igor_kavinski said:
Plus, Dell probably wants their customers to not hate them so their 3070 wouldn't be as bad as some weird Chinese brand you may see on Newegg.
Click to expand...

Dell machines are infamous for poor cooling in their gaming machines. There have been plenty of tests from various outlets of them.

Dribble said:
OEM for nvidia means founders edition, which are high quality cards for 3xxx series and use good quality components (they will last well) but they are not designed for heavy overclocking.
Click to expand...
Dell does not use founders edition cards typically. They tend to use their own designs. In the case of the 3070, it is this card: https://www.ebay.com/itm/165698512352

Infact, the 3080 and 3090 use this same card design. GN tested the Dell 3090 and it was not great (but not terrible, just really loud). As you would expect with a 400W card using a small 2 fan design.

The 3070 appears to be at least half decent. I was not able to readily find test results for the 3070. The cooler is on the small side (its not very thick compared to other 3070's). So chances are the fans will have to run faster making it louder.
 
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What a wonderful thread. I just picked up a Dell OEM 6800xt second hand. I am currently quite happy with the card.

Pros:
- Relatively compact three fan design, smaller than the MSI Armor 2x 980ti it replaced.
- Very understated design (Not a big fan of the gundam coolers on a lot of AIB cards).
- Good noise levels, no coil whine or fan pitch
- Good temps given size of card, at stock card runs about 70c under load and overclocked the card hits ~80c
- No issues OCing card up to ~2500mhz
- Stable
- When buying second hand, these cards will typically sell a bit cheaper than AIB variants that perform similarly

Cons:
- Just an average ho hum 6800XT. Consistently benches into the "average" zone in 3D Mark for example, even with an OC applied.
- For some people, the design of the card is super basic. Just a black rectangle with a light up "Radeon" logo on the side. Green PCB under backplate.

That said before purchasing I did a lot of reading on the Dell OEM 6800XT and the general agreement was that it was an unusually well built OEM card. Dell might have been anticipating a much hotter/power hungrier card than what was actually delivered to them.

In the end, like any card, do your research and make sure the model and brand of card you're getting have a good rep.
 
I wouldn't say inferior 'quality', per se. Almost all the OEM cards are going to have lower power and thermal budgets, so that means lower clocks and memory interface widths. Some offer the BTO or customize 'upsell' option to a premium GPU on some systems but it's almost never any deal. OEMs generally aren't interested in the high performance segments because their business models succeed on the volume. So they pass the performance/enthusiast market onto the boutique builders they acquired which are usually operated like a subsidiary.
 
Dribble said:
OEM for nvidia means founders edition, which are high quality cards for 3xxx series and use good quality components (they will last well) but they are not designed for heavy overclocking.
Click to expand...

I think you might be referring to reference design/boards rather than the Founder's Edition. From what I recall, Founder's Edition cards did use the reference design up until the 30-series, which changed due to Nvidia's radically different cooler. (The PCB with the triangular cut-out is not the standard/reference design.) Basic boards (i.e., usually the ones at MSRP) tend to use Nvidia's reference or maybe include slight deviations.
 
Aikouka said:
I think you might be referring to reference design/boards rather than the Founder's Edition. From what I recall, Founder's Edition cards did use the reference design up until the 30-series, which changed due to Nvidia's radically different cooler. (The PCB with the triangular cut-out is not the standard/reference design.) Basic boards (i.e., usually the ones at MSRP) tend to use Nvidia's reference or maybe include slight deviations.
Click to expand...
In this case OEM means parts found in OEM computers. So the big, big box computers. Dell, HP, Acer, and so on. Dell ones have always been under cooled, using very cheap materials for the shell. Perfect example do a search for Alienware 3080 on google and select images. The closest in build you see in retail might be the Gigabyte Eagle series but even that is better cooled and better built.
 
I've ordered a few RX 5700 HP OEM "reference design" cards (8P+6P) off of a vendor on ebay, supposedly "new", bulk-packaged.
Looking forward to having a reference-design RX 5700 in my rig again, it was a quite-nice card, a little noisier than most though.
 
Stuka87 said:
I have not seen an OEM consumer card that I considered to be of good quality.
Click to expand...

Dell actually did a good job on the 3090.
But again, it is the 3090... 😎


As for the cheaper cards, i wouldn't bat an eye on poor quality, i know dell has a horrible 3060ti.
 
aigomorla said:
Dell actually did a good job on the 3090.
But again, it is the 3090... 😎


As for the cheaper cards, i wouldn't bat an eye on poor quality, i know dell has a horrible 3060ti.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I noted that in my post 🙂

It works fine, its just really loud.
 
I've always thought OEM's were the same, except as mentioned above. Tomshardware recently posted about a "new" 3050 recently though, and it had an interesting observation. The 3050 is listed as having 2560 CUDA cores, vs the OEM's 2304. Could just be a mistake. Would be interesting and scummy if true.
 
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