OEM video cards...worth it???

[conlan]

looking for opinions on OEM vid cards , especially the OEM radeon 32DDR which is 40-50 bucks cheaper than the retail version

 

[Deeko]

I have no problems with OEM cards. Good way to get a discount.

 

[oldfart]

Those cheap OEM Radeons are clocked @ 148/148 instead of the normal 166/166. Powerstrip can be used to clock it up if you get one.

 

[conlan]

true they are underclocked , but arent they basically the same card?? it shouldnt be a problem to clock em back up or overclock to retail card levels should it?? or am i mis-guided here ??

 

[Kingofcomputer]

Sometimes you can get retail from some online retailers using coupon even cheaper than OEM.
I'd say it's not worth to get OEM video card, cpu, hd, etc if you're in US.

 

[DarkMajiq]

I think OEM cards are good, a good way to save some money without sacrificing performance, except for the Radeon OEMs which are clocked lower, and can't always hit retail speeds.

 

[pidge]

Be careful if you rely on tecnical support. OEM's cards sometimes do not have the same level of technical support if any as a retail card would. With a Radeon, it doesn't matter because their technical support is horrible, OEM or retail. The best technical support of any video card company that i have experience with is Creative labs. Asus is very bad as well.

 

[oldfart]

People who have bought that cheap OEM Radeon have easily got it up to the normal 166 speed, and many run it @ 180+ with nothing but the stock cooling.

Pidge, what a surprise to see you in here with your anti-Radeon rhetoric. What is is this tech support you need? I have never had to call tech support on any PC product I have ever owned, and that has been a lot. Any information needed can be easily found on the 'net.

 

[pidge]

The reason I emailed them wasn't because I needed help necessarily. Sometimes, I just want more information on their products, such as what form of texture compressions they used, were they planning on fixing the HyperZ issue for Direct 3D that when enabled, would corrupt my games (this was when i was trying to decide on whether to sell one of my ATI Radeon's or not), when were they going to release Win2K drivers for Rage Fury Maxx, problems with Quake III Arena and the ATI Rage 128 a while back etc and the mouse cursor, etc. And I didn't just mention ATI. I also said I was not pleased with an Asus video card that went bad a while back and I was trying to RMA. Damn. conlan asked for an opinion and I gave mine. He is not entitled to only opinions from ATI fans.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

If you burn the vga card (I've seen more than 3 times somebody's bad power supply burn and burn out almost everything), and it's retail, you can just claim warranty replacement. This is US, this is the way of doing business. I won't save few dollars to go for oem stuff.

 

[Kingofcomputer]

If you burn the vga card (I've seen more than 3 times somebody's bad power supply burn and burn out almost everything), and it's retail, you can just claim warranty replacement. This is US, this is the way of doing business. I won't save few dollars to go for oem stuff.

 

[CraigRT]

If anyone knows other ATI cards they'll know it's not just Radeons, I got an ATI Rage Fury a couple years back and it was clocked to some junk speed like 90MHz.. below stock.. I am not sure if ALL of their OEM cards are like that or just the "decent" ones so that the well read users will be forced to go out and buy the retail boxed jobby.
Personally I like having all of the box and manuals and everything, you get more satisfaction with what you have! I have a huge tower of boxes in my room and it could be bigger if it wasn't for stupid OEM products.