I get any number of inquiries about uh which brand of video card should I
choose I want to get a a GTX 580 or I
want to get a Ron 5770 what whatever
whatever card you're looking at and you want to know which brand to choose so uh
for the launch of the GTX 580 I happen to have the luxury of having two cards
to compare so I have one from EVGA so
this is an EVGA reference GTX 580 so you
can see it uses the same cooler
as the MSI GTX 580 it also uses the same
PCB layout as the GTX 580 and um I have
a lot of people asking me like should I pick based on overclocking results and
reviews or should I pick based on
um you know the uh the overall quality
of the product well I can tell you one thing right now these are both reference
design products especially when you buy a high-end GPU at launch they are quite
literally exactly the same thing there is no quality difference between an MSI
GTX 580 and an EVGA GTX 580 none
whatsoever so put that out of your mind so some of the ways that you can
differentiate is in terms of the other
ways that the brands differentiate each other from each other
that's awkward anyway so MSI has a three-year warranty and EVGA has a
lifetime warranty if you register so there's uh one tick boox for EVGA uh
MSI's card actually comes with a slightly better accessory package
although I do mean slightly it comes with a long HDMI cable about a 6t cable
versus the EVGA 1 comes with one that's about this long so that's a mini HDMI to
HDMI cable and the MSI 1 also comes with my preferred type of six pin to eight
pin so it just has a single six pin on the one side that goes to a single eight
pin on the other side whereas EVGA uses one of those dual six pin to 8 Pin
adapters that I'm not all that fond of
now in terms of connectivity overclocking results etc etc it's all
luck of the draw except remember these two are just reference products both of
these manufacturers will release all kinds of different non-referenced
products so EVGA for example on the GTX
460 has their external exhaust version
they've got any number of overclocked skews so that is they have GTX 460s that
are overclocked out of the box now you do pay a slight premium for them but
that means that you're getting a higher speed bin and if you don't know what a
speed bin is go ahead and check out my NCI Tech tips episode on the process of
binning and that'll explain what that means but you're basically getting like
a higher a higher graded chip okay
because it passed at a higher speed you're getting
um yeah well basically that's it when you buy a factory overclock card that's
what you get and MSI also does some pretty unique Solutions as well so you
can see here I've actually got some MSI
GTX 460 Hawk edition cards so these guys have triple overvoltage so that means
you can overvolt the GPU the RAM as well
as the uh GPU PLL voltage so you can get some great overclocks it's actually got
a uh a switch on the back where is it right there where you can even change
the voltages so that you can go even higher and get real crazy uh aftermarket
cooler so uh oh yeah EVGA like I said they have their external exhaust coolers
versus the reference one MSI's got the twin frozer too they've got the Cyclone
all kinds of unique stuff that these particular vendors are doing now they
also have some software differences although they aren't really differences
evga's got their Precision Tool which is for overclocking and tweaking all that
good stuff monitoring your temperatures fan speeds and MSI has afterburner which
is a fairly similar uh utility now bear in mind that both EVGA and MSI have
graciously allowed uh all other board
Partners to use their particular software so you can actually buy any
card and use MSI After Burner and the same goes for EVGA Precision which is
pretty cool of both of them to do that uh EVGA also has their 247 tech support
as well as their uh where is the uh the
terms and conditions for that one I believe they still do offer a tradein
program if something newer and faster comes out so that you can uh you can
trade in your old card got some little bragging on on the side of their box
here which is uh definitely some interesting
stuff there you go evga's number one and
then what do we have on the MSI box not
a whole lot there just I mean these are
reference cards so it becomes very difficult to differentiate so like I
said I've brought up a bunch of different things that both of these brands do to separate their products
from the other NVIDIA partners for these particular cards it's going to come down
to uh what kind of price how much of a value you put on the uh the value ads
that each of these board Partners have attached to their GTX 580 and your
personal preference because really nobody can tell you what experience
you've had in the past with MSI or what experience you've had in the past with
EVGA I mean there's all kinds of different factors like you could go oh I
got an MSI Motherboard and it's great so I want to buy an MSI product great good
for you but that's no reason why you can't use an EVGA card on an MSI
Motherboard and similarly if you have AMD chipset there's no reason you can't
use an NVIDIA card and the other way around you got EVGA board you want to
throw a Missi card in it no problem so
there you go there is my little guide on EVGA versus MSI as far as being NVIDIA
board Partners
go oh yeah I should have probably mentioned my my one of my personal
favorite ways to pick uh video cards is based on the aesthetic of it you know
whether you like the EVGA sticker or you like the uh the MS size sticker better
can actually make a difference to people and you can even run into differences a
little bit later when we're not all using reference cards uh where you know
some will have a green PCB some will have a black PCB so uh so yeah and yeah
like I said it's a goofy thing but that that is actually something that factors
in for me personally