What is the difference between these 2 gpu's are you just paying for the brand.?

Question

http://www.shop.bt.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=4XDJ&CategorySelectedId=11137&NavigationKey=415930000&InMerch=1

http://www.shop.bt.com/ProductView.aspx?Quicklinx=53B4&CategorySelectedId=11137&NavigationKey=415930000&InMerch=1

Answer 1

hi mate

        these two graphic cards are in essence the same,the only difference is the manufactuer,the first is a asus card and the second is made by the popular graphic card manufactuer sapphire

       however when you buy cards from different manufacturers they sometimes alter certain specifications in the card,for example they may "oc" or overclock the card,and this involves increasing the core and memory clock speeds by a few mhz,however adding another 50mhz on any core clock speed will significantly improve your gaming experience

          the other differences can be the physical appearence of the card,some may come with a basic heatsink and fan were as some may have a complete cooling unit ,with the later looking much better cosmetically,however you will pay for this in the price,infact some cards can come with built in water cooling but again this is reflected in the cost of the card

        as for the above cards i would personally choose the asustek card,mainly because i have had several components from asus with the majority being motherboards however the few asustek graphic cards i have had the pleasure of using have been top notch

         the website you have chosen are pretty expensive and for a better selection at much lower prices your better off going to http://www.aria.co.uk/Products/Component...

           for example the HD3850 on the bt.shop is £52 were you can get the superior Asus ATi Radeon HD 3870 for a mere £30 more and the Asus ATi Radeon HD 3870 is a extremely fast card with a 775mhz core clock and 512mb of ddr4 memory running at 2250mhz,along with the excellent 256bit memory bus you have a excellent graphic card capable of any game you care to throw at it

           however the Sapphire Technology Radeon HD 3850 from the bt shop is also a excellent and powerful card,the 668mhz core clock is fast and the sizable 512mb of gddr3 ram runs at a rapid 1660mhz,these are fast speeds and only slightly slower than the HD3870

             both these cards are worth their price tags,however i would allways opt for the faster of the two cards,especially for the small difference

             any problems let me know

                      good luck mate !

Answer 2

Which brand do you trust more?

But i say go with sapphire

Answer 3

looks like a con to me!

the asustek looks suspicusly short on the specification!

look how they spaced the lines out to make it look like it has more than it actually does.

Answer 4

Well I can't see any difference between the two, everything seems to be the same so yes you are paying for the brand.

What seems really strange is that Sapphire are a well respected brand of graphics card and are still cheaper!