Tom's Hardware & video cards

Peter Principle

I've got a question about Tom's Hardware and their video card reviews. When they evaluate a card, either with benchmarks or with how they perform with a particular video game, they list performance by the card type and processor, but not the specific manufacturer.

For example, Tom's says that the ATI Radeon 58xx or an Nvidia 98xx whatever is a good buy for a particular price range, but they don't give specifics on the manufacturer. So does it make a difference? Or is a Sparkle ATI Radeon xxxx just about the same as a Diamond Radeon xxx same as a biostar same as an ASUS, etc?

Dehumanized

Typically somewhere in the review they'll mention what specific manufacturer's implementation they used. Assuming the cards that they are benchmarking are close to reference, performance between different manufacturer's cards ought to be similar.

I usually choose more based on warranty and customer service reputation. Like, for example, EVGA is probably the only place I'd buy an Nvidia card from, because of their lifetime warranties, step-up program, and official support for overclocking and using aftermarket additions to their cards without breaking said warranty.

Nathrak

Sometimes you can find comparisons between brands for a specific card model, like Here compares a few brands of the ATI 5850. Not a huge difference between them but all three brand ones are quite a bit better than the reference board.

A few years ago when I was shopping for an 8800GT I looked at some comparisons and went with the Gigabyte because it had a different power setup which makes it run cooler/quieter. Also it came with Neverwinter Nights 2 which I wanted at the time, so might want to check any software bundles! If it comes with a game you'd buy then there's a few bucks saved.

Kivutar

For the most part, the chips, etc. are manufactured by a few asian companies, and are rebranded under a million other names. As far as the actual hardware is concerned, a given card is practically identical to another of the same name, with the only real difference being whether or not the company rebranding the card has modified it in anyway (i.e. clocking the GPU higher than the manufacturer did).
Beyond that, it pretty much comes down to differences in warranty & service, which can have a fair bit of impact.