Difference between AMD partner products explained

THE READERS often end up educating the scribblers. (Especially in your case, Fernando, Ed.]

One reader asked me recently what difference is there between AMD's own cards and ones from its partner companies, also using AMT graphics chips. We asked the firm.

When you decide to buy a graphics card, the choice is not only Nvidia versus AMD, it's also often from which vendor to buy the card, after having chosen a given GPU model number. But given the same GPU chip type, is there really a big performance difference to be expected - if any - by buying, say a Gainward branded card versus a Connect3D one, just to give two examples? Of course, one card manufacturer can choose to release a DVI only version while removing the analogue connector, and other such basic decision about connectors and cooling, but other than that, what's the point of going card manufacturer A versus B?. Good question!

Connect3D ATI X1600 PCIe card

Let's say for the sake of argument that you have decided to buy an ATI X1600 powered card, in PCIe bus flavour. You can find a card with ATI's X1600 and 256MB for around $90 at the time of this writing by Connect3D here. Another card with the same ATI chip, same bus, and same memory amount, but by Diamond Multimedia can be found over here at $164, sporting a larger fan, but little obvious difference. Finally ATI markets its own retail cards, which you can see for instance on Amazon.com.

What do we have under the Connect3D sticker? Oh, an ATI component

A factsheet by AMD (ATI) begins by stating the obvious "Q: What is the difference between a 'Powered by ATI' Partner Product and a 'Built by ATI' Retail Product? A: Products with the 'Built By ATI' logo on the package are manufactured by ATI. Products with the 'Powered By ATI' logo on the package are manufactured by a partner company". Gee, I wouldn't have thought about that.

Since I could only venture an answer based on my own guess and using common sense or by asking Fudo about memory timing differences, the ability in the card to allow over clocking, and the like, I decided to ask the difficult "really, what's the difference?" question to Chris Evenden, AMD's Director of Public Relations, officially and for good. He repeated the obvious line from the factsheet about different manufacturing choosing different output configurations, memory and the like, but also shed some light on AMD's own retail graphics cards, which to my surprise are limited by geographic boundaries. This must explain why I have not seen ATI retail cards down here in a long time. Here's the official response from AMD/ATI. Take it as a micro-interview:

Q: Chris, perhaps you could enlighten me with the answer to a very basic question... ATI makes the GPUs... that's understood, but what about ATI's own retail cards available on Amazon.com, what's the point?

CE: "We do reference cards, too. We only market "built by ATI" cards in North America, but the reference cards go to press worldwide, because that's all we have that early in the product life cycle".

Q: And leaving aside any software bundles or cables, the difference between two similarly sized ATI-powered graphics cards by two different OEMs -sorry, you guys call them Add-in Board partners (AIBs)-, using the same memory and ATI GPU, with the same bus, is...?

CE: "Cards built by our AIBs can have different cooling options, for example, affecting noise output and overclockability. But, assuming all else -memory size, memory and engine clocks- are equal, performance should be the same. Customers choose ATI cards because of the brand".

So now you know. Unless you are a tweaker and benchmarks freak caring about getting 0.2x more performance by overclocking and so on, and given the intense competition between firms, the differences do not amount to much between card brands, given the same GPU and configuration. Yes it is fairly obvious, but now ATI has confirmed that their own "built by ATI" cards have two differences against OEMs: perhaps nicer coolers and the "built by ATI" statement next to the logo. Compris? µ

See Also
Seller comments on ATI's own "BBA" cards vs "Powered by ATI"
"Powered by" vs "Built by ATI", driver problems?
Linux drivers for "powered by ATI" cards emerge