OEM vs Retail

[max u.]

I just wonder what's the real difference between OEM and retail versions of hardware? The price is obvious, but what about the hardware pieces themselves?

Thanx!

[allocta]

OEM means no fancy box, sometimes no cable, software and less warranty cover. When you buy retail mouse from Microsoft for instant, you get a box drivers disk, manual, and maybe 3 or 5 year warranty but the OEM doesn't have driver disks, manuals, and only comes with 1 year warranty so which would you decide? There are instances where OEM is better like CPUs which the retail comes with fan, box, manual, and 3 year warranty but the CPU has a shorter lifespan then the warranty and the cooler isn't that good.

[max u.]

Well, yep, I know what it's all about. I just don't know if there is a difference in quality of the hardware itself. Like if its reatail, maybe, they'll put some better components, etc.? Is that possible? I know it's kinda crazy to assume that, but still, who knows...

The point why I'm asking is that I want to buy a video card, and there are two 'flavours': OEM and retail. So I just thought, why would anyone buy the retail if the OEM is $100 cheaper?! Made me thinking...

[alan norman]

I think you will find the components are the same. With OEM products the manufacturer does not supply support for the item. The person that sells it provides the support. For instance if you buy a PC with an OEM version of Windows, Microsoft will not provide the support for it. You would have to get that support from the PC supplier/manufacturer. That supplier would have got the copy of Windows cheaper (because they would have taken on the support for it). than if you had purchased a Full version with support from Microsoft.

Hope that helps.

Bye

Alan

[gilles lussier]

If you are talking about video cards. In the case of ATI, there is a big difference (aside from the box and software), usually retail ATI video cards are clocked higher than their OEM counterpart, they also get faster memory chips.

In the case of processors, it is not true that oem processors are better than oem. Usually in oem you get gray market parts, in retail you get the 3years warranty and a fan, which in the case of Intel is more than enough to properly cool the chips.

[ton]

some voodoo 3 oem cards are 8mb ,the retail version is 16mb,also the creative pci 128 oem sound cards have only 2 outputs instead of 4 (i think)
tony

[max u.]

Originally posted by gilles lussier
In the case of ATI, there is a big difference (aside from the box and software), usually retail ATI video cards are clocked higher than their OEM counterpart, they also get faster memory chips.

This is just what I was talking about. Although, I'm gonna buy the Morpheus GF3 Ti500, so it's not gonna be an ATI chip.

But still... If anyone has any information of nvidia doing the same thing with OEM and retail as ATI, flame here (j/k:p ). Seriously, though, I don't wanna buy a card that's been tuned down because it's OEM.