Difference between FE and other versions of GPUs?

[hiltomedy]

Hey there,

 

I don’t really have much knowledge on the difference in terms of performance with the founders editions of cards and other third party ones? Due to the differences in prices, third party ones are always higher than the FE ones so I thought that they might perform better. Just wanted to know before I decide which version of a card I want to go for.

[Middcore]

Third party cards (AIBs) can perform somewhat better than reference (although not always), because some of them use revised PCB designs, and often have better cooling and moderate factory overclocks.

 

The difference in modern cards is usually fairly marginal.

 

Some people seek out reference cards on the belief that these are "high-binned" chips and will therefore perform the best when overclocked in a custom liquid cooling loop, but I don't know that there is any hard evidence indicating this is to be the case anymore. 

[Jurrunio]

30 series FE performs like a cheap-ish (but not the cheapest) custom model, so are the temperatures and noise in general. Performance is only different due to clock speed differences, so it's minor.

[Smurfmaster2000]

1 hour ago, hiltomedy said:

Hey there,

 

I don’t really have much knowledge on the difference in terms of performance with the founders editions of cards and other third party ones? Due to the differences in prices, third party ones are always higher than the FE ones so I thought that they might perform better. Just wanted to know before I decide which version of a card I want to go for.

I had the same questions myself and I found this video comparing the VRM and power limits and such for 38 models of RTX 3070. I had NO idea the considerations to look for.

Basically, I discovered MY model was actually BELOW the standards of the FE/reference model so maybe it should be no surprise it died in just a week (an MSI RTX 3070 Ventus 3X OC) or maybe I just got unlucky (FYI, 6 weeks later I'm still trying to get MSI to resolve the issue under the warranty, but that's a whole other story).

 

To be clear, I'm NOT an overclocker, but logic tells me if something is being factory pushed to its limits out of the box (like my MSI Ventus) that increases the chance of failure. And the guy in this video agrees with that sentiment.

 

Anyway, I would try to explain better, but the guy in the video does a much better job. It's nice though because you can see where he places the FE in the mix of all the other AIB cards! (he also has a similar video for the 3060TI where he does the same thing)