We Put EVGA, PNY, & MSI on Camera to Battle over Best Graphics Card | PAX East | GamersNexus

We Put EVGA, PNY, & MSI on Camera to Battle over Best Graphics Card | PAX East

By Steve Burke Published April 25, 2016 at 8:00 am

One of our most commonly received Ask GN questions is “which video card manufacturer is 'the best?'” (scare quotes added). The truth of the matter is, as we've often said, they're all similar in the most critical matter – the GPU is the same. If MSI sells an R9 380X and PowerColor sells an R9 380X, they're both using the same GPU (Tonga) and silicon; core performance will be nearly identical. The same is true for the GTX cards – EVGA and PNY both sell GTX 960 video cards, and all of their models implement the same GM206 GPU. The differences are generally rooted in pre-overclocking, cooling units, support and warranties, and aesthetics.

All our content combined, we've spent hours and tens of thousands of words talking about which video cards perform the best in various categories. That's great -- but sometimes it's fun to do something different. This video allows each GPU manufacturer one minute to explain who makes the best graphics cards for gaming. It's a speed-round, to be sure.

Vendors Battle: PAX East “Best Video Card” Duel

The above video features three of four video card manufacturers present at PAX: EVGA sent Jacob Freeman into our fast-paced arena, MSI sent Mark Tran, and PNY sent Jay Chen. Gigabyte was present at the show, but opted-out of our battle arena on conditions that the video card team did not have a member present – only the board team (write-up on their new boards here).

Each vendor was granted one minute to defend their GPU against the other two video card manufacturers at the show. Quite obviously, is only useful in its top-level, TLDR format which it is presented; we created the content to inject some entertainment value from the faces of the companies. If you're after something in-depth and with full framerate and thermal benchmarking of each card, check some of our recent GPU reviews.

EVGA – Jacob Freeman

“I think there's a few reasons why people like EVGA. Number one – the number of different options we offer on our graphics cards. We have the water-cooled versions or this [indicates table] Hybrid-cooled version, which people really like a lot. And with our ACX coolers, we have a lot of different options for our customers. In addition to that, our warranty – even at this show, I hear time and time again about the EVGA warranty and how people love it. We have our 24/7 technical support. On top of that, our overclocking software [Precision] – we spent a lot of time on dialing it in and making sure it has all of the options and knobs and everything that enthusiasts are looking for. I think those are really the key reasons why people like EVGA.”

Learn more: http://www.evga.com/

PNY – Jay Chen

“The advantage of PNY is that we are the only authorized partner from nVidia for the Quadro product line. Our staff is supporting a product line that no one else can have. From the very high-end to the entry-level, our technical staff are experts in supporting graphics cards. Maybe not everyone knows, on our XLR8 product line for GeForce GTX we provide lifetime warranty support for our customers. So if you buy our product [and] register on our website, as long as you own the product, we're going to take care of you. At this event, we're showcasing our brand new design that's perfect for silent gaming because it's designed to run as quiet as possible. We encourage everybody to check out our website the following weeks. We are experts on graphics cards and second to none in terms of support.”

Learn more: http://www.pny.com/

MSI – Mark Tran

“The reason why our video cards [are] better than our competition is because of our Twin Frozr solution, and also our MSI Afterburner. You can do the best overclocking paired with our cooling solution – that's why we're the best graphics cards on the market.”

Learn more: http://gaming.msi.com/

Future Vendors

A lot of people make video cards. EVGA, MSI, and PNY were present at the show, but there's also Gigabyte and ASUS (each huge), XFX, PowerColor, Sapphire, Palit, and others. We hope to continue this series at events and will work with more manufacturers to create a Round 2 of this content.

Editorial, Host: Steve “Lelldorianx” Burke
Video Production: Keegan “HornetSting” Gallick

Last modified on April 25, 2016 at 8:00 am

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.