oem vs non oem price's

[cricket]

in looking for a ati radeon 9800 pro 128mb video card i used price grabber.com and found these prices. click here (http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=704418/search=ati%2520radeon%25209800%2520pro/ut=4160616c628a1016) what i wanted to know is 'what is the difference between an OEM card and a non oem card?
seeing as how the oem card from xtreme gear is only $298.00...there must be something different with this card than with the higher priced $375.00 from zipzoomfly.

can someone explain this to me in english please?

[saturnotaku]

OEM cards ship with the card and a driver CD, nothing more. Those cards are typically warrantied by Sapphire for one year. Retail cards give you the box, cables, DVI to VGA adapter, ATI Multimedia Center software and a three year warranty. Bear in mind those are for ATI's own retail cards. Hercules, Sapphire and other manufacturers also make cards with retail packaging that can include, but are not limited to: other DVD players, overclocking/tweaking software and games.

[cricket]

so are the cards built exactly the same? or did they skimp on it somehow?
if all you really need is the card and drivers and dont care what box it comes in...is this not a good deal? aside from a 1 year vs 3 year warranty.


also what is the ati multimedia software all about? cant it be downloaded from ati's website? do i really need multimedia software?
i ask this because i have never had ati card before and really dont know.
do you think prices on ati radeon 9800pro cards currently at $375.00 will drop anytime soon since the release of the new xt cards?

[saturnotaku]

The cards should be completely identical, right down to the brand and speed of the memory. Updates to ATI's MMC can be downloaded, however you need the original product CD key (which comes on the CD in the retail boxed cards) to install it.

Built by ATI cards are the only ones that come with MMC. Most other brands (Sapphire, etc) come bundled with PowerDVD, which I personally prefer. There's nothing that says the retail boxed card you buy has to be a Built by ATI one. Sapphire, Connect3D and Gigabyte all make very good retail cards that most of the time cost less than the Built by ATI counterparts. But if having a full box isn't important to you, you can go with an OEM card and you would be getting the exact same thing.

[demonized]

The saphirre 9800 pro OEM that i got came with evrything. dvi to vga adapter. svideo cable, s-video to rca cable and a CD. So i think its just the box and the bundled software that you dont get.