Are MSI and Gigabyte the same?

[larry moe 'n curly]

Because the MSI model RX9550-TD128 Radeon 9550 ATI graphics card looks
exactly like a Gigabyte GV-R955128D, except for the colors and
heatsinks.

 

[Gojira]

Manufacturers all build their cards based on the same chipset,ATI or Nvidia
design it and the various companies come up with their versions,so there's
always a similarity.

 

[larry moe 'n curly]

Manufacturers all build their cards based on the same chipset,ATI or Nvidia
design it and the various companies come up with their versions,so there's
always a similarity.

These don't have just the same chipset, but every tiny surface mount
resistor and capacitor is in the same location.

 

[badgolferman]

These don't have just the same chipset, but every tiny surface mount
resistor and capacitor is in the same location.

I have seen this with some other video boards that were based on the
Nvidia GeForce 4200 chipset. One was blue (Albatron) and one was gold
(Chaintech). They looked exactly the same except for the fan and the
board color itself.

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

I have seen this with some other video boards that were based on the
Nvidia GeForce 4200 chipset. One was blue (Albatron) and one was gold
(Chaintech). They looked exactly the same except for the fan and the
board color itself.

The chip people provide reference designs, if the boards are identical
then both board manufacturers just took the Nvidia reference design and
used it.

 

[kony]

These don't have just the same chipset, but every tiny surface mount
resistor and capacitor is in the same location.

It is quite common for many companies to use the exact same
reference design and PCB layout. However, some
manufactures, in recent years more often Asus and MSI,
tended to deviate from the reference designs early on in a
GPU's product cycle while other manufacturers, especially
2nd tier, seemed to wait until nVidia was clearing out chips
cheap, to produce different lower cost designs more
optimized to lower clockspeed. Then again, it could be that
nVidia also released these lower speed designs in some
cases, similar to what was done for GF4TI4200 vs.
GF4TI4400/4600 though 4200 came into the market earlier than
many clock-reduced designs seem to.

While it would be common for more than one manufacturer to
have same locations and "sometimes" even same capacitor
values, it is rarer for more than one to use the exact same
capacitor makes and models- something harder to discriminate
with cards using surface-mount caps than those with leaded
electrolytics. I have not heard of any Gigabyte and MSI
boards being "exactly" identical, but then I'd never looked
into it either.

 

[badgolferman]

similar to what was done for GF4TI4200 vs.
GF4TI4400/4600 though 4200 came into the market earlier

Can you explain this please?

 

[kony]

Can you explain this please?

Ti4400/4600 used one nVidia reference design while 4200 used
a different nvidia reference design. At this point I don't
remember who, if anyone had also produced a non-reference
layout for either of these.

With the 4200, nVidia was selling them as a primary
mid-level product alongside the other two. If you look at
other chips like TNT2, it was at least a couple of years
later than the technology was recycled into M64 and Vanta.
More recently there were chips like the FX5900 later turned
into FX5900XT. I think it was more a matter of timing than
anything, that TI4600 PCB was a huge and expensive layout
and they needed something in the mid-level right away but
where phasing out GF3 already and nobody really took a
liking to GF4MX since it was only a DX7 part.