EggXpert

I figured I'd take the time to explain an important concept for those of you who are actually interested in it.

Most people here will gauge quality based on experience and make recommendations off of that, which I believe can be a bit misleading, especially when such recommendations may not be based on any factual evidence. Such is the case when people recommend the likes of Rosewill and Apevia (SP?) power supplies based on experience. I don't have a problem with people expressing their experience and even their opinions, but nothing competes with the straight facts. You can imply facts based on a broad consumer base's experiences with a product, but its generally a better idea to know what you're talking about.

Given that, Acer is one of those companies that sells great products, but their quality isn't on par with that of Samsung or LG. Their color quality has been historically inferior to that of Samsung and LG LCDs, and Acer's quality control also seems to be sub-par to that of Samsung and LG, which is proven by your experience with a supposedly top-notch cutting edge LCD. An Acer panel's build quality may be perfectly fine, but will still be an inferior product if their quality control isn't as great.

What you have to understand here is that manufacturers of computer parts leave a certain amount of room for error in their products. This "room for error" is measured in standard deviations from the norm. Consider this graph:

As a rough example, a manufacturer manufactures a specific product, such as video cards. A loose standard deviation will have that manufacturer producing 68.2% of their products according to specification, which was roughly the case with the Nvidia 6800 AGP series. While Nvidia sold the 6800 Vanilla, 6800GT, 6800 Ultra, and hyped the never sold 6800 Ultra Extreme, Nvidia manufactured only the 6800GT specification. 68.1% of those cards performed at the designed specification at 16pipelines/6shaders at 350mhz core/1000mhz mem, while a remaining 15.9% of those performed above specification and became the 6800 Ultras, and a remaining 15.9% performed below a specification tolerance and became sold as 6800 Vanilla cards. The 6800 Vanilla was sold at 325mhz core/700mhz mem, and came with 12pipelines/5 shaders. If for some reason a 6800GT had a defective pipeline or shader, or could not run at the rated speeds, it was sold as a 6800 Vanilla.

To share my fortune with this scenario, I purchased a 6800 Vanilla AGP for $176 and learned about this manufacturing process. I discovered from testing that the reason my card was a 6800 Vanilla was because of one defective shader. Using a bios flash, software voltmod, and a modified heatsink, I was able to unlock the 4 good pipelines (leaving me at 16 pipelines/5 shaders) and overclock the card to 445/990, which was a mere 5mhz slower and had one less shader than the $550 6800 Ultra Extreme. I used the card for 2 years without problems and later sold it on ebay for $120.

Knowing this process, one should consider that companies have specific tolerances of standard deviation in their manufacturing process for a given product. The likes of AMD, Intel, ATI, and Nvidia benefit from the luxury of being able to manufacture a very loose standard deviation with one general product and rebadge it as desired. However, other companies such as Acer, Samsung, and LG cannot as they only produce one product and each has to be nearly perfect. Samsung and LG maintain their reputation for excellent quality and reliability because they have very stringent tolerances of standard deviation. While it is more expensive to ensure that each product is built extremely close to specification, it does produce a higher class product. Acer's tolerances of standard deviation are lower than that of Samsung and LG (though not by too much) which allow them to manufacture at a lower cost and sell competitively priced panels. Their products aren't as great, but for the general user and even leisure gamer, its good enough.

Granted, there are other factors that affect the pricing on a product such as the effectiveness of their operations management (take Toyota for example, which excels in this field), but this concept plays a fairly large role. So next time you feel like recommending a product or see someone else recommending a product based on experience, consider this concept and do some research. Highly rated companies will generally  produce their products at a tighter standard deviation to minimize defects.

Any questions? Mods, is this worth a sticky somewhere?

Ya I see what you mean, I wanted some thing different and didn't think of the quality factor.

I'll thered it for a sticky!!!   

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Thanks guys.

4/4 votes for making this thread a sticky and still no sticky? haha, I'll bet the mods have been too lazy to read the whole thing. 

Probably just a forum glitch, or they only set it for 3-6 months.

They have set times because if you want to make it permenent it becomes an "announcement" and hovers above the main area above the button to make a new post, but below the other subforums. 

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Bump again!

Really have the same opinion with you. That reminds me Intel's "classic" event when Coppermine P3 600E and 800EP released, they were the same core, only with different host frequency.

Also, for AMD, people overlocked Spitfire/Thunderbird by connecting L1 and L3.

For Nvidia, we could change a Geforce 2 mx400 to Quardo MXR, Geforce 3 ti 500 to Quardo DDC.

For ATI, ati 9550 change to 9600 or FireGL.

......

Oh BTW, forgot to mention, MFGs also play tricks on those so-called released code. Just like 9800gtx and GTX 250.

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Exactly Freebird

Thanks XtremeRevolution for posting this very useful info. Yes, all eggxperts should read this. Also expecting more great info from you

BUMP!

Really good information here for folks to read and understand, thanks Xtreme!

Respectfully,

PROACEX1

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By Anonymous, 1929: "See the happy Moron. He doesn't give a d***. I wish I were a Moron-My word! Perhaps I am..."
By Mazer Rackham: "Early to bed and early to rise," Mazer Intoned, "makes a man stupid and blind in the eyes."

okay, not bad info but do we really need to know about this? Is there any better to way to recommend products based on ones own experience? :-) as for factual evidence, I mean, most of hardware is made by the same ODM, Do you really think there is any difference between a Toshiba laptop and lenovo one? not really, maybe they are both using the same LCD made by Samsung. moreover, Each hardware has a failure rate, to buy a product is like to buy lottery, yup, the same processor made by the same Intel, some OC better,some comes with some glitches and can't OC very well, and some DOA.

But I have to agree, it is better to know something new.

intelguy:

okay, not bad info but do we really need to know about this? Is there any better to way to recommend products based on ones own experience? :-) as for factual evidence, I mean, most of hardware is made by the same ODM, Do you really think there is any difference between a Toshiba laptop and lenovo one? not really, maybe they are both using the same LCD made by Samsung. moreover, Each hardware has a failure rate, to buy a product is like to buy lottery, yup, the same processor made by the same Intel, some OC better,some comes with some glitches and can't OC very well, and some DOA.

But I have to agree, it is better to know something new.

You serious buddy? Ever actually used a Lenovo T400 and a Toshiba similar priced laptop for a month each? You come back and tell me the hardware is made by by the same manufacturer. There is a HUGE difference in design, quality, and intelligence in the way it was put together. A Lenovo T400 will have a spill proof keyboard, a magnesium alloy frame, and will sustain a 25 mph impact into a brick wall while on and STILL function. Try that with a Toshiba. Lenovos are on a completely different level.

This is pretty much what I assumed, based on what Ive read over the years.

Glad someone pretty much stated it as such.

Explains why you can overclock some lower badged processors so much.