Trying to choose between an EVGA or GIGABYTE product for your PC? We can help!
Generally, EVGA and GIGABYTE products both feature good build quality. However, EVGA offers superior support, warranties, and customer service, while GIGABYTE offers better variety throughout its product lines. For GPUs, EVGA only specializes in NVIDIA cards, while GIGABYTE makes both NVIDIA and AMD cards.
That’s the way-too-short answer. Realistically, there are lots of additional details to cover when comparing similar products between these two.
So which company is better, EVGA or GIGABYTE? Whose specific products are better? Who should you look to when it’s time to start thinking about your next build?
From GPUs to motherboards, warranties to customer service, we’ve done all of the heavy lifting to help you determine which of these heavyweights hits the hardest.
Clearly, EVGA and GIGABYTE are hardware competitors with plenty in common. Both have long, storied histories, both offer a variety of products in a wide range of categories, and both have techy names spelled in all caps.
Having a lot in common isn’t always a good thing, however, as both companies’ product offerings overlap in a few critical arenas. And, like most arenas, only one entrant can claim victory at the end of the day.
EVGA’s Background
It didn’t take EVGA very long to rise to the top. Established in 1999, the California-based computer hardware manufacturer quickly demonstrated its potential as one of the best producers of NVIDIA-based graphics cards and NVIDIA reference designed motherboards.
EVGA was one of the first firms to introduce factory overclocked GPUs, motherboards capable of supporting four GPUs running in SLI, and GPUs capable of running in 4-way SLI, and that’s just the start. EVGA quickly expanded into the Intel chipset-based motherboard business (starting with their X58 SLI motherboard in 2009), but they didn’t stop there.
EVGA has spent the last decade polishing its processes, building on its innovations, and expanding its product line. Their offering has grown to include power supplies, liquid coolers, computer cases, and other components, computer accessories like gaming mice and keyboards, and they’ve even dabbled in premade tablet computers and gaming laptops.
While not every single one their newer products have been as successful as they would have liked, EVGA’s willingness to take risks and expand their lineup speaks to the company’s ambition and marks them as one of the most dynamic firms in the market.
As a private company, EVGA doesn’t make much financial or organizational data public, but the available information paints a picture of an established company with lots of room to grow.
EVGA has eight different locations around the world and at least 250 employees, and its wide product offering suggests a long list of manufacturing partners and suppliers from whom EVGA sources many of their products.
GIGABYTE’s Background
GIGABYTE may have been founded way back in 1986, but its eyes have always been on the future. The first clue is in its name: a gigabyte may seem insignificant today, but in the 80s the idea of consumer electronics able to store a billion bytes was the stuff of science fiction.
Under the leadership of Pei-Cheng Yeh, the company’s founder and current chairman, GIGABYTE has grown from a boutique computer hardware firm into one of, if not the world’s biggest motherboard producers and has expanded its scope to a range of products and solutions in the consumer, enterprise, and industry spaces.
Motherboards may be their bread and butter, but GIGABYTE has its eyes set on the whole bakery. Over the years they’ve entered the consumer electronics market with desktops, tablets, ultrabooks, mobile phones, and even PDAs, produced and sold components like optical drives, monitors, mice, keyboards, cooling systems, power supplies, and cases, and even catered to enterprise clients with lines of server motherboards, server racks, networking equipment.
Like EVGA, GIGABYTE’s ventures and expanded inventories haven’t all paid off, but GIGABYTE’s core business and global reach are more than capable of absorbing the odd risk that doesn’t pay off.
Unlike EVGA, GIGABYTE is a publicly traded company (traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange), so they’ve had to make a lot of their financial and operational information a matter of public record. On top of their main business, GIGABYTE operates at least one subsidiary company (Aorus), and their various facilities, offices, and fabricators employ over 2,600 employees.
All this size and scope translates to a hefty balance sheet for GIGABYTE, with the company reporting revenues of NT$84 billion (about $304 million) for fiscal year 2020.
Product Variety
Product Variety Winner: GIGABYTE
EVGA and GIGABYTE have produced and sold many of the same types of products in the past, but their current product offerings only overlap in a few key areas: GPUs, motherboards, mice, and keyboards. EVGA’s comparably smaller operation and shorter history put it at a bit of a disadvantage—especially in the motherboard category.
As you can see from quick can of EVGA’s website and GIGABYTE’s website, it’s abundantly clear that GIGABYTE dominates the variety debate in just about every way possible.
A quick note: The semiconductor/GPU shortage threw the whole market into chaos. Many GPUs are/were sold out, listed at outrageous markups, or both, and some have been pulled from online listings altogether until the supply chain returns to normal. This, naturally, makes it nigh impossible to do accurate price comparisons between the two companies’ GPUs, so you won’t find much information about price points in this article.
Customer Support
Best Customer Support Winner: EVGA, by a large margin
If you live in America or another English-speaking country you’ll have a better time with EVGA’s customer service than with GIGABYTE’s. EVGA is an American company with an American support staff, which can be very helpful when you’re trying to work out an issue with a product.
You’d be hard-pressed to find accounts of bad experiences with EVGA’s customer service, and, though GIGABYTE’s service isn’t necessarily the industry’s worst, EVGA’s excellence in the arena is more than enough to overwhelm GIGABYTE’s sometimes spotty and hard to reach customer service.
Warranties
Best Warranties Winner: EVGA
Both EVGA’s warranty and GIGABYTE’s warranty list 3-year warranties on their sites for all GPU purchases. Their policies are pretty much boilerplate; the companies guarantee they’ll repair or replace your GPU if it has some kind of defect in material or workmanship that causes your graphics card to crap out within three years of purchase.
They seem pretty much even…until you hit a little clause in EVGA’s agreement: a Transferable Limited Warranty clause. It sounds boring (and it is) but it means you can sell your GPU to someone else and transfer the warranty to them. This is a small but important difference between the two firms’ policies, and it’s enough to give EVGA the win.
Customer Reviews
Best Reviews Winner: EVGA
Customer reviews across the board say pretty much what’s been covered above: EVGA’s selection is small and their cooling systems aren’t as impressive as GIGABYTE’s, but their customer service and warranty are so good they almost make up for EVGA’s deficits in other areas.
The two companies’ respective GPUs perform very similarly, are made with similar quality materials, and last about the same amount of time, so it’s up to you whether you’re more interested in a larger variety or in a responsive company that places a higher priority on the customer.
GPUs
When a company “manufactures” graphics cards, they aren’t actually building and assembling all the components needed to make a functioning graphics card. We covered this at length in our guide to EVGA vs NVIDIA.
We also recently did a full comparison of EVGA vs ZOTAC, who both only overlap in the GPU market.
Instead, most companies (with the exception of NVIDIA and AMD) buy all the GPUs important bits from either NVIDIA or AMD, slap on some proprietary cooling tech or put it in some fancy form factor or configuration, and then sell the finished products under their own brand.
This means there won’t be much of a difference in performance in graphics cards from different companies, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t differences between any two GPU “manufacturers’” products.
Even if one’s cards don’t have a huge performance or technological advantage over the other’s, there are still differences in customer service, reviews, selection, and cooling systems.
If you’re interested, here’s a full list of EVGA GPUs.
And here’s a full list of GIGABYTE GPUs.
To make things more straightforward, we split the comparison into low, mid, and high-end GPUs.
Low End GPUs
Low End GPU Winner: GIGABYTE
EVGA doesn’t have a very large selection of GeForce 200, 700, or 10 Series GPUs. The different versions they offer are just as barebones as their selection; you won’t find any fancy features or advanced cooling systems on these cards. EVGA reserves those for their pricier GPUs.
GIGABYTE, on the other hand, clocks in with an incredible combined total of three hundred different versions of NVIDIA GeForce 200, 400, 600, 700, 900, and 10 Series GPUs—and that’s not including the fifty versions of lower-powered AMD cards they carry.
This round goes to GIGABYTE based on numbers alone. Not only do they carry both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, they offer nearly sixty times as many varieties as EVGA.
Mid-to-Upper Range GPUs
Mid Range GPU Winner: GIGABYTE
GIGABYTE wins this round as well. Their selection of midrange NVIDIA cards is massive, and their selection of midrange AMD cards is…there. EVGA makes a decent enough showing, but there’s no arguing with the sheer number of models and versions that GIGABYTE has on offer.
High-End GPUs
High-End GPU Winner: GIGABYTE
And now we get to the big boys. These GPUs are where we really start seeing some differences in form factor and cooling systems, the latter of which can have a bigger impact on your GPU’s performance than you may think.
GIGABYTE comes out on top once again. Their massive selection of high-end NVIDIA and AMD GPUs absolutely dwarfs EVGA’s lineup, and it even has a range of cooling options that match or exceed EVGA’s own proprietary cooling systems.
GIGABYTE definitely wins in terms of selection, variety, and even cooling systems.
Motherboards
Motherboard Winner: GIGABYTE
This will be a quick comparison. Unlike our GIGBABYTE vs MSI comparison, there’s not a lot to talk about here.
EVGA may have made its bones building motherboards, but it seems like the company’s pretty much moved on from the space, as they currently only offer four motherboards on their website.
GIGABYTE, on the other hand, has several different lines of motherboards designed for both individual and enterprise customers. Their AORUS Gaming, GIGABYTE Gaming, and Ultra Durable lines include nearly 1,000 different models in total, and their Embeded/IoT and Server/Workstation lines add another 60+ models to the tally.
Selection might not be everything, but there’s no real evidence that suggests GIGABYTE’s motherboards are inferior to EVGA’s current selection. GIGABYTE dominates EVGA in this category.
Keyboards, Mice & Other Peripherals
Mice, Eyboards, & Other Peripherals Winner: NEITHER
Once again, GIGABYTE offers a much larger selection of gaming mice and keyboards than EVGA, and once again their respective products are quite comparable in terms of functionality, price, and form factor.
But here’s the kicker: Neither EVGA’s or GIGABYTE’s gaming mice or keyboards come close to being the best in the market. There isn’t one reputable website that’s listed either of their peripherals as some of the best available in 2021 or 2022, which pretty much tells you that both companies are equally bad at making and selling mice and keyboards.
Final Thoughts & Recommendations
If EVGA is David, GIGABYTE is Goliath. EVGA’s business is much smaller and more focused, and their emphasis on the North American/English-speaking market make them a much better choice for people anticipating a need for customer support in the future.
GIGABYTE is a fine company with a long history and an absolutely massive product offering, but their subpar warranties and customer service may be a dealbreaker if forced to choose between buying a similar product from either company.
The computer hardware market is…weird. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of manufacturers and resellers for everything from computer cases to graphics cards, but there’s surprisingly little variation between the products they sell.
That there are really only two core GPU manufacturers (NVIDIA and AMD) always makes things interesting, as it seems like every other company claims to produce their own GPUs.
And while that’s technically true—each GPU “manufacturer” buys the tech from NVIDIA or AMD and adds proprietary features to make the cards their own—no amount of advanced cooling systems or specialized form factors will change the fact that they’re all built on the same underlying technology.
Repackaging and reselling other companies’ products is incredibly common in the computer hardware market, which often makes it a chore to determine which firm offers the best tech.
