Does the brand of graphics actually matter too much?

[directhex]

Warranty service varies a LOT between brands - the length of warranty, and how well treated you are by the warranty. Nobody wants components to fail, but you'll kick yourself if you saved £5 buying a card with a 24 month warranty instead of 36, and it dies in month 25

[dfour]

I actualy like stock cards as 99% of the time I will be water cooing them anyway. As this invalidates most warrenties its cost is the biggest factor for me.

[Pob255]

I actualy like stock cards as 99% of the time I will be water cooing them anyway. As this invalidates most warrenties its cost is the biggest factor for me.

That's one thing to note, stock cards all have the same pcb layout and most water blocks are designed around the stock pcb, on a non-stock card a water block might not fit.

In fact pcb is one area where cards can vary, not just the layout but the quality of the pcb and the thickness of the copper tracers used, making the coper tracers thinner make it cheaper to manufacture but can interfere with the voltage regulation of the VRM's limiting overclocking, also the pcb acts as a secondary heat sink the gpu radiates heat down into the pcb as well as up into the cooler, so do the VRM's and ram.
Generally this shouldn't be a problem but again can effect overclocking.