OEM - Retail...Common question I'm betting

[dgunthert]

Building a new PIV system and planning to overclock. I've seen conflicting info about OEM and retail CPU's. I know retail has a box, manuals, and a warranty. I've seen posts that retail will overclock better and some that say OEM will. Some say OEM is not as good quality, others say it is. Realizing that I'm asking for the same conflicting opinions, can I get some input about the absolute factual differences (warranty, manuals, etc) and the percieved differences?

[Pinky]

Actually, most retail are made in one country/facility, and most OEMs are madfe elsewhere, so it really comes down to the fabrication plant and week... but even these rules don't always apply.

[Pecos]

And then you've got some fabs that produce both OEM and retail versions of the same chip -- for example my 2 Tualatin Celeron 1.2GHz chips. One's an OEM and the other is a retail and both were fabbed in the Philippines.

A lot of the luck has to do with the chip you receive.