How disadvantaged is a Gainward (or Gainward Phantom) GTX 970 compared to competition?

[Katahn]

I am considering buying a Gainward card considering it is much cheaper than the MSI or Asus cards where I am. Is there much difference in performance, noise or anything else? If so would it be worth spending the extra $70 or so dollars on a more expensive card?

 

[gytisxp]

They have a shorter warranty ( 2 years ) while the competition has 3. I've used both Gainward and Gigabyte among many others and never had a problem with any of them. Also they have some sexy looking coolers and overclock decently.

 

[17seconds]

Here's a review of the Phantom.
http://www.eteknix.com/gainward-phantom-geforce-gtx-970-4gb-graphics-card-review/

Quotes:
"The Gainward Phantom cooler excels in the noise department. Without a doubt it is the quietest cooling solution we’ve ever tested."

"The Gainward GTX 970 Phantom sacrifices temperatures to reduce noise: something I prefer. Despite this we still manage to stay south of 80 degrees celsius and in Unigine Heaven it didn’t even reach the thermal throttling point of 79/80."

"Gainward’s Phantom series of graphics cards are hugely under-rated in my opinion. The reason for this probably stems from Gainward’s comparatively small status compared to “big boys” like ASUS and EVGA, but this shouldn’t be the case. As our testing shows Gainward’s Phantom cooler does an excellent job of keeping the Nvidia Maxwell GTX 970 GPU running cool and extremely quiet even with a significant overclock."

"On the negative side it is fair to say the 2.5 slot design may be an issue for users with smaller motherboards or cases: if you know this might be a compatibility issue then we strongly recommend you measure up how much space you have to spare. I also feel that the decision to deploy mini HDMI and DisplayPort connections is inconvenient from a usability-standpoint as no adapters are provided."