Read [MENTION=340386]DorkDisk[/MENTION]'s post. All those little engineering tweaks cost money but they produce real results. It's like comparing two violins each from a different manufacturer. They can look exactly alike but sound totally different. That difference in sound is what you pay for and changing to higher quality strings only helps so much. You can tweak the Performance bike with better tires and the like but it'd be better to put the same coin into improving the Giant.