Cards without tin box tuners - good or bad reception

[lez]

I am looking at buying a third card,and have found some dont have the tin box tuners, now I dont care how they tune without tuners, but I am wondering do they receive as well as a real tin tuner based card?

I guess the small usb dongles tune the same way, so would expect a tuner-less pci card and a tuner-less dongle to receive about the same, so maybe a 'is pci better than small usb' answer the same answer....