The Factory Girl introduction delineates the difference between FactoryGirl.build() and FactoryGirl.create():
# Returns a User inst
Using FactoryGirl.build(:factory_name) does not persist to the db and does not call save!, so your Active Record validations will not run. This is much faster, but validations might be important.
Using FactoryGirl.create(:factory_name) will persist to the db and will call Active Record validations. This is obviously slower but can catch validation errors (if you care about them in your tests).