Official overclocked version or regular version?

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cpthk

Weaksauce
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For nVidia card right now, many manufacture made the official overclocked version of video card. They are usually around the same price. Would you get the overclocked version or the regular version?

Thanks.
 
cpthk said:
Right now, many manufacture made the official overclocked version of video card. They are usually around the same price. Would you get the overclocked version or the regular version?

Thanks.
Click to expand...
What card...
 
cpthk said:
I am talking about nvidia card any chip. For example, regular 9600GT vs overclocked 9600GT, 9800GTX vs overclocked 9800GTX, etc.
Click to expand...

Assuming that the warranty and the HSF are the same, if the OC'd version of the card is exactly the same price as a stock card, then get the OC'd version. Fast card for the same price as a slow card? Gee hard decision. :)
 
As I saw, they are usually like only 10 dollar difference, which is nothing. The thing is I know some people prefer the regular card, they said it's stabler. Is that true?
 
well by that logic why not underclock th card when you install it, i mean if it gets more stable the slower it is....
 
Why pay more for something you can do yourself? Most of the time they're overclocked by some minuscule amount and use stock cooling. You're basically paying them to change a few BIOS settings.
 
Go with what is cheapest. There's usualy no difference between normal models and pre-overclocked ones and so the maximum overclock will be the same. If there is an obvious difference such as custom cooling then it might be worth it, such as watercooled.

The only real benefit of the OC models is they come guranteed to run at them clocks where as standard models don't, but In my experience the OC versions never push the speeds that hard, you're more or less guranteed to get them speeds anyway especially if the hardware is the same.
 
DONT BUY AN OVERCLOCKED VERSION OF A CARD!!! Man ill be the first to tell you its the dumbest idea in the world (ill explain while in a bit). I remember a few months I build my first comp and to be honest it was a scary experience. I wanted to ensure I was buying great parts for great parts and above all I did not wana get ripped off. However when I was buying graphics cards, around November (I put the actual comp together in January but was buying the parts during thanksgiving, black friday, new years, and christmas) the 8800gt came out. The MSRP was about $250 but there was such short supplies and little competition that prices were gouged up to $260-$270 on average. Well the stock clock of an 8800gt is 600mhz (for core clock I mean) but well EVGA was selling an SSC version with a clock of 700mhz for $300 and I thought, at the time that was a great deal. Well it was... until the AMD 3000 series came out and drove the prices of the 8800gt down to $200.

Well even after the prices went down, I felt I had a good deal. To make it even better, in my mind, I OC the clock to 730mhz (forgot the other numbers) and I thought it would further increase my fps in games because in benchmarks (pcmark06 for example) it increased my score however in real game settings (Crysis, Cod4), I saw 0-1 fps improvement... Ofcourse you can imagine the disappointment in seeing such numbers. Well I replaced the stock 8800gt cooling with the terrific accelero s1 with turbo module and was able to further increase overclock to 760 (remember the stock 8800gt cooling was a minimum of 70C for me, even with rivatuner fan adjustments, on full load temps sometimes shot to 80-90c, with the accelero s1 and turbo module average temp was an amazing 42C and on full load (using ATI tool artifact test) was only 44C so I would imagine the huge drop in temps increase my OC potential). Anyway testing it in game it further increased my fps by 0-1.

The point? Well the extra 40 dollars I spend on an OC version, I could have EASILY spent the same amount of money MUCH better cooling for my card or even better ventilation for my case which would have resulted in lower temps for my graphics card and I believe higher OC (same trend happened with q6600, with an AF7 Pro max OC was 3.8,. stable at 3.6 @1.5v 10h prime95; with TRUE 120 max OC was 4.0 (documented by cpuz) stable at 3.8; I highly doubt such a trend (lower temps result in higher oc) was a coincidence). Now I am not saying that a factory OC part doesnt increase your fps. What i am saying is that the extra money that you spend on an OC part could have EASILY been spent on better school which would probably increase you OC by the same amount.

Why did I write an entire story about and not just get to the point? Because I remember when I build my first comp a few months ago and didn't know shit about computers. I asked the same question in a similar thread and I got the same responses: why pay more for a company to do what you could easily do in 5 minutes. At the time I kept thinking that it probably is difficult to overclock and im sure if a factory does it then it will mean its better then if i did it. Well once I learned to OC (which isnt that difficult, if a dumbass like me can do it, im sure 99.9% of the world can; not even joking, its not difficult, if you dont believe me, u can always rely on the wonderful support of this forum to help you out, as well as various other sites). Anyway people that posted where write, but I didn't listen and still got the SSC version?

Why didn't I listen? Because people assumed I knew something about OC, well I didnt and so I thought it was harder then it was, when it wasnt. Even more important, few people backed up their response with any evidence other then what they thought was common knowledge. So ofcourse I decided to "play it safe" and get the OC version instead of trying to OC it myself. Boy did I get burned. Honestly if I could go back in time and NOT buy the SSC and force myself to clock a regular card then I would. Experience is great and all but not at the cost of money and getting ripped off...

To sum it up? Never buy a factory overclocked version of a card. If its only a few extra dollars, then spend the money on better cooling and ask individuals in this forum how to overclock, trust me, people here are extremely nice and helpful.
 
If its a matter of a few dollars more, then why not get the faster version? Of course you can do it yourself, but I would hope the OCed version was at least held under higher QA standards than the regular model. That doesn't mean a stock version couldn't be overclocked just as high or higher, but at least with the factory OC you know you're not getting a lemon.
 
NOT worth it. The overclocks are usually so small that 1) the actual difference in performance is not even noticeable and 2) nearly all of the stock clocked cards could reach that speed (unless the overclocked versions had radically different coolers).
 
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