Factory Overclocked Cards- Good or Bad?

[Abraxus#]

I'm curious what you guys think on factory overclocked cards, are they less reliable? Are they better overclockers overall? Is the increased power drain a big issue?


The reason i ask is that i'm going to buy a GTX260 next week but I can't decide between:

The XFX Black edition 216:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896MB-XFX-GTX-260-Black-PCI-E-20-2300GHz-GDDR3-GPU-666MHz-216-Cores-2xDL-DVI-I-HDTV-plus-FarCry2

Or the EVGA Standard 216:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896MB-EVGA-GTX260-PCI-E-20-(x16)-Mem-1998MHz-GPU-576MHz-216-Cores-2x-Dual-Link-DVI-I-HDTV


They're both the same price, but because the only card i've ever had a problem with (see link here (http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=120362)) was an OC'ed BFG i'm slightly hesitant to go for the XFX (Who i've heard have pretty bad support).

Also I quite like the idea of step-up but I doubt the new GTX260 in Jan' will be that much better, so it's probably not that relevant.

Also, i'll be getting a Corsair TX650 to power it, that should be ok right?:captnkill:

[bob saget]

we have had many discussions here on this topic, and some of them have not ended well :lol:
basically, what factory overclocks does is its sort of a guarantee that the card will and is running at above stock speed 100% stable.
This brings us to the question : Is it worth paying more for something that you can do yourself? To some it is, because they prefer to mess with the card as little as possible, and would rather have a solid unit. Others, buy the stock card and mess with it themselves. This does have some risk involved, but you save the money.
Since they are the same price, i would go for the factory overclocked version. Usually the differences are not huge (3-5fps), but i would go for the faster inna heartbeat.

[Abraxus#]

Yeah I did think that but i've since read a lot of stuff about how appalling XFX support is and since I had the issue with the GTX280 I bought, that's quite a big issue.

I will admit I forgot to search for it before I posted, but what's the general consensus on overclocking, presumably the factory oc'ed ones are better quality in order to guarantee higher clocks?

[jcrox]

I've never had a problem buying a vanilla version of a card and then overclocking it to the speeds of the more expensive cards. Why pay more for something that takes all of about 5 seconds to do yourself?

[bob saget]

I've never had a problem buying a vanilla version of a card and then overclocking it to the speeds of the more expensive cards. Why pay more for something that takes all of about 5 seconds to do yourself?

well he is not paying more, thats why i would do it.

[Madpistol]

I'd get the EVGA card and overclock it yourself.

BTW, EVGA's service and support is fantastic! :D

[Lfctony]

I'd say bad. Sometimes the QA on them is not good enough, they will fail and cause you trouble, costing you even more money to RMA them...

[scubes]

from my experience they are not a good idea after my troubles with a bfg oc 280 gtx first of all in sli mode it would freeze coming outa of crysis and crysis warhead then on its own it would refuse to even post thank god its RMA,ED to bfg.just gonna sell it when i get it back:(

[Abraxus#]

Yeah that's pretty much what I thought, EVGA it is!

[Blacklash]

I'd echo others here. Buy a card from Evga since they support end user overclocking and HSF replacement under their lifetime warranty. I wouldn't bother with factory OCed cards. Many stock GTX 260s will do 660 on the core with the fan on auto and can do well above that with 70-75% manually set. I'd expect 680 or greater in that scenario. When you find your max shader clock you can always unlink it from the core and raise the core until it maxes. I did just that.

In some scenarios overclocking is pointless. It can often be very meaningful @ 1920x with AA when considering min frame rates.

[Abraxus#]

Sounds good, I usually set the fan to 95% in Rivatuner anyway so I should be able to overclock a fair bit.

[john19055]

Since what you are looking at are the same price I would go with the overclocked one ,But Evga has lot better customer support.Most of the time a factory overclock card will overclock farther then a stock version ,but not always ,and it is useally not by very much.I would get the cheapest GTX 260's and just overclock them ,most of the time you can save a lot of money and put it toward something else.

[EciDemon]

some past factory OCed cards ive seen have better ram for example that are rated higher then reference (zoltac had an 8800gt OC like this) while others just factory OC with reference parts going over specs.

Evga's factory OC g200's don't use special ram or anything, it's the same as vanilla cards. They are however tested and hand picked and are guaranteed to work at the factory OC

[nekrosoft13]

also will say bad idea, Overclocks should vary from machine to machine, you can't guarantee clocks.

you have customer A and customer B, both buy factory OC card.

Customer A lives in South Florida, rarelly turns on AC and preffers open windows for the cool ocean breeze.

Customer B lives in Alaska.

[Viventis]

I have an overclocked XFX 8800GT and it would overheat to artifacts (high 90's) during extended 3d gaming sessions until I installed Riva Tuner and set the fan higher (I had percentages set from 60 to 100%)

I now have regularly clocked GTX 260 and it never goes above 55c.