This is why base/boost was a load of crap to begin with. Back in the days of yore, you could expect the card you purchased to perform exactly like the benchmarks showed (given same model and setup). This was done from the beginning to inflate benchmarks vs. real world performance. Two minute benchmark FTMFW! Now do I personally have a real issue with base/boost and the way it actually works? No, I just don't like it's intended purpose was to inflate benches. I also don't like that two people can buy the same card at the same price and one boosts to 1466 and the other to 1398 or whatever. Back then if you bought the same thing, you got the same thing, anything extra was up to the end user to extract via overclocking. Yes, once overclocked it was still down to silicon lottery and one person would have a better result than the other, but now one person gets it by default at bootup.