Bill Brasky
Diamond Member
- May 18, 2006
- 4,345
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When vendors give OC out of the box, all that means is they changed the voltage at the factory and OCed video card a bit.
Dont fall for that. Do it yourself
my card is Vanilla , on purpose,, cuz I wanted control over voltage and OC that I want, plus its less expensive...
and you can see my sigrig I OCed the busheshezeees out of this card. heheh
When vendors give OC out of the box, all that means is they changed the voltage at the factory and OCed video card a bit.
Dont fall for that. Do it yourself
my card is Vanilla , on purpose,, cuz I wanted control over voltage and OC that I want, plus its less expensive...
and you can see my sigrig I OCed the busheshezeees out of this card. heheh
I think most people would want to keep the warranty on their card.
I think the blue PCBs are much more effective in cooling since blue is a cool color. If you have a red PCB color you're going to over heat and cause lots of problems. Black? Forget about it. And green? Only if you're some hippy tree hugger.
When you are paying $500 for a video card, the extra $15-20 is nothing.
I'm with the school of thought that buying a factory OC'ed card means the burden of ensuring the OC falls to the manufacturer and that's a guaranteed overclock you can take to the bank.
Bought an MSI Cyclone 460, I think it's stock OC is 725MHz (or is it 760MHz?). My first one crapped out and MSI replaced it under warranty even after I told them I had OC'ed it further still above 800MHz before it died.
For a few bucks extra I got a card that is guaranteed overclock and warrantied to boot. I consider the $ tradeoff to be worth it.
Eh? We buy the with the better cooler normally. That will be a non reference SOC version normally plus you get a nice warranty on it. Now you go and buy a reference on with a junk cooler go oc it by yourself and watch how the heat gets hold of it. Now you go out to buy a cooler for it your nice warranty expires you accidentally damage the card when replacing the cooler (happened a lot just ask the people over at guru3d and the 4870 x2) and you sit with nothing where you couldve just spent 30 to 40 extra for the cooler.
yes but they are clever. Remove the stock and there goes your warranty. Only Xfx I think still warranty your card if you replace the cooler. And yes it is easy to damage the card with it. Ask a few 4870 x2 customers with Artic coolersI think it's worth adding that even those "deluxe" coolers that venders put on their cards don't compare to true third party solutions like Arctic Cooling or Noctua. Going for the stock clocked card through a reputable company and then ocing the crap out of it with better cooling seems like the way to go.
I buy whats on sale
I'm with tweaky for the most part. I can't agree with his idea that you should buy anything, though. Design that GPU and build it yourself you lazy miscreants.