are superclocked or FTW Edition and etc cards worth it ?

Just to throw my 2 cents in I would say if it's an Nvidia card then absolutely not it's a waste of money. You should have no problems getting any Nvidia reference card to OC up to the clocks of a FTW or SSC card. On the other hand for an ATI card I would say maybe. In my experiene OC'ing ATI cards it's not as easy as OC'ing Nvidia and not every card will OC well or at all in some cases. Just my thoughts on that.

The reality of the situation is regardless of whether it's a factory OC'd card or you OC it yourself the actual performance gains will be minimal depending on the card. IMO it's a waste to OC a 285 because the actual gains are less than 5% unless you go overboard. On the other hand my 8800GTS 512MB was an overclocking monster and I could get anywhere from 10-20% better performance when I OC'd it. It's up to you in the end but I personally only OC my card for benchmarks. To me it's just not worth it for every day use.

 

That is the card I use, BFG 8800GT 512MB OC, it is pre-OCed, and even so has lots of headroom for even further OCing and from what I see on the card it sure doesn't look like a reference cooler - but anyhow....

 

I would say definately buy stock clocked cards and OC it yourself. Its fun, and you save some cash for games, fans, etc.

 

The use of higher quality components (caps, chokes, etc...) helps too !

I don't know I'm not sure if you got a stock card of the same model you would be able to OC it to the same level - if that were the case, there would be a major pissing match concerning this - people would stop buying the OC and SC versions.

 

Out of about 25-30 GPUs that I have owned, I've never had one that I couldn't meet or surpass the OC/SC versions by OCing them myself. I've never had a card die on me either.. though I did get 2 that were DOA.

 

Most OC'd version cards are conservatively OC'd, so any stock card should easily reach that. However, I think reputable card makers bin some of the higher OC models. My SC card beats the highest OC Hilbert was able to achieve in Gurus gtx275 shootout review, albeit not by much (745-1610-2600), but with further testing I may be able to go higher. So this may be a binned card. Either that or I was lucky.

 

those are nice clocks for a 275.

i have two bfg oc(720/1300) but they are slower then my plain evga 275 (740/1300).

but i'v seen it the other way around too where the ssc or xxx type cards ran faster then the stock models

 

I would just select the type of card I want.. then narrow it down to reputable manufacturers, then narrow it down by price and freebies. I never factor in whether its a OC or SC edition.

 

i've had several that i couldnt OC to meet factory oc'ed versions. usually it was the memory

 

I think this could be a good review for the guru team to run some tests on.

I reckon grab EVGA gtx275 and EVGA gtx275 FTW, and overclock the stock to the FTW, and see the results in vantage and crysis....

IMO I would go the factory clock over my own. seems to just work a hell of a lot better