Factory overclocked vs. Overclocking yourself?

Hey guys,

I'm thinking about buying two GTX 460's, and I was wondering if i should get Factory Overclocked or Normal and then overclock it myself

thats a no brainer factory oc 460 vs vanilla anyday.. the stock fansinks generally suck eggs for overclocking a factory oc'd one has a better fansink which means they manage heat better which means higher clock speeds on your core/memory are possible as are unlocking pipelines on older cards.

"better overclock a factory overclocked.":D I think even if you are an oc guru don't bother with gpu just buy a factory overclocked.red-ray

factory oc'd cards without a manual overclcok arent worth your time.. rarely do you see gains over 5fps and generally speaking no less than 1fps :P witha proper manual oc you can really make some suckers fly..an hd 4670X2 card actually can be overclocked to out preform three actual hd 4670's!!!

the hd 5830 CODmw2 edition card i have when manually oc'd can surpass a gtx 275 very nicely while its factory oc only yields 1 more fps than the regular hd 5830.

unless you live in a country where you see custom pcb cards for factory oc'd card (tgt in asia or pwoercolor's cards in europe & asia) you dont see super overclocked cards anymore really. (the cases in point im referring to are the hd 5670 sp640 and the gtx 460 BEAST)

I have an MSI 5770 Hawk , thats designed for overclocking. Factory has put a very nice Fan/Heatsink on , and advertise its OC potential. But, its not Factory OC'd . Of course - download Afterburner and crank up the Clock speeds, and it does make quite a difference.

So, my point is - there is always an Exception to things like that.

It depends. They have different tiered overclocks, like BFG for example used stuff like gtx 285 OC, gtx 285 OC2. I'd imagine they grab a batch of cards, test them, ones that pass the highest tiered tests are labeled OC2, while ones that didn't do so well are labeled OC. That means if you get a card labeled OC, it won't reach OC2 levels and beyond. I doubt every vanilla card is tested for oc potential, or maybe not at all. Just received from Nvidia and boxed for standard clocks.

I've bought one pre-oc'd card in my life, a BFG OC level card, and it was the worst overclocking card I've ever had, only a few mhz over its factory speeds. All the vanilla cards I've bought have gone well beyond factory oc levels except for the extreme editions that cost like $100 more, with which you could get a better stock card with that money, so totally pointless unless you're shelling out for the absolute best cards and maximum oc edition.

That's my experience, will not waste the money on overclocked cards.