Worth buying factory overclocked 4870?

Is it worth buying a factory overclocked 4870 or buy stock 4870 and different vga cooler like thermalright HR-03 and overclock it myself.

Are factory overclocked cards more overclockable if I bought a different cooler for them.

Thanks

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Originally Posted by rob4001

Is it worth buying a factory overclocked 4870

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Worth is something only you can decide based on your own criteria. For most people's use a normal 4870 is better value.

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or buy stock 4870 and different vga cooler like thermalright HR-03 and overclock it myself.

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Again for most people's use this probably isn't worth it.

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Are factory overclocked cards more overclockable if I bought a different cooler for them.

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There's usually less headroom on factory overclocked cards.

you can overclock standard ones without the heatsink change.

my 3870 is 777 / 1236 (or somethin like that) stock and i run 825 / 1300 as standard (did go further but didnt want to keep it) as long as you use ati tool to change the fan speed (mine is default to 60% at start up) it souldnt be an issue

just to say make sure you get a decent 4870 version sinse there a lot of issues i seen with the bog standard 4870s, no offence but cyberpower.co.uk uses lots of these 4870 basic models and seen and heard lots of bad problems from them.

suggest maybe getting either a sapphire or maybe ASUS version .they overclock very well

yh the asus ones give you utility software for overclocking

The bigger heatsinks on oem overclocked cards are as much for show alot of the time as they are performance. Most of the time the non-overclocked card at £20 less will clock to the OC settings if not higher on the standard cooling solution.

I agree about that too. Get average brand at default stock specs and overclock yourself without buying extra bits. Satisfaction saving £20+ quid on mid and high range cards :)

There are quite alot of overclocking threads about for ati software and Nvdia. When buying you base it on the graphics chipset first.

like oher said get a good base card then if you wise tamper with it and overclock up, it pretty much proven factory overclocks "out of box" arent that great and tend to show little or no visable differance over normal non overclocked"out of box" card.

I'd also recommend getting a stock one and overclocking it yourself as it's relatively easy to do. However the only thing to bear in mind is that if you overclock a stock one you will most probably void the warranty.

Go standard and overclock it. My sapphire handled 880/1200.

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