Factory overclocked cards worthwhile?

I'm looking at a new gaming build, and will be aiming at c.£200 for the GPU. Scan currently have the GTC670 Power Edition (stock clocks) @177 and The power edition OC @ 198.

Given that the budget is squeezed a little bit, If I could spend the £20 elsewhere it would be useful, since the cooling solution on both is the same, and both are voltage unlocked is the OC version likely to be worth it? Are they generally better binned? Or am I likely to be able to get a similar final result by OCing it myself?

Can't tell how good nVidia cards OC but lately I been installing AMD cards into my builds and even regardless the cooling solution (XFX 1 FAN vs. 2 FANs) I always hit driver OC cap. The acoustic experience is the only difference between the two.
So keep a long story short, if the cooling solution is equal and the factory OC does not exceed 7.5-10% I would not bother to buy the more expensive solution.

It makes a big difference here - the cheaper 670s are ones that failed the overclock tests for the regular power edition. i.e. the cheaper ones are the opposite of binned.

Cheap ones are the equal of binned I think (sorry if not).

The cheap ones are the lowest binned, if you want to put it another way. The power edition cards that couldn't reach a decent overclock. These are cards that are worse than average 670s.

Thats a fair point I hadn't thought of. £20 doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, but will take me over the £450 budget I had said, which I've been desperately trying to avoid doing (mostly because I\'m the worlds biggest sucker for \'its only an extra £20\', then before you know it the spec has gone from FX6300 + 7870 to i7 & twin Titans.

Have you considered the 7950s? There\'s a very good HIS one for under £190 at ocuk.

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Originally Posted by teppic

Have you considered the 7950s? There's a very good HIS one for under £190 at ocuk.

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Yes, and that was my original plan, I wouldn't use any of the bundle (despite it being 'better' I'd only be playing stuff because it's free, whereas batman would be a definite buy) and I have the option of phsyx/shield

scan have gtx 670 oc (not power edition) for £186 - and they are fully overclocked cards - 985 stock clocks.

With £200 to spend on a new card with nVidia as a preference I would go for this: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-z...es-1344-plusfr

I prefer cards that have custom heatsink designs because they tend to be quieter.

They do, but that card isn't clocked as high, doesn't have unlocked voltage, and most importantly has the reference cooler. I'm not after silent, but not sounding like a tornado would be good.

Edit : noxvayl, that's also a contender, but i couldn't find any reviews of the am edition cooler, where as the frozr iv is pretty well regarded.

Here is a review: http://www.hardwareheaven.com/review...roduction.html

Very good cooling considering the high factory overclock it has.

I got the GTX760 Twin Frozr OC for £200 on scan, generally the advantages I've found are that it's less power consuming under load than my old non-OC'd card and much quieter thanks to the non-reference design.