 So this video is about the value or lack thereof and spending more on your graphics card to get a higher factory overclock or fancier cooler or board design when you're not going to be overclocking. Sorry for not overclocking. We've covered that quite heavily in the past and it just isn't the point here as we're specifically trying to investigate the worth of factory over clocks. There will also only be one manufacturer included, EVGA. Why? Because they have an excessively high amount of GTX 980 models. They have 10. That's insane. But wait, why 980? You've made a billion 980 videos in the past and its value proposition isn't even that good anymore. Good! That's not the point. I'm not trying to tell you what card to buy. I'm just investigating the potential value in factory over clocks. This video is also not sponsored. I contacted EVGA because they were a prime example of totally cray amounts of different card versions and they agreed to send me four cards as long as I sent them back. There was no financial exchange and we don't get to keep the cards. We gained nothing from this other than a video. And spoiler alert, if you're not overclocking, don't buy the most expensive version of a card. But stay tuned to find out why. Phoenix Collections Autor Mechanical Keyboard comes complete with gold-plated Cherry MX Brown switches, an aluminum coating, and a full 104 key layout. Check out the link in the video description to learn more. Although many graphics card manufacturers sell multiple cards with the same GPU, perhaps the most well-known and excessive example of this is EVGA, which currently has 10 different versions of the GTX 980. So we decided to take four well-known models from this product stack and see how they stack up. Today we've got the Reference, the Super Clocked, the For the Win Edition or FTW Edition, and Classified editions of the GTX 980. All of these cards, including the Reference model, came with EVGA's ACX 2.0 cooler, except for the Classified, which contains a larger version of the cooler due to its larger PCB and more aggressive power delivery. So what exactly do you get with these four models? The Reference card sells for the same amount as a card with a Reference cooler, about $500 US dollars, and is essentially the same as a completely Reference designed card, except for the ACX 2.0 heatsink. For $10 more, the Super Clocked edition features about a 150 MHz higher boost clock, but no other significant upgrades. Another $10 will score you the FTW Edition, which not only gets you another modest clock bump, but also a second BIOS chip for further customization and a 6 Plus 2 power phase design for more overclocking headroom, as opposed to the 4 Plus 1 on the less expensive models. Finally, the Classified serves close to a no compromises card for extreme overclockers. It features a beefy 14 Plus 3 power phase system and a third BIOS chip, including LN2 mode, which we'll get more into later. You also get a small increase in out-of-the-box clock speed, though this will all set you back a whopping $635, far more than the other three cards. So how did we test all this? Well, we used our standard test bench. However, to get a more accurate idea of the card's thermal performance, we put the entire test bench into our Cooler Master MasterCase Pro 5, obviously minus the bench itself, with its default fan configuration, instead of using an open air test bench. We ran all of our components at stock speeds also, by the way. The first thing we wanted to check out was the performance of GPU boost. In our first video on the topic, which you can see out here, we found that there's a fair amount of variation, even among otherwise identical cards, but also that the advertised boost clocks tend to be conservative estimates of what you'll actually get in real world gameplay. With our EVGA stack, we mostly saw the same thing as the Reference, Super Clocked, and For The Win editions. All saw load clocks that were faster than what were advertised, with the Reference and For The Win editions both exceeding the official specification, by over 35 MHz. However, the Classified fell a little short for whatever reason, but as most people who will buy this card will probably be overclocking, it's not a huge concern, but not good form either way. The ACX 2.0 cooler did give us better performance over the Reference cooler, which lets Nvidia cards get up to 83 degrees Celsius before thermal throttling. The highest we saw on our EVGA stack, however, was just under 75 degrees under load. The Classified's larger cooler didn't actually really make it any cooler than the other cards, though it does have a much larger VRM to cool down, and if you were overclocking more, you might see a performance difference there. Now let's have a look at real world performance in games. The out of the box over clocks on the non-Reference cards did give us some slight performance gains in 4K, with the Super Clocked edition adding 2-3 FPS, and the For The Win edition adding another 1-2 on top of that. The Classified actually fared the worst of the 3 overclocked cards. Again, I suspect most people in the market for something like a Classified won't be running it at default speeds anyways, and could squeeze a bit more performance out of it like we've seen in the past with our Classified reviews, but still. Today, however, we're looking at what card will give you the best performance out of the box, and the For The Win edition walks away the winner, albeit by a very small margin. Since the difference between the For The Win and the Reference ACX card is only $20, it may be worth it to spend the extra on a higher clock out of the box, and more overclocking headroom with extra power phases if you can squeeze it into your budget. And even if you're not an overclocker, you may think it's well worth the $20 to get a little bit more performance out of the box without having to play with anything. So in conclusion, if you're trying to pick between stepping up an entire class of graphics card, or just getting a better cooler and overclocking solutions on them, maybe jump up an entire class of graphics card, that's what I would recommend. But if you've got $10, $20, maybe $30 line around, getting a better, slightly higher tuned or better cooled or better power phase designed graphics card can actually be kind of worth it, an interesting insight. And unless you're looking into overclocking, just don't get the top end one. Just don't. Get like a couple steps in. 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But if it was awesome, get subscribed, hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon. Buying a cool t-shirt like this one. I mean, we actually have that store kind of working now or with the direct monthly contribution through the forum. Now that you're done doing all that kind of stuff, you're probably wondering what to watch next. So click this thing in the top right hand corner to check out an old video where I actually overclocked the graphics card and it was a high end model and I showed how that's actually kind of cool.