What's up w/the retail overclocking on 8800 GTXs???

So I'm in the market TO BUY. I hear the best of the best right now is the 8800 GTX. I check out newegg, and see that there are a few models that are overclocked at retail purchase. Is this good/bad/indifferent?? A cheap trick??

Stock retail 8800 GTX:
core clock: 575
Mem clock: 1800

EVGA 768-P2-N835-AR
core clock: 621
Mem clock: 2000
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130079

EVGA 768-P2-N837-AR
core clock: 626
Mem clock: 2000
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130078

BFG Tech BFGR88768GTXOCE
core clock: 600
mem clock: 1800
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814143080



Problem is.. I've been out of the market since right after PCIE was introduced... so I'm almost completely new to PCIE

Exactly...OC'ing with a warranty. To be brutally honest...there is no reason you would need to OC a 8800[insert model here] for any system, except to say, "I did it". It is such a powerful piece of hardware, your main concern should be getting enough data to it to process, by means of a fast processor. The 8800gtx will scream regardless if the core is clocked +/-50 mhz.

8800gtx=OMFG

Yep... unless its from a company who doesn't honor any of their warranties

You should be A-Ok from either BFG of EVGA.
EVGA does have a cool program where u can upgrade your video card in the future for minimal cost. Called "step Up program"
(not that you would want to with a 8800GTX)

8900 GTX
I suppose....but im not sure how long you have till you hafta upgrade......

I'd get the acs3 evga, the acs3 cooling is something very nice to have, plus, the oc is covered on the warranty so you can't loose for choosing a factory oc'd card (except money....>_> ). But first I'd wait to see what amd has up their sleeve or at least for the 8900 is the r600 sucks. Other than that, the regular evga is fine, it's cheap and comes with step up in case that means anything to you (most people sell their cards on ebay anyway though, you get more money in most situations, and its a lot cheaper to buy off newegg than evga's site)

Evga only makes nvidia cards, so you couldn't do that, but there's an upcoming gts price drop bringin it to only $300 if that means anything to you, so maybe you could just get the gts instead and wait a while for the 8900gtx and get that if you need premium performance

I suggest getting a 6700 for gaming, or getting a water cooler with the 6600 (for one thing, wait a tiny bit longer till the price drops to $214) and then get that to 4ghz or so to really take advantage of these cards, otherwise you'll bottleneck the card. If you don't need sli (which you don't), I suggest getting the gigabyte ds4, it's not on newegg for some reason, but here it is
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Product [...] A-965P-DS4
This revision supports 1333, so it should support the penryn quad cores


Then just pickup some nice ram such as crucial's ddr2-1000
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820148047
and then just get yourself something like a thermaltake armor case with this psu, this can easily power a single gtx with an oc'd cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6817703005

meh, there are boards as good for less

Then in that case, wait until the r600 comes out before making any decisions, because you may want an ati card instead and the rd600 is a far better board than any I have seen with the exception of the striker, but it only supports sli with regular drivers (you can run sli with hacked drivers though...)

r600 comes out in late February (benchmarks should arrive in early-mid feb, when it officially launches, give a week or two for it to stock). But if you can't wait, I'd still go for the ds4, that will provide future penryn compatibility (unless intel changes the northbridge requirements as they always do) and that is a better upgrade than two 8800gtx's, but as I said, you can get sli to run on an ati board if you really wanted to, but here's where the evga 680i may be quite nice. But seriously, considering the ds4 is almost $100 less than a 680i based board, you'd better off buying a watercooler for that money (and then some more) and ocing your cpu to 4ghz+, that's where you'd find your value, not in sli, tests show that sli of an older card is only as good as a single newer card (a tad better, but not much). Such as 8800gtx's sli compared to say an 8900gtx, if what nvidia continues what it has been doing so far and put more pipelines in the 8900gtx, then an oc'd 8900 can't be touched by anything really

BFGs warrenty is a "true" lifetime warrenty. Its the lifetime of the owner, not the "shelflife" of the card that some card makers do (which is usualy 2-3 years at the most.

Plus since its OCed, you wont need to tweak it more.

So you could have this card for 6 years and if it dies they will repleace it for full value. The only thing not stated is if you did want a replacement after that long would they:

a) Give you the value of the card.
b) Give you a card they had in stock, if they have one)
c) Give you the current equlivent(sp)


Personaly that is why I would love the BFG 8800GTX OC Water Cooled version. It may be $899 (OW!!!!!), but that warrenty makes it damn tempting to know it can always be replaced.

As you can se my build is running with a 500W psu. it doesnt even get stressed. I have seen measurements of benchmark rigs that use around 350-380W with a 680i motherboard, Core2duo and 8800GTX. So if you get a good PSU, 500W or more shoud be sufficient.

pc p&c ?? I'm not sure what you mean by that?

I also plan on adding in some water cooling, but I've never done that, so I have no clue if it affects the needed wattage of the PSU.


Also, there's the new "2 rail vs 1 rail" thing with PSUs nowadays.... what is that? I can't seem to find any good articles on how that really makes a difference, other than the 2rails cost about twice as much...

I think to narrow my choices for a mobo, I'd like to get your recommendation for 2 mobos, one if I *do* plan on using SLI, one if I don't. The things I'm looking for in either are the same though:
- stability and efficiency of moderate overclocking
- longevity/quality

I have NO clue what the different north and southbridge chipsets are all about... does someone have a link to an article I can read about those??

Thanks again for all the responses

Eh.. I just looked into eVGA's tradeup program... you only get 3 months to trade up in... and I know I'll be keeping my GTX more than 3 months if I drop that much money on it... The way they have the program set up is basically for you to keep depositing more money. I highly doubt anyone would actually save money by doing this, and would more than likely end up spending MUCH more than if they just held onto their card, got use out of it, sold it on eBay and then bought another.


So... that's back to the drawing board for which manufacturer is better..

Ah, thats not true. Are you kidding??? Some companys have better warrentys, and FAR superior customer servious. Ive found BFG warrenty and customer support to be FAR supperior to other. As a result 3 out of the last 4 graphics card i have bought have been BFG. If your looking for some higher clocks, OCZ hand picks memory chips from selected bins that clock higher than standard. You might also do a bit of reasearch on the difference between the black and green PCB's. If anyone has an links to info about that, im interested in the difference as well.
Thanks
Charlie

Well this program could do a couple of things.....

1) Lets say you needed to buy today but new DX10 cards are coming out in only 3 months. In 3 months you could upgrade to a new 8600 from a 7600. Honestly, you may still make out better selling the old 7600 on E-Bay and buying the 8600 but it may save you some money.

2) Same deal but you find out that you did not buy high enough model.
Again since the prices listed at EVGA are higher than what you would pay at "NewEgg" you may be better off with E-Bay and a new purchase.

If nothing else, it does give you a litte bit of a safety net.

But not all of the "Parts" on the board are the same for all of the cards.
Both Memory Chips and Coolers among other things vary.

There tends to be a large difference in the grade of memory chips on many of the different boards. The lesser grade memory chips run just fine at stock but have little headroom to OC. Others use more expensive RAM chips that are verified to run at higher speeds.

That's what I'm saying though.. it seems like a saftey net, but if you read into it, it seems more like a trap where they can basically disqualify you if and when they need to...

buy the regular eVGA 8800GTX here's why:

1 its cheaper then the ACS3 or OC'd versions
2 wanna get faster clocks from it? feel free, with eVGA you WILL NOT lose your warranty from Overclocking, they are the ONLY company with this policy
3 Step up program normally there's 90 days to step up, however eVGA has decided 2 extend that 90 days, untill something faster then the 8800's are out (theyre only doing that for 8800 owners)

it's in the forum

pc power & cooling, that's what pc p&c stands for, it's the best psu brand on the market right now imo