Manual Overclocking vs Factory Overclocked

Hi there, i wanted to know if you could reach the same speed if you manually overclock a graphics card (say an XFX Geforce 9600 GT standard) and reach the same speed as that of the factory overclocked version (XFX Geforce 9600 GT XXX Alpha Dog)? Or is it that only the companies can reach such high speeds?

its jus a very nice and attractive way to empty our pockets

its called marketing my friend...
appealing to peoples irrational emotions to sell garbage

99.9% of the time you can get just as good a clock, sometimes higher as the companies still have to keep it stable on what is basically a stock card. There are things the home user can do, like increasing voltages to stabilize a higher clock that most factory overclocked cards bother with.
However there are cards out there (and this is where doing some digging and reading some decent reviews can pay dividends), that have non stock parts and settings that will help you get even higher clocks. Asus i think it is make a 3850 that has a button on it that increases the voltages to assist when overclocking. Some of the Factory overclocked cards are said to have the best of the best chips on them, both GPU and Memory wise. While this is true for some of them the vast majority of them are just stock cards ramped up to a level easily attainable by the end user, just to get more money out of us.

Mactronix

HOLY ****!!! So thats the thing! Thanks guys. I will not be buying a factory overclocked card and waste the extra money. I will be buying the standard stock card and overclock it myself and save some penny. But what about the fan on the card? are the overclocked ones better to provide better cooling or are they the same as on the standard edition card?

Yes you can reach the same speeds but no warranty.

I bought myself a factory overclocked 8800GT (£170 for 700mhz o/c). At the time it was the same price as other lesser overclocked and even standard cards, although it wasnt as a good a make (Gigabyte) however it came with a zalman fan, which i thought was a bargain. Especially as stocks on all cards were low at that point.