Does a higher clocked card matter when water cooling?

Yea the factory OC cards are better because if they fail its on the manufactures pocket... but the reference and u OC its on ur pocket

^That's... no.

He's talking about taking the heatsink off and replacing it with a watercooling shroud, which I highly, HIGHLY doubt is covered in ANYONE's warranty... except perhaps EVGA, but that's just a guess.

OP, the only difference would be that the superclocked cards might be higher binned - I know it's true for the 7970 GHz editions. That means you'll hit a slightly higher overclock, but I don't know if it's $50 more each card worth of higher overclock.

As for buying two 680s, don't do it. A 680 is only 5% faster at STOCK than a 670... that goes down to 3% after overclocking both on air, and it'll be even less on water. That's nowhere NEAR worth $100 to $150 more per card.

By the way, what is this going to be used for? If it's triple monitor gaming, go with the 7970's; if you buy 670s, you'll need the 4GB versions. If it's not triple monitor gaming, I'm sorry, but you're being a bloody fool; a single overclocked, air cooled 670 or 7950 will max out any game out there.

I plan to run a triple monitor setup.

short answer is NO.... there will be no difference as long as they clocked the same..