WEBVTT

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so this video is about the value or lack thereof in spending more on your

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graphics card to get a higher Factory overclock or fancier cooler or board

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design when you're not going to be overclocking sorry for not overclocking

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we've covered that quite heavily in the past and it just isn't the point here as

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we're specifically trying to investigate the worth of factory overclocks there

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will also only be one manufacturer included

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EVGA why because they have an excessively high amount of GTX 980

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models they have 10 that's insane but

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wait why 980 you've made a billion 980 videos in the past and it's value

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proposition isn't even that good anymore good that's not the point I'm not trying

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to tell you what card to buy I'm just investigating the potential value in

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Factory overclocks this video is also not sponsored I contacted EVGA because

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they were a prime example of totally cray amounts of different card versions

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and they agreed to send me four cards as long as as I sent them back there was no

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Financial exchange and we don't get to keep the cards we gain nothing from this

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other than a video and spoiler alert if you're not overclocking don't buy the

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most expensive version of a card but stay tuned to find out

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why Phoenix collection's aour mechanical keyboard comes complete with goldplated

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Cherry MX Brown switches an aluminum coating and a full 104 key layout check

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out the link in the video description to learn more although many graphics card

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manufacturers sell multiple cards with the same GPU perhaps the most well-known

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and excessive example of this is EVGA

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which currently has 10 different versions of the gtx980 so we decided to

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take four well-known models from this product stack and see well how they

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stack up today we've got the reference the super clocked the for the win

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Edition or FTW Edition and classified

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editions of the gtx980 all of these cards including the reference model came

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with evga's ACX 2.0 cooler except for

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the classified which contains a larger version of the cooler due to its larger

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PCB and more aggressive power delivery so what exactly do you get with these

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four models the reference card sells for the same amount as a card with a

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reference cooler uh about $500 and is essentially the same as a

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completely reference designed card except for the ACX 2.0 heat sink for 10

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bucks more the superclocked Edition features about a 150 MHz higher boost

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clock but no other significant upgrades

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another $10 will score you the FTW Edition which not only gets you another

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modest clock bump but also a second BIOS chip for further customization and a 6

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plus2 powerphase design for more overclocking headro as opposed to the 4

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plus one on the less expensive models finally the classified serves close to a

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no compromises card for extreme overclockers it features a beefy 14

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plus3 powerphase system and a third BIOS

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chip including ln2 mode which we'll get more into later you also get a small

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increase in outof the Box clock speed though this will all set you back a

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whopping $635 far more than the other three cards

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so how did we test all this well we used our standard test bench however to get a

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more accurate idea of the card's thermal performance we put the entire test bench

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into our Cooler Master master case Pro 5 obviously minus the bench itself with

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its default fan configuration instead of using an open air test bench we ran all

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of our components at stock speeds also by the way the first thing we wanted to

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check out was the performance of GPU boost in our first video on the topic

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which you can see out here we found that

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there's a fair amount of variation even among otherwise identical cards but also

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that the advertised boost clocks tend to be conservative estimates of what you'll

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actually get in Real World gameplay with our EVGA stack we mostly saw the same

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thing as the reference superclocked and for the win editions all saw load clocks

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that were faster than what were advertised with the reference and for

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the win editions both exceeding the official specification by over 35 MHz

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however the classified fell a little short for whatever reason but as most

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people who will buy this card will probably be overclocking it's not a huge

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concern but not good for me either way the ACX 2.0 cooler did give us better

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performance over the reference cooler which lets NVIDIA cards get up to 83°

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cus before thermal throttling the highest we saw on our EVGA stack however

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was just under 75° underload the classifi larger cooler didn't actually

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really make it any cooler than the other cards though it does have a much larger

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vrm to cool down and if you were overclocking more you might see a

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performance difference there now let's have a look at real world performance in

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games the the outof thee boox overclocks on the non reference cards did give us

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some slight performance gains in 4k with the superclocked Edition adding 2 to

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three FPS and the for the win addition adding another one to2 on top of that

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the classified actually fared the worst of the three overclock cards again I

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suspect most people in the market for something like a classified won't be

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running it at default speeds anyways and could squeeze a bit more performance out

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of it like we've seen in the past with our classified reviews but still today

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however we're looking at what card will give you the best performance out of the box and the for the win Edition walks

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away the winner albeit by a very small margin since the difference between the

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for the win and the reference ACX Card is only $20 it may be worth it to spend

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the extra on a higher clock out of the box and more overclocking Headroom with

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extra power phases if you can squeeze it into your budget and even if you're not

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an overclocker you may think it's well worth the 20 bucks to get a little bit

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more performance out of the box without having to play with anything so in

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conclusion if you're trying to pick between stepping up an entire glass of

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graphics card or just getting a better cooler and overclocking Solutions on

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them maybe jump up an entire class of graphics card that's what I would

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recommend but if you've got 10 20 maybe 30 bucks lying around getting a better

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slightly higher tuned or better cooled or better power phase designed graphics

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card can actually be kind of worth it an interesting insight and unless you're

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looking into overclocking just don't get the topend one

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just don't get like a couple steps in unless you want it for the looks I guess

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but that's on you man Squarespace is a

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beautiful thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know what to do

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supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon buying

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now or with a direct monthly contribution through the Forum now that

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you're done doing all that kind of stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so click this thing in the top

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right hand corner to check out an old video where I actually overclocked the

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graphics card and it was a high-end model and I showed how that's actually

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kind of cool