I guess my point is, with such a huge cooler, why make the base clock so low? Surely that's the whole point of their massive cooler, it means the card can cope with a much higher clock and still be quiet, so I don't get why they'd only set it at 1241. Doesn't exactly imply any special binning if they can't ship it with a decent clock to begin with. And I don't see any link between the speed & problems, by definition someone overclocking the card beyond its limits to the point of failure is responsible for the failure, not Gigabyte.
The implication of the branding is that these cards are special for overclocking, in which case they should at least come with a base that's better than standard factory oc'd cards from other vendors. It's slower than the EVGA which has one less fan. 😀