It's called the law of diminishing returns. let's say the median OC of the next CPU is 4.5 Ghz.... 20% are exactly 4.5 Ghz... 40% are higher and 40% are lower. 25% of CPUs might top out at to 4.6 Ghz....10% might get to 4.7%.... and 2% gets to 4.8 Ghz
That covers the random variation, but there's also a cost factor. Improve the components on the PCB with $25 worth of parts, ya might boost performance by 5% ... spending another $25 might get you just 1%
Not o long ago when i saw this question with "just get the cheapest one, it doesn't matter, I'd try and explain why this wasn't factual. If ya read this article... all the nitty gritty about chokes. MOFSETs, VRM phases, you come ask the question .... If A has better components than B has better components than C does this all come out in the wsh so to speak ? If you can resist cheating and skipping ahead to th [performance pages, you see that as you rank them from best to last based upon componenty and cooling, they finish in the same order for performance.
And now for the monkey wrenches ya gotta throw into the mix ...
a) Silicon lottery means every GPU that comes off the line is different, sometimes manufacturers bin them accordingly ... when they don't luck of the draw may prove a better benefit than the better PCB.
b) Boost 3.0 is very conservative and it would seem that it is nerfing the cards performance such that when a better card should do better, it doesn't because of th leash that is Boost 3.0
The only rules are:
1. Avoid FE / reference models.
2. Many of the next cards up are likely to be based upon the same PCBm (MSI Armor, MSI Gaming, MSI Gaming X, MSI gaming Z) ... I don't recall exactly but at least 3 of them have same PCB.
3. Performance and warranty are oft just money things ... in every PC component supplier's offices, a discussion takes place where the anticipated failure rates of any particular model is discussed. Now you can use PSU life, HD life, GFX card clock and it goes like.
For model A, we can expect 5% returns after 3 years and given our costs, overhead and profit we'd need to charge $150 for this item to cover warranty costs and make a x% profit.
For model A, we can expect 10% returns after 5 years and given our costs, overhead and profit we'd need to charge $170 for this item to cover warranty costs and make a x% profit.
For model A, we can expect 10% returns after 7 years and given our costs, overhead and profit we'd need to charge $195 for this item to cover warranty costs and make a x% profit.
Instead of years you could use a certain performance level in MHz ... the higher the number you advertise, the more likely any given unit will fall short ... the cards with the same PCB, same cooler but different factory OCs (and higher costs) will have more cards out there where tech support gets calls with users starting the call with "My card's clock is 1900 and at the at clock I crash about 3 times a day.... at a lower clock, it has less likelihood of crashing ... so more potential of an RMA, the higher the cost has to be.
Other differences are...
the lowest tier AIB cards can't be one click overclocked with then gaming App.
move up a tier and ya get an extra LED
Move up a tier and ya might get a slightly higher OC
In past generations, there were more differences in components
At the bottom ya had the Reference cards ...
.. next up ya had the EVGA SC... same PVB better cooler and factory OC
... next up ya had the AIB Gaming cards like the Asus Strix, Gigabyte Windforce, MSI Gaming and EVGA FTW
.. next up ya had the enthusiast cards like Asus Matrix, MSI Lightning, EVGA Classified, Zotac Amp Extreme
As time went on the difference between the gaming cards and the enthusiast cards didn't make sense ...extra $100 for 1% more performance... back in the day that might a been 4 or 5%
The nVidia gaming cards (5xx, 6xx, 7xx, 9xx) would see overclocks from 25 - 30% .. with 10xx and Boost 3.0 we see 15 to 18%. Seems over the last few generations nVidia has been working hard on 2 things:
a) diminishing the amount of things that board partners can to thru design as well as legal means., thereby making it more difficult for anyone to distinguish themselves from the competition.
b) diminishing the price difference and increasing the performance difference between the xx70 an xx80 cards. They hate it when peeps would OV their x70s 25+%, pair them off in SLI and demolish the xx80. That had them losing a wad of cash for each x80 sale they didn't make cause the margin on twin x70s is way smaller than the single x80. Was particularly obvious on the 9xx series as the dropped the throttling point on the 970 way below the 980 which made no sense as the lower powered card should have more headroom.
I am finding as many people are making decisions on aesthetics (read color) as anything else. I am also seeing a lot of folks looking at the Seahawk. That's a real EK full cover water block on there... real high quality component compared to say the old Hydrocopper. the price is great, you get it cheaper than buying separately, don't have to buy TIM ... and if ya throw a Swiftech H240 X2 AIO water cooler at the CPU, adding a water cooled GFX card is "take outta box, install card, connect 2 tubes, toop of the coolant and go.
I have been mostly recommending these:
$410 (1.56 base Clock / 1746 Boost) - MSI GeForce GTX 1070 DirectX 12 GTX 1070 ARMOR 8G OC 8GB
$419 (1.61 base Clock / 1797 Boost) - MSI GeForce GTX 1070 Quick Silver 8G OC
With the Ganming, Gaming X and Gaming Z, it depends on the price that day
$439 doesn't sound bad for the boost that you are guaranteed for the Gaming Z ... but when the Gaming X is only $379 tho.,.. it's the proverbial "no brainer" when ya save $60 and have a damn good chance of meeting / beating the Z's guaranteed clock.
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