can the OC just be overclocked like the TOP or is there a hardware difference?
The OC versions are a bit slower then the TOP.
After a very brief Google, it sounds like they just pre-test the gpu's and see if they are good chips for overclocking. Basically they're helping you avoid the overclocking lottery, so an OC model could go as high as a TOP model but you've got a better chance with the TOP. I compared the normal OC R9 280x vs the R9 TOP 280x and the clock differs by 70mhz. People have reported getting a 170mhz overclock on the OC edition, but again your not always guaranteed that.
Hope this helps
Thanks, but I don't really understand why the TOP version can better overclock. Is the gpu not good enough on the oc version. On a Linus TechTip video, Linus says they got a bad card, so that is why it didn't overclock well. I bought my first graphics card today a Asus 770 and it is just available in the OC version. Do I have to test it, if it is a bad or a good card?
Whenever you buy a CPU or GPU there are always good chips and bad chips even though they're identical models. For instance I have an i7 4770k and can only overclock it up to 4.3ghz whilst maintaining stability, where as i have read about people getting up to 4.7/4.8 with similar cooling setups. The ASUS TOP cards are pre-tested to weed out the lower end GPU chips like my CPU. This isn't to say that the OC model wont go as high as the TOP model though, there's just a little bit more "luck of the draw" involved.
You might want to actually try the card out before you think about overclocking it anyway. The 770's a good card and you might find that it fulfills your needs without overclocking. Testing the chip out would be irrelevant now anyway as I don't think you could return it just because you can't overclock it to the moon.
Out of interest what games are you wanting to play?