So after much saving, humming, hawing and generally fretting over the biggest single PC related purchase of my life, I went and ordered an Asus GTX980ti DC3OC Strix card. Bought it right here in Ireland for €775 and thought I'd bagged a bargain, given the OC cards are usually out of stock in most Eurozone etailers, and usually priced at over €800. Well I went to collect my gaming behemoth and to my horror the card that arrived was the non OC version. So I checked up on it again and it seems not only my etailer, but nearly all of them have the cards listed incorrectly, with the wrong SKU's, wrong packaging photos etc etc. Its a fking mess over here, don't these people know how to do the basics? Basically I took a €25 rebate on the error from the retailer and have the non OC card right here under my desk, awaiting its comrades to build my next PC. Hell, even the glorious Wendell didn't make any reference to the difference between the card he reviewed being the OC version and not the 'ordinary' one.
Anyway what do I do? Is the non OC card as good as the OC one? I could simply OC it myself or is that even necessary with a top end GPU like this? Its totally a first world problem I know, but its nagging me I don't have what I wanted.
P.S. This card is going into a skylake build: Z170 Asus Maximus Hero VIII mobo, i5 6600K (cooled with my existing H100), 16gb ddr4 ram. I might upgrade to the i7 after Christmas when they are in stock over here for reasonable prices.
Yes I have thought of doing that, they gave me €25 off as a 'sweetener' so basically I got the card I have at UK prices (where Germany etc are a good 30-40 cheaper again, but shipping from Germany....)
Then theres the whole out of stock issue, most vendors seem to be OOS until the new year at least, like with the i7 6700k chip. And the ones that have cards right now want well over 800 for them. I hate dilemmas.
Tough situation, have no card for a bit and wait for the OC version to come back in stock or keep your current one. It's really your decision at the end of the day dude.
I should mention alza.co.uk have it in stock for 780 or so, but they have generally poor customer service reviews and aren't a UK company, but a Czech one. Anyone here ever ordered from them?
I would contact retailer, at the very least you should be able to get a partial refund of the difference between OC and non OC.
also their the same dude performance wise, the OC is just higher binned and in should in theory reach higher clock speeds, but in reality you can prolly oc the non oc one to the same clocks speeds.
I don't know if I plan to clock it. Thats why I was gunning for the factory OC version. I know its easy to OC these cards though, and the general consensus is no matter which 980ti you buy, none of them will get to over 1500mhz. so they are kind of equal. All I want really is a super top end card that will not need upgrading for 5 years, will let me 4k game in the future, that kind of thing you know? I have an Asus 7970 HD at the moment and feel its limitations on my 27" Korean monitor.
Yeah that seems to be the consensus alright, and I did already get a little cash off the price. Moral of the story is: if its too good to be true then it probably is. I thought I was ordering the OC card at basically the non oc price. I was wrong, and in raising the complaint I seem to have uncovered mass incompetence in myself and in Eurozone retailers, who don't seem to understand SKU's.
I'll probably keep this card and do a mild OC, if and when I need to. I';ll be mostly playing the hell out of Fallout 4 over Christmas anyway, but I have other more graphics hungry games in my ridiculously large Steam library (don't we all?!).
My next issue will be whether I should have got the i7 6700k instead of the much cheaper i5 6600k?
Well i think you should be capable to overclock the non OC edition yourself, Because they are basicly both the same thing. In the Netherlands i can only find the OC edition of the Strix.
I agree with the consensus, you should keep the card, OC it yourself if you feel you need it to be OC'd.
Also, I would take screenshots of the page you bought it from, showing they are listing the OC edition with the non-OC SKUs and send it to Asus on Twitter or something. They would have more leverage to make the retailer do something about it, and social media has been quite useful for consumers to leverage (read: shame) big companies into fixing their mistakes.
As for the cpu, I personally would have gone with a 6700k if I planned a 980ti build, but it shouldn't be a huge issue. If you notice your games performing poorly, it might be worth looking into it further, but you should be fine.
I would just do this. I have an OC card and honestly will probably never buy an OC card again. Why because with Precision X it is easy to OC your cards. Now some games I have found get a little weird with Precision X running in the background but not many. Also because you're getting such a high end card you should be good for a while gaming honestly.
Just my 2 cents. Good luck, hope it all works out in the end for ya. Cheers.
Without reading all the comments... You return it, you make a scandal, you ask for refund and spend your money elsewhere. We aren't talking about 50€ products here... We are talking 800€ wrong listed product... This is not innocent misunderstanding, especially after they send the wrong product without confirmation from you, the buyer. You do not want to let this go away without noise. Basically this is lying to the customer with the idea "they can overclock it themselves, so they will be quiet and we will make our money"... I am in a similar situation here, and this is not even funny. We spend our money not to be lied to, so yeah... Those sh*tty retailers should not get away with that...
And i add that just because something is an OC version, it doesn't mean that it's a better binned chip. My 'lite edition' 970 overclocks pretty high without additional power.
Great replies, thank you all so much. I think I was merely fretting over the difference between a Ferrari and a Porshe. I mean, they are both superb and whats the difference really? They'll both utterly sh1t on my current car all day long! Yes, the etailer fked up big time with the wrong parts, and sorry mattman87, the listing was taken down the next day when I told the guy his info was all wrong. Always check your SKU's people, when buying online, they all seem to use the same stock photos, but its the SKU's that count.
So yeah, I think the only part I'll consider changing will be the i5 for the i7, and even that can wait I think until the i7's come down in price in a few months. I'm also getting my first M.2 drive, so this new build will be stupid fast either way.
Isn't it always great to be expecting new kit?! Can't wait to take apart my rig and upgrade the bejesus out of it. Thanks again guys, great forum this.