factory overclocked card = superior quality, or just a normal card OCed?

[chocoboat]

Product 1 - XFX Radeon 6870 "Black Edition" card with a factory overclock.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150507

When companies release products like this, are they usually superior quality products (tested to higher handle speeds, better able to deal with heat, whatever)... or do they just take a certain chunk of their normal cards, OC them, and sell them at a higher price?

Product 2 - XFX Radeon 6870 with a special dual-fan cooler, costs $5 less.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150521

Is a cooler like this superior (or inferior?), or does it provide just a tiny difference that only a statistics-keeper would love? Should I buy this one and OC it to the first card's settings, or is the first one a superior product?

Or does it really make absolutely no real difference at all?

 

[happy medium]

They bin them and choose the better chips in most cases. Sometimes I would guess its not the chips but the quality of the power delivery components on the cards.

The cooler will help some also because you can increase the voltage while keeping the card at decent temps while overclocking.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

Varies from product to product.

 

[Spikesoldier]

you can usually expect them to be binned, but as lincoln stated YMMV from AIB maker to AIB maker.

usually the reason i pay a premium for a certain card is looking for a card with a superior cooler.

 

[mrSHEiK124]

Some cards have better binned chips, others have better VRMs.

The EVGA 570 GTX Classified has better VRMs [for example]

 

[timma]

for example,Gigabyte have own pcb made OC(overclock) SOC(super overclock) all higher than factory default card.

here is the official web site.
http://www.gigabyte.com/MicroSite/268/images/about.html

 

[Anarchist420]

I was going to say what Lincoln was going to say.

Due to that, I don't buy cards with a factory oc'd chip. I've always bought the Black Ed CPUs, but they probably aren't binned any better than the non-Black Eds, because there can be a large vcore difference between one BE chip and another BE chip (same CPU). Still, when I buy my intel CPU, I'm going to get the K version for sure, just in case it is a better-binned chip even though I don't OC.