Good subject this is.
The way I see it,benchmarking serves all of us in general.It's nice to see what's "under the hood" and how it performs to it's maximum while making a decision on a new video card (or any other computer component for that matter)
It serves our community by displaying what components are ultimately capable of and in the process of benchmarking also stumbling over glitches,incompatibilities,best drivers etc.
The community learns from those benchmarking tests and comparisons.
I know a lot of us comb the internet for information on "the latest & greatest" components and we indulge in reading reviews,benchmark tests,comparisons to form an "educated" informed decision making opinion of our own afterwards when building a new system or upgrading a current one.
Having said that,I'm not an overclocker and I never recommend it to the average home user due to reliability,stability & warranty issues,but it is nice of those that do since it serves as a useful measuring stick to those of us looking for all those criteria.
Generally something that performs great out of the box and overclocks without a hitch boasting good benchmarking scores,should serve as a very reliable,stable component in a non-overclocked system.
So I feel compelled to toss out some kudo's to those folks that spend their precious time and invested effort doing all these benchmarks and overclocking etc. and then posting those results for the community.
It indeed serves it's usefulness,more so than you may think
Thank you overclockers & benchmarkers!