I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on the subject. I was looking at the Evga web page and they are showing 2 variants (actually 3 if include the water cooled version) of the 580 GTX.1: 580 GTX standard http://www.evga.com/...es%20Family&sw=GPU clock: 772 MhzMem clock: 3900 Mhz2: 580 GTX Superclocked http://www.evga.com/...es%20Family&sw=GPU clock: 797 MhzMemory clock: 4050 MhzLooking at the specs on the Superclocked version, it doesn't seem so much of an increase over the standard version. But as I am no expert on the matter, I was hoping some of you could share some insight on whether its worth it to go Superclocked or to just go for the standard variant.Looking forward to your replies!

No, there isn't that much of a difference.Also, if you take advatage of the Step-Up program, I do believe you can only Step-Up to a vailla model anyways.

In my experience factory overclocked graphics cards are the best of the bunch and tend to have more clock headroom than non-overclocked models. For example, there is a user at another forum I frequent who has purchased an EVGA GTX 570 SC and has achieved clockspeeds as high as 957/1914/4600 whereas I have reached "only" 875/1750/4400 with my vanilla PNY GTX 570.

In my experience factory overclocked graphics cards are the best of the bunch and tend to have more clock headroom than non-overclocked models. For example, there is a user at another forum I frequent who has purchased an EVGA GTX 570 SC and has achieved clockspeeds as high as 957/1914/4600 whereas I have reached "only" 875/1750/4400 with my vanilla PNY GTX 570.

...or you can luck out and get a good one. I run my vanilla Zotac 580 GTX in FSX at 900MHz, but it has run for an hour under load at 1,000MHz without problems, but that is too hard on my nerves. It crashes a little over that though. It is the luck of the draw.Kind regards,

In my experience factory overclocked graphics cards are the best of the bunch and tend to have more clock headroom than non-overclocked models. For example, there is a user at another forum I frequent who has purchased an EVGA GTX 570 SC and has achieved clockspeeds as high as 957/1914/4600 whereas I have reached "only" 875/1750/4400 with my vanilla PNY GTX 570.

This is true if the OP wants to OC (Evga bins their GPUs).However, since the OP is asking if there is that much a difference between them out-of-the-box, performance wise, and if it is worth the extra money, I would say no. In FSX, there is not a noticable difference performance wise with standard vs SC/SSC cards. At least not with regards to the 280, 285, and 480 (I owned the standard and SC/SSC versions of each). There is no reason to suggest anything would change with regards to the 580 series either. Although the GPUs are binned, it is still a little gimmicky, IMO.

This is true if the OP wants to OC (Evga bins their GPUs).However, since the OP is asking if there is that much a difference between them out-of-the-box, performance wise, and if it is worth the extra money, I would say no. In FSX, there is not a noticable difference performance wise with standard vs SC/SSC cards. At least not with regards to the 280, 285, and 480 (I owned the standard and SC/SSC versions of each). There is no reason to suggest anything would change with regards to the 580 series either. Although the GPUs are binned, it is still a little gimmicky, IMO.

I don't know, it's only $20 difference between a vanilla 570 and the EVGA SC model, I'd say it's worth it.

Not sure if this is what you are looking for but I got the EVGA SC-580 but only because the early shipment I had coming directly from Taiwan was delayed (ASUS)I needed insurance that the card would arrive before a specific time so I ordered the first one that became available the very minute it was posted on NE and the EVGA SC just happened to be it.The card will overclock to an extreme, but then temps and fan speed increase at a quicker rate, and since there is no point overclocking the card -all things FSX wise - and to keep the machine running nice and quiet it has been left at stock SC speeds.As I understand it according to a source at EVGA some cards are binned but not All cards are tested and it can be the luck of the draw on vanilla cards however most SC/SSC/FTW cards achieve very high clocks via custom BIOS with slight voltage increases as common to many NV partners (ASUS and others with similar O/C cards).The EVGA card I received has voltage set at 1.085, the standard around 1.000-1.025 range.

Thanks for the replies all!I also saw that the price difference (in Holland) was only 20 or so Euro's... I'll wait and see what they do price wise in a few months when I'm ready to build.. Thanks again for the insights!

I thought about it more last night. If the viderocard is just a few bucks more, than I would get it just because the GPUs are binned. Do I think you will see a big performance increase? No, but it might be worth it for a few bucks more.

There are some new terms here for me.. Binned? Vanilla? Would someone be so kind to explain?

Product binning means thesame product is tested for performance and dropped into bins grouping the same performance. Vanilla, short for "palin vanilla", means the basic, unenhanced product.Cheers,- jahman.