Special edition graphics cards - are they worth it?

Are Premium edition graphics cards are a waste?

Special edition graphics cards come with higher clocks, better coolers and more comprehensive bundles, though at a higher price point

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Edit: Haha or that

For me it seems more than likely one can mod your own card at a cheaper price.
Take my card for example HD4870x2 (dual gpu card)
For less than the price of a watercooling unit for this card , I bought a 3rd party mod that not only lets the card run cooler but also more quiet.





At the time I bought this card , I would have payed R1500 more for the watercooled version :


Where I payed R800 for importing the 3rd party air cooler.

Just a word of warning , mounting the 3rd party cooler wasnt for the weak of heart and ofcourse voids the warranty.

We are now 3 years down the road , the warranty is by now useless but the card is still running happily.

I'd have to agree with kerby. If you have the money for a premium card then go forth and buy one. But otherwise with a few well spent bucks you can take the stock model and OC it and the same performance as the premium cards at only a fraction of the cost and still let it whizz about for 3 or 4 years without a worry (unless you don't trust your handy work, which is a good 2 or 3 months -_-)

The SUPAAA! edition will age just like the Standard edition of the same card.

The only special edition cards i think that a re worth getting are the ones where you cant oc to get the same result. Like the Asus Mars Edition where they specially design two high end cards to work together as one and not two individual ones in sli... As for the price tag, its is out of most peoples league... If i could i buy a Mars or something similar.

Ok well having gone through roughly 10 cards this year including some XXX Editions ect, I reckon I've got some advice for you guys.
Special Edition Gpu's are not worth the money, its simply a way of punting the brand and for bragging rights.
At the moment I can't think of 1 single special edition GPU that is worth buying. Special edition gpu's are mostly gpu's with a pretty cooler and oc'd out the box, yeah you do get exceptions like the Asus ROG mars II which is a fantastic card but price wise...Its out of this world. You'd be much better off buying a normal card and clocking it yourself and as Tinman mentioned, you could always just pump up the fan, yeah it'll increase you're noise levels but who really cares about that.

Good case in point...MSI R6950 can be unlocked to a 6970 and costs around R2500, why spend R3600 on a MSI R6970 if you can get the same performance for a grand less with just a bit of tweaking?

Hi everyone; seems a ball was dropped over on the editorial side. The conclusion to the article has now been inserted. Apologies for the confusion :S

I have bought one "special edition" graphics card before, and honestly it was nothing special. Slightly overclocked, which you can do to the stock card... and an "improved" cooler that didn't quite blow me away. These cards run hot as it is. I prefer to buy the stock cards and put the extra monies elsewhere oh like games!