TechPowerUp over the past 50-odd days surveyed our readers to understand if they're willing to pay premium for high-end factory overclocked graphics cards. This is especially important to know in the wake of GPU manufacturer MSRPs turning largely irrelevant, pushing even inexpensive non-OC cards with simpler designs way above the MSRP. We have also seen scenarios where certain GPUs are only sporadically available, and in some cases, only their premium factory-OC cards are. This would tell us if buyers are willing to pick up a premium OC graphics card if it's the only option available versus waiting for non-OC cards to become available at relatively lower prices.

Our survey gathered close to 21,000 responses. 46.4% of the responses (9,738 votes) say that they choose premium OC graphics cards, however, they do so only for the better cooling. Board partners tend to give their products premium cooling solutions to not just deal with the added heat from the OC, power-limits, and boost headroom; but also to offer low noise as a feature, besides other aesthetic touches such as RGB lighting or a premium appearance. The "Yes" option, which means that buyers want premium OC graphics cards for their superior performance, gathered an interesting 28.2% of the vote (5,908 votes). Lastly, only 25.4% (5,335 votes) say that they are not willing to pay for premium OC cards, and prefer cards either at or close to the MSRP.The survey points to the possibility that the majority of buyers do not like what's on offer at or close to MSRP, and custom-design boards tend to offer too little value on top of the GPU. They are unsatisfied by the cooling solutions on offer, which has an impact on other important factors, such as boost frequency residency, and fan noise.

A combined 71.8% of our readers are willing to stretch their budgets for premium overclocked graphics cards, however, nearly two-thirds of this group only does so for better cooling and its related factors—better boost residency, lower noise, manual overclocking headroom, and aesthetics; only one third actually chooses a premium board design for the factory overclock on offer.

Quite a few board partners tend to know this nuance, and create variants of their premium board designs, where the "OC" variant comes with a higher factory overclock, while there tends to be an identical-looking product that either has a modest factory-OC, or lacks it, while retaining the rest of the hard product (same cooler, PCB, etc). These "non-OC" products tend to be around 3-5% cheaper than the OC products, letting buyers save a bit.