Asus gtx980 ti DC3 V Asus gtx 980 ti DC3 OC !

[Mike.Middy]

Firstly let me say hi to everyone, this is my firs post on the forum and I am also a total noob where overclocking is concerned.

Next the problem.
I bought a nice shiny new ASUS gtx 980 ti form ebay, the description and pictures on the add showed it as the 980ti DC3 OC, when it arrived however it was the DC3! no factory overclock. pfffft.
I was gonna return it but two things stopped me, a m8 advised me I would be able to oc the card myself to the same settings as the factory oc'd version? And the seller gave me a £50 partial refund

First I visited the asus website and compared the 2 cards they appear to be exactly the same apart from the different clock speeds?

Being a noob I then contacted ASUS tec support to ask if this was feesable and got the probably typical response of:

"I'm afraid it is not advisable to try to overclock the non-OC version to be close or equivalent to the OC version as that can damage it.
Please note that not only are the GPU Base Clocks and the Boost Clocks much lower than the OC version but the Memory Clock is also about 200Mhz lower and forcing it higher can negatively impact the life-span and performance of the card."

Is he saying that the components of the 2 cards are not the same? and that the DC3 card physically CAN NOT be overclocked? as I said I'm a noob so I'm flying blind here.
If all the components are the same, and of the same quality then the DC3 OC's overclocking must be a software thing? Soooo! would I not be able to flash the DC3 card with the bios of the DC3OC thus solving my problem?

if this is just stupid please go easy on the new guy

If its not going to be possible to get this card to oc I might just sell it on and go buy the card I wanted in the first place as I was intending to buy a second at some point and sli.

I'm in the process of a new build awaiting delivery of the components, like an expectant first time father

I7 5930k
Gigabyte X99 SLI mobo
Corsair H80i v2 cooling
32Gb corsair vengeance ddr4 @2666mhz
and of course the gtx 980 ti

 

[Kenrou]

Heya

I asked a Asus rep the same question and he told me the only difference was the speed it has from factory, same parts, same cooler. They reputedly choose the chips like they do with CPU's and sell the ones that can handle higher overclocks as DC3OC and the rest as DC3.

You might get lucky and get better overclocks then the DC3OC though, mine for example tops out at 1460mhz

 

[Janus67]

I would just open up MSI Afterburner or ASUS GPU Tweak and set it to the speeds of the OC one. There's a next to 0% chance that the card you have coming will not be able to reach the fairly-easy-to-attain speeds that most/all factory overclocked cards come with.