if no intention to o/c,reference cooler (eg leadtek) is the way to go?

Asus has longer lasting high quality parts, but Gigabyte wins for Malaysians because of better support, or at least thats what ive been told. Asus reportedly sucks huge ass whenever you need to return your ware for warranty coverage.

Theres a reason Malaysian traders love to price Gigabyte cards more expensively than all else in Malaysia. High end Gigabtte cards are also usually using higher binned chips.

Dont quote me though. Im just a poor man who got lucky in the silicon lottery that his Leadtek GTX 970 can overclock  as high as Asus. Normal people buying cheap brandds arent so lucky.

OCing GPU is still useful in situations when you want that extra frames to reach 60fps minimum, especially when you dont want to compromise detail settings.

That said, i rarely overclock GPU these days. 1.3k isnt exactly pocket change for poor people like me, so i want to keep my GTX 970 working as long as i can. Thankfully i play mostly old games.

Last time 1000 ringgit got 970 and SSD

Yea, last time buy 1199 saja

Nearly RM300 difference is not exactly 'okay la tu'. 

But then again, only poor people like me can appreciate that much difference. I suppose RM300 is like 3 kupang for /k's general 20k population though, eh? 

yes, they attempt to add in their own feature and over or lower clock a bit, then start selling, so even the chip is the same, performance and power consumption wise is different, the chip is the engine, same engine different gearbox can mean big different.