Okay, I understand why this is an issue of honesty and that it's annoying that MSI makes you install their gaming application to enable the listed clock rates. They really should just send the cards out with the default clocks set to the advertised speeds. The issue is that their gaming app is used to change the LED lights and switch between three profiles, and I guess they are assuming that people want the middle of the road profile most of the time (bad assumption).
The workaround for people in the know is just to dial in the advertised clock rates as OC'ing in Precision X or Afterburner is going to have the same effect as the stupid gaming app. That's what I did, I have a profile that is the standard "OC" profile that was listed on MSI's website, and a profile where I crank it up, and one where it's just at the default rate.
I guess my opinion is that anyone reading all these reviews is going to install the app or overclock on their own anyway, and the ones that just buy the card and throw it in are fine with the "Gaming" profile that is default in the VBIOS. Sure, it's stupid to try to force people to install your stupid gaming app to get the full guaranteed speed of the card, but if the only change to review samples were to dial in the advertised speeds ahead of time so that the reviewers don't mess up the testing setup, I think it's understandably non-malicious. MSI just really needs to reexamine why they are adding barriers to get their card's top speed in the first place. That gaming app is useless and robs people of performance unless they aren't stupid, but MSI was not maliciously inflating performance past what any owner of the card is guaranteed to achieve.