I think you have way too many categories. I think that from a fundamental ballistic standpoint, there is simply overbore or not. Once you can use all the volume in a case, it just depends on what you want to do with it. Different clubs for different yardages, as a golfer would say. I think the only absolute statements you can make are that when you are really pushing the upper envelope with overbored cartridges, barrel life will suffer, sometimes severely if you are interested in really good accuracy. When it comes to really seriously accurate cartridges (not guns) the mild cartridges are king. Years ago, Pete Brown published a graph in Gun Digest which presented data from Remington's custom shop 40X tests of customer rifles. He plotted powder capacity of the case vs accuracy of the finished rifle. It was literally a straight line graph with a pretty steep slope. Since it was based on hundreds of rifles by the same manufacturer built for bench resting, it was pretty persuasive.

Bottom line is, I don't have a favorite type. While I prefer a mild cartridge in general, I will always use the one that does the job I need doing at the time.

Tough question.....I had to think...

I prefer the .338-06 to the .338 mags, 30-06 to the 300 magnums, the 280 to the 7mm Mags, the 270 win to the 270 mag, the 25-06 to the 257 mag etc

I prefer the .223 to the .220 S etc.....guess that's where this shooter stands.

Art,

You are of course right. I admit I have and probably will continue to all over the map on this. I think the categories are correct though, high level almost all the cartridge world fits into one of the four, I contemplated only three but after though I felt it wasn't representative of real world. Frankly I didn't expect many champions of the underbore, and certainly no maufacturer is going to advertise their latest offering with "as impotent as a eunuch on his wedding night".

I fall most times into the two middle categories, slightly and effiecient. But in the end its a case by case opinion on my part.

Hmm,

I wasn't really expecting the underbores to be popular, but a figured at least someone would like these in some flavor. My examples were pretty anemic I admit, but I thought that there would be at least some defenders of the 458 Win and a few of the classic big bores which fall into this category

Give me a 6.5-06 and a 45/70. Small and inefficient, with long bullets; big and very efficient, with short bullets.
I have my 358-404 Imp for everything else!
Oh, and a 22LR for the ultimate in celestial harmonic efficency.

I generally like "efficient" cartridges such as the 6.5x55 and .260 but I also have a couple of slightly overbore chamberings for when the yardage is on the long side or I want just a tad more "horsepower", i.e. 7mm Rem Mag & .22-250.

I have a real affection for mag rounds like the 7 Remmy and the .300 Winny. I'm also fond of the 22-250, and a .243 pushing 58 gr bullets at 3748 fps. The standard 308 and '06 cased rounds seem to be pretty efficient and plenty adequate, but I like the extra range the "standard" magnums provide. After shooting a .300 Jarrett for the past 9 years I thind the "super magnums" are burning too much powder for too little return.