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Overclocking & Tweaking
As most of you with most videocards know, you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. You can do this at two levels, namely tweaking by enabling registry or BIOS hacks, or very simple, tamper with Image Quality. And then there is overclocking, which will give you the best possible results by far.
What do we need?
One of the best tool for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is our own Rivatuner that you can download here. If you own an ATI or NVIDIA graphics card then the manufacturer actually has very nice built in options for you that can be found in the display driver properties.
Where should we go ?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard but it really can be done in less then a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners not to increase the frequency any higher then 5% of the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 500 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest you don't increase the frequency any higher than 25 to 50 MHz.
More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 10-15 MHz and leave it at that.
Usually when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 20 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today tested card anyway but we'll show it still ;)All in all... do it at your own risk.
First off .. to save a little time we didn't overlock the reference sample, I mean what good would it do us as you can't buy them while we can have a look at the retail samples ?
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| 450 MHz | 480 MHz | 654 MHz | |||||
| Memory Clock | 1320 MHz |
Honestly, I am still a little in shock .. the overclock for the XFX card was colossal ! And to be certain I tested it with several applications several times. 200 MHz extra on the core and a good 300 on the memory (compared to reference) is just staggering. Example .. if the card was not stable at this clock it would at the very least fail miserably in 3Dmark06 agreed ... ? 3DMark06
at default returned 4611 points. But when overclocked .. 5855 ! In the chart below you can see a score measured with Prey at 4xAA and 16xF. Look at the scores hover above the rest.Let's have a look at the Sparkle card.
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| 450 MHz | 450 MHz | 472 MHz | |||||
| Memory Clock | 1320 MHz |
Okay, so that's not even close to what the XFX card can do in overclocked form. But remember .. the XFX Extreme had another PCB, you pay premium price as it is 30-40 bucks more expensive. It's still a reasonable overclock for sure.
Have a look below where you are are looking at Prey at 4xAA and 16xAF with the cards in at default results and overclocked.
Our overclock scores where very impressive to look at. You are looking at Prey at 4xAA and 16xAF with the cards in at default results and overclocked In blue the Sparkle card and green, the XFX Extreme Edition card.
Sidenote: Our overclocking results are never a guarantee for your home grown results. Manufacturers' choices in components differ often per batch and so will the end-result. This however is a good indication of what is (or isn't) possible.
