Performance - Overclocking

OverclockingOf course with most videocards we can do some easy tricks to boost the overall performance a little. It's called overclocking the videocard and by increasing the frequency of the videocards memory and gpu we can make the videocard increase it's 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 that frequency any higher then 5-10% of the core and memory clock. Example: if your card would run at 100 MHz then I suggest you don't increase that frequency any higher than 110 MHz.

More advanced users push that frequency often way higher. Usually when memory starts to show white dots 'snow' you should go down 10 MHz and leave it at that. The core can be somewhat different. Usually when you are clocking to hard it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. I recommend that you back down at least 10-15 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well.

All in all .. do it at your own risk. Overclocking your card too fast or constantly to it's limit might damage your card and it's not covered by your warranty.

You will benefit from overclocking the most with product that is limited or you may called it 'tuned down'. Now then, we know that this graphics core is likely more powerful then what we have seen in the previous benchmarks. Therefore by increasing the memory and core frequency we should be able to witness some higher performance results.

Will FlowFX help cooling down the GeForceFX enough for a nice overclock ?

As I stated in the beginning of this review, the core of the FX 5800 Ultra graphics card is normally clocked in 3D mode at 500 MHz. Memory in total is 128 MB DDR memory and clocked at 2x500(1000) MHz

The card was good for a nice ocerclock yet not extremely far. The results (while remaining stability and image quality) was 535 MHz for the core and 2x540 MHz for the memory, both core and memory are now beyond GeForce FX 5800 Ultra specification.

We did a few test runs in Quake III and Aquamark at a 32-bit 1600x1200 resolution. In Aquamark you'll gain a whopping 2-3 FPS and in Quake III you are able to gain ~5 frames more out of the card. So overclocking is not really worth the effort if you ask me.