Date: March 11th, 2009
Article by: Nathan Glentworth (Owner / Head Editor)
Product was submitted by: XFX
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VIDEOCARD OVERCLOCKING
With the stock overclocked values of 785Mhz core and 1150Mhz memory set, I tried to push the card to its 100% stable ceiling. Through several hours of testing and benchmarking, I finally found a 100% stable overclock of 840Mhz core and 1330Mhz memory. When I state a stable overclock, I mean an overclock that works and never freezes during any game or benchmark. I could have gone higher, but the card would work fine on one game, and then stop responding during a benchmark and would need a complete reboot. With that being said, if this was a standard cocked core, I would deem this overclock to be substandard. But when this clock is already overclocked when I started, a 55Mhz core and 180Mhz memory clock increase is quite substantial and does unlock some serious performance hidden within this card.
Even when the overclock was in place, the cooler fan only ramped up 10-15% and the VPU temperature never went above 55c. To say the least, this card is a cool performer and has a lot of overclocking headroom. When compared to other reviews, my card might seem to be a little of a freak but it was rock solid stable and the performance kept climbing with the extra memory speed.
VIDEOCARD BENCHMARKING
The Testbed is comprised of:
Intel QX9770 Extreme Quad Core 3.2Ghz Processor Check Prices
Gigabyte P35-DS4 Premium Motherboard Check Prices
Crucial Ballistix Tracer 2Gig PC-8500 DDR2 Memory Check Prices
Windows XP Professional SP3 Check Prices
Maxtor 250gig SATA-150 HD Check Prices
PCI Express Videocards Benchmarked Against:
Sapphire Toxic HD4850
Sapphire Atomic HD3870 X2
Sapphire Atomic HD4870 X2
HIS IceQ 4 Turbo HD4850
Sapphire HD4850 X2
Benchmarking Programs Are:
3DMark2006
3DMark2005
Half Life 2 Episode 2 HOC Benchmark (8x AA / 16x AF)
Far Cry ( 8x AA / 16x AF)
Far Cry 2 ( 8x AA / 16x AF)
Crysis ( 8x AA / 16x AF )
Crysis WarHead ( 8x AA / 16x AF )
Quake Wars : Enemy Territory ( 8x AA / 16x AF )
All tests are done using DX9c seeing we will be running Windows XP for maximum performance. In most games today, there is almost no difference in visual quality that can noticed when you compare DX9c vs DX10.1. DX10.1 involves installing Vista which in itself is a huge performance hindrance that most gamers avoid. Relative performance comparisons can be made seeing the difference will be relatively the same for each DirectX version.
Testing Methodology
Throughout the testing of this videocard, I will be showing you how this card performed on the system mentioned above using the following programs at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 resolutions. Higher resolutions will be added over the coming months.
Both testing situations will be benchmarked with stock and overclocked settings initialized separately.
