Overclocking

Upon completing the initial testing of the GTX our thoughts turned to overclocking and as usual with Nvidia cards we ran the Coolbits registry entry. This added a link to the driver control panel, however when we clicked the link we were presented with a message which stated that this feature was now a performance option (or words to that effect) and we should download and install Ntune... unfortunately Ntune is a utility for Nforce motherboards and so was no use to us for this review.

If we are honest this is a pretty disappointing stance for Nvidia to take, having access to simple overclocking functionality in the driver is a great resource.

Luckily ATITool was recently updated to include support for Nvidia cards (no seriously), including the 8800 series so we installed it and began the process of finding the maximum settings which were stable on the GTS and GTX.

Starting with the GTS we were able to raise the clocks from 500/800 to 625/938 whilst maintaining full stability. Temperatures at these settings ranged from 77c idle to 88c under load. The GTX maximum settings were slightly higher as we would expect, topping out at 630/980. With the higher clocks came slightly higher temperatures of 80c idle and 90c load.

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