XFX 8800 GS XXX / Sapphire HD 3850

Overclocking

To overclock Sapphire’s 3850 we used the Overdrive section within Catalyst Control Centre. This allowed us to raise the card to 745MHz core and 910MHz memory. This is an increase of 75MHz core and 80MHz memory.

The 8800GS was overclocked using the Nvidia N-Tune utility and the maximum overclocks achieved were 703MHz core and 808 MHz memory. These are increases of 23MHz core and 8MHz memory although it should be taken into account that the card is pre-overclocked when purchased.

With the maximum overclocks applied to each card there is still a difference in performance which favours the GS. Additionally the GS becomes completely playable in Crysis through use of the overclock. The 3850 is not far behind and only minor tweaks to the detail level would be required to consistently perform above twenty-five frames per second which is a big improvement over the stock speed results.