NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX Overclocked

We all know how well a stock 9800 GTX performs. Shane sees if things improve by much with a decent overclock in place.

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6 minutes & 33 seconds read time

Introduction





Overclocking these days is great; while many years ago it used to be reserved for only the most knowledgeable of computer enthusiasts, these days with so many software programs out there, overclocking can literally be done by anyone.

One of the easiest components to get overclocked in your system is the graphics card, thanks to programs like Rivatuner and ATITool. With a few sliders and a bit of patience you can be getting those much needed extra frames that let you crank the detail up a little bit more or just give you an overall smoother gaming experience.

The overclocking card of choice today is the 9800 GTX which has been out for just over a week. While out of the box the performance is pretty good, if we can get a bit more for nothing then we're not exactly going to complain. Since we already know about the 9800 GTX, let's just get stuck straight into the test system setup and have a look at the clocks we achieved.

Test System Setup and 3DMark06


Test System Setup

Processor(s): Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 3GHz (333MHz x 9)
Cooling: Corsair Nautilus500 (Supplied by Corsair) with Arctic Cooling MX-2 Thermal Compound (Supplied by Arctic Cooling)
Motherboard(s): GIGABYTE X48-DQ6 (Supplied by GIGABYTE)
Memory: 2 X 1GB Kingston PC6400 DDR-2 3-3-3-10 (KHX6400D2ULK2/2G) (Supplied by Kingston)
Hard Disk(s): Seagate 250GB 7200RPM SATA-2 7200.10 (Supplied by Seagate)
Operating System: Windows XP Professional SP2, Windows Vista SP1
Drivers: Catalyst 8.3, Forceware 174.53 (9 Series), Forceware 169.25 (8 Series)


The default 9800 GTX core comes in at 675MHz, the shader clock at 1688MHz and the 512MB of GDDR3 memory at 2200MHz DDR. As you can see below, we achieved 781MHz on the core, 1953MHz on the shader clock and 2326MHz DDR.



Quite a healthy overclock really. Testing today, we'll be checking out our Vista line-up of testing applications. So let's not delay and just get stuck straight into it.


3DMark06

Version and / or Patch Used: Build 110
Developer Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com
Product Homepage: http://www.futuremark.com/products/3dmark06/
Buy It Here





3DMark06 is the very latest version of the "Gamers Benchmark" from FutureMark. The newest version of 3DMark expands on the tests in 3DMark05 by adding graphical effects using Shader Model 3.0 and HDR (High Dynamic Range lighting) which will push even the best DX9 graphics cards to the extremes.

3DMark06 also focuses on not just the GPU but the CPU using the AGEIA PhysX software physics library to effectively test single and Dual Core processors.




Straight away, right across the board we can see decent gains with our 3DMark score jumping up another 1000 marks at the higher resolutions.

Benchmarks - PT Boats: Knights of the Sea


PT Boats: Knights of the Sea

Version and / or Patch Used: Benchmark Demo
Developer Homepage: http://en.akella.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.pt-boats.net/





PT Boats: Knights of the Sea is a naval action simulator that places gamers in charge of a mosquito fleet of the Allied Forces, Russia or Germany during the height of World War II.

Using the latest Direct X 10 technology PT Boards - Knights of the Sea manages to apply a lot of stress to the components of today which in turn gives us quite an intensive benchmark.






Looking at the averages we can see we're up about 10% at the highest resolution.

Benchmarks - CINEBENCH R10


CINEBENCH R10

Version and / or Patch Used: Release 10
Developer Homepage: http://www.maxon.net/
Product Homepage: http://www.maxon.net




CINEBENCH is a real-world test suite that assesses your computer's performace capabilities. MAXON CINEBENCH is based on MAXON's award-winning animation software, CINEMA 4D, which is used extensively by studios and production houses worldwide for 3D content creation. MAXON software has been used in blockbuster movies such as Spider-Man, Star Wars, The Chronicles of Narnia and many more.

MAXON CINEBENCH runs several tests on your computer to measure the performance of the main processor and the graphics card under real world circumstances. The benchmark application makes use of up to 16 CPUs or CPU cores and is available for Windows (32-bit and 64-Bit) and Macintosh (PPC and Intel-based).




CINEBENCH sees a small increase, but nothing to get too excited about.

Benchmarks - Half Life 2 (Episode Two HDR)


Half Life 2 (Episode Two HDR)

Version and / or Patch Used: Latest from Steam
Timedemo or Level Used: Custom Timedemo
Developer Homepage: http://www.valvesoftware.com
Product Homepage: http://www.half-life2.com
Buy It Here





By taking the suspense, challenge and visceral charge of the original, and adding startling new realism, responsiveness and new HDR technology, Half-Life 2 Episode Two opens the door to a world where the player's presence affects everything around him, from the physical environment to the behaviors even the emotions of both friends and enemies.

We benchmark Half Life 2 Episode Two with our own custom timedemos as to avoid possible driver optimizations using the "record demo_name" command and loading the timedemo with the "timedemo demo_name" command - For a full list of the commands, click here.




Half Life 2: Episode Two sees gains across the board, with the best gains again being at the higher resolutions.

Benchmarks - World in Conflict


World in Conflict

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.0.0.5
Timedemo or Level Used: Built-in Test
Developer Homepage: http://www.massive.se
Product Homepage: http://www.worldinconflict.com





World in Conflict is a real-time strategy video game by Massive Entertainment and to be published by Sierra Entertainment for Windows (DX9 and DX10) and the Xbox 360.

The game is set in 1989 where economic troubles cripple the Soviet Union and threaten to dissolve it. However, the title pursues a "what if" scenario where, in this case, the Soviet Union does not collapse and instead pursues a course of war to remain in power. It is an intensive new game is sure to put plenty of stress on even the latest graphics cards and we use the built-in benchmarking for our testing.






WIC sees good gains at the highest resolution in the minimum department. Looking at the averages, 1280 x 1024 sees no gains while both 1600 x 1200 and 1920 x 1200 do.

Benchmarks - Enemy Territory: Quake Wars


Enemy Territory: Quake Wars

Version and / or Patch Used: Latest Steam Version
Timedemo or Level Used: Custom time demo
Developer Homepage: http://www.splashdamage.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.enemyterritory.com/





Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is the latest Quake incarnation to make it out of the iD labs and carries with it a fast paced experience that manages to place a good amount of strain on your graphics card.

We use a custom made time demo which shows a bit of everything and manages to give us a good solid benchmark for the graphics cards that we test.




ET:QW doesn't make any real use of the OC with scores pretty much being within less than 1 FPS of each other.

Benchmarks - Crysis


Crysis

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.1
Timedemo or Level Used: Custom time demo
Developer Homepage: http://www.crytek.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.ea.com/crysis/
Buy It Here





From the makers of Far Cry, Crysis offers FPS fans the best-looking, most highly-evolving gameplay, requiring the player to use adaptive tactics and total customization of weapons and armor to survive in dynamic, hostile environments including Zero-G.

Real time editing, bump mapping, dynamic lights, network system, integrated physics system, shaders, shadows and a dynamic music system are just some of the state of-the-art features the CryENGINE™ 2 offers. The CryENGINE™ 2 comes complete with all of its internal tools and also includes the CryENGINE™ 2 Sandbox world editing system.




Moving to Crysis we can again see the gains at all resolutions that equate to just under 10%.

Benchmarks - Unreal Tournament 3


Unreal Tournament 3

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.1
Timedemo or Level Used:
Developer Homepage: http://www.epicgames.com/
Product Homepage: http://www.unrealtournament3.com/
Buy It Here





Following the formulae that made Unreal Tournament so great the third installment to the series has hit us recently with better than ever graphics. The games uses the latest Unreal Engine which like most modern day games when maxed out puts the pressure on our lineup of graphics cards.




UT3 performance continues to be a bit up and down; the highest resolution sees a small bump, but nothing that you would get too excited about.

Benchmarks - High Quality AA and AF


High Quality AA and AF

Our high quality tests let us separate the men from the boys and the ladies from the girls. If the cards weren't struggling before they will start to now.


3DMark06



We again see that nice little increase which is almost 10% when we turn on AA and AF.


Half Life 2 (Episode Two HDR)



Moving to real world AA and AF testing we again see roughly a 10% increase in performance.


World In Conflict





Finally, we again see that 10% performance increase when we overclock our card.

Final Thoughts




No doubt companies are hard at work creating their overclocked models of the 9800 GTX, and it will be interesting to see what speeds they come up with. Without getting into any crazy cooling solutions, it seems that the 9800 GTX is quite the overclocker.

On average we see about a 10% performance increase with the clocks we've achieved here, and they should be pretty achievable on most brands. The 9800 GTX continues to be a good card, but even with a decent overclock like this it continues to not be the revolutionary jump that we expected from the 9 series of cards.

Getting 10% extra performance out of the card probably isn't a deal breaker for you, but if you've just picked one up or you're about to, it's good to know that you can get a bit of extra performance out of the card quite easily and freely.

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Shawn takes care of all of our video card reviews. From 2009, Shawn is also taking care of our memory reviews, and from May 2011, Shawn also takes care of our CPU, chipset and motherboard reviews. As of December 2011, Shawn is based out of Taipei, Taiwan.

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