Testing with air cooling:

Before we start with cooling the card down to subzero temperatures, we have to know how good the card is on air. This should give us some pointers on which we can continue once the temperature drops. In our review, you can read that the card overclocks quite easily to 710/1566/1100 (gpu/shader/mem). Continuing from those speeds, we decided to test the card’s capabilities with higher voltages.

I've used different setups to obtain the best results I could using air cooling. Thanks to Gamer and Geoffrey for lending me respectively an E6850 (3DMark01) and a Q6600 (3DMark06).

3DMark01

http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=652440



As you can see, we clocked the card up to 770/1566/1050 and used Gamer's E6850 at 3690MHz to crack the 50k barrier without even trying very hard. Notice that 3DMark01 really likes fast cpu's with a lot of l2 cache. I've tried reaching 50k with my E6300 as well, but even at much higher clocks, I couldn't reach the same level I did with the E6850. Yours truly currently is 17th 8600GT HWBot's league.


Click here to enlarge picture


3DMark03

http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=662180



3DMark03 is, unlike 01, very GPU dependent. In other words, even with a slower cpu you can reach very high ranks if you can clock the gpu to extreme speeds. Using my E6300, clocked at 3640MHz, I was able to reach 23878 which is not bad at all solely on stock cooling. Card clocks were 880/1940/1075 at 1,61v Vgpu and 2,15 Vmem. Currently taking 11th spot in HWBot.

3DMark05

http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=662181



Another GPU dependant benchmark is FM's 3D update of 3DMark03 ... 3DMark05. Using the same setup and clock frequencies I reached 14265, just good enough for the top20 in the HWBot 8600GT league.

3DMark06

http://www.hwbot.org/result.do?resultId=662193



FM's latest is known for it's very cpu dependant engine, especially if you're not using high-end videocards. During OC-Team.Be's first OC lan, Geoffrey provided me with his Q6600 to test the 8600GT on air. Clocking the cpu at 3612MH

Aquamark3

Last but not least Aquamark3. This benchmark has been run with the E6300 at 3500MHz and the card at 850/1050.