Results



The maximum stable overclock on the GPU was an impressive 1053Mhz ; you know that the reference clock speed of the GPU is 675Mhz; thus we saw a 56% increase! The GDDR3 memory could be OCed only ~17%. Last but not least with the release of the latest Rivatuner we can separately clock the GPU and Shader clocks and this certainly pass of; default at 1688Mhz we got it up to 2658Mhz! (+57%!)



For comparison, the maximum OC with air cooling was 805/1235/1944; nowhere near as high as the LN² cooled results!

Let's have a look at the improvement in performance when overclocking. Below you find the bar charts to visualize the performance gain. For test details, please have a look at the links under each bar chart.

3Dmark01: 1055/1296 - 2nd 9800GTX in the world

3Dmark03: 1055/1296 - 3rd 9800GTX in the world

3Dmark05: 1055/1296 - 2nd 9800GTX in the world

Aquamark3: 1048/1296 - 7th 9800GTX in the world

Evaluation

Let's sum up and give you some evaluation pointers of overclocking the 9800GTX.

We find these cards a lot of fun to play with, considering their price.

The cards scale fantastically on subzero cooling (until -45°C of course): 1055MHz core frequency is not nothing at such 'high' temperatures and low core voltage.

For daily usage overclocking, a stock cooler might not be the best choice. If it's hot in your game room, the card can get over 80°C easily.

Low price and good availability makes the choice between brands easy

The downside for most extreme overclockers is of course the coldbug.

The only thing that's left is to thank you for reading this overclocking test. Stay tuned for more extreme overclocking action, we might have SLI and even 3-way SLI overclocking coming up.



We hope you enjoyed reading this OC report, until next time. For more OC related articles click the banner below or check the links below.