Overclocking Results:

stock overclocked gpu (core) speed: 576 mhz 665 mhz memory speed: 1800 mhz 2132 mhz if you're new to Overclocking and not sure what to do, check out these two excellent Guides for some pointers: Overclocking the CPU and Memory Overclocking the Videocard

The MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD videocard is pretty darn quick in its own right, without anyone messing around with it. That doesn't mean PCSTATS is going to spare this flagship videocard from the overclocking tests.

We'll be starting today's overclocking tests with the nVidia 'G80' GPU first. It is clocked at a default speed of 576 MHz, and that frequency will be increased in 5 MHz increments.

Using RivaTuner, the GeForce 8800GTX core turned out to be a pretty good overclocker and easily cracked 600 MHz. Shortly thereafter we passed 610, 620 and 630 MHz without any trouble. nVIDIA may not want videocard manufacturers to factory overclock the G80, but that doesn't mean it doesn't overclock well!

The MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD hit a top speed of 665 MHz before RivaTuner stared to complain about it not passing the internal test. If we disabled the internal test, the core could probably go higher but with stock cooling, I didn't want to push too hard. There are reports online that the G80 scales well with watercooling, TEC or phase change cooling solutions.... but unfortunately none of those types of cooling were available at the time of this review.

Next up was the 768MB of Samsung GDDR3 memory. This videocard memory is clocked at 1800 MHz by default, or 1.8GHz. We were a bit more aggressive when it came to overclocking the videocard's memory, and took it in 20 MHz strides.

In the past we have seen Samsung GDDR3 memory overclock well this way, so we were anticipating some really fast results this time.

The MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD's memory didn't disappoint. We broke through 1900 MHz in no time, and closed in on 2000MHz just as fast. The 2 GHz plateau came and went, as did the 2100 MHz barrier!

A few moments later, we reached the end of the game, with the memory at its maximum speed of 2132 MHz. RivaTuner started to complain about failing the internal driver test, so we didn't try for anything faster.

One of the interesting results of all of this overclocking was that it didn't actually improve the benchmark results of the MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD videocard all around... However, as you saw from the power draw tests, overclocking does have a noticeable impact on total system power consumption.

Aside from reaching for 3DMark records the NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD is fast enough for hardcore gamers at its stock speeds, even those of you who play 1600x1200+ with AA/AF. It's hard to believe, but overclocking really isn't all that necessary with this GPU.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD test system was configured for benchmarking; the specific hardware, software drivers, operating system and benchmark versions are indicated below. In the second column are the general specs for the reference platforms this nVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX based videocard is to be compared against. Please take a moment to look over PCSTATS test system configurations before moving on to the individual benchmark results on the next page.

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system processor: amd Athlon64 FX-62 Clock Speed: 14 x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz Motherboards: Asus M2-CROSSHAIR (NF 590 SLI) Videocard: MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD Asus EAX1900XTX/2DHTV/512M/A Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E Gigabyte GV-NX76GT256D-RH Biostar Sigma-Gate GeForce 7600GS Memory: Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C3 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x PowerSupply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Athlon64 FX-62 Reference Heatsink Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 nVIDIA Forceware 6.70 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 ATI Catalyst 6.11 Benchmarks: 3DMark05 3DMark06 FarCry Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Doom 3 Quake 4 FEAR AA+AF Benchmarks FarCry FEAR Doom 3