Overclocking Results:

stock overclocked gpu (core) speed: 575 mhz 662 mhz memory speed: 1700 mhz 2020 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 last GeForce 8800GTS 320MB videocard we tested, the Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC, overclocked pretty well so PCSTATS had some high hopes for where the MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E-HD-OC would take us.

From the factory, the core on this MSI Geforce 8800GTS card is clocked at 575 MHz, which is already a healthy overclock from 500 MHz. Starting with the core first, let's see if we can beat the 650 MHz PCSTATS overclocked Foxconn's videocard to.

Using nTune, and moving up in ~7 MHz increments, the MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E-HD-OC easily reached 600 MHz. That's 100 MHz faster than a regular GeForce 8800GTS. Continuing, the videocard sailed passed the 650 MHz mark, 655MHz and then settled on a top speed of 662 MHz. Anything higher caused nTune to complain about failing its internal test.

Next up was the 320MB of GDDR memory; by default MSI clocks the memory at 1700 MHz which is 100 MHz faster than a regular GeForce 8800GTS 320MB videocard. Again using nTune, and this time moving in 10 MHz hops, we proceeded fairly quickly. A memory speed of 1800 MHz came and went, then 1900 MHz, 2000 MHz, 2005MHz and 2010MHz! We were quite impressed that the MSI videocard memory topped out at 2020 MHz! Anything further and the driver started to complain.

The core and memory of the Geforce 8800GTS videocard had no problems running at their respective maximum speeds, and as you'll see overclocking does improve performance nicely!.

Also note, whether using nVidia nTune, the MSI driver level overclocker or Dual CoreCenter, the maximum core and memory speeds were the same.

Prelude to Benchmarks

The details of how the MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E-HD-OC 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 8800GTS 320MB 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 NX8800GTS-T2D320E-HD-OC Asus EAX1900XTX/2DHTV/512M/A Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E Gigabyte GV-NX76GT256D-RH Biostar Sigma-Gate GeForce 7600GS Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC 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 7.2 Benchmarks: 3DMark05 3DMark06 FarCry Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Doom 3 Quake 4 FEAR AA+AF Benchmarks FarCry FEAR Doom 3