Overclocking Results:

stock overclocked gpu (core) speed: 600 mhz 712 mhz memory speed: 1600 mhz 1754 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 NX8600GT Twin Turbo videocard is built with overclockers in mind, coming pre-overclocked from the factory to 600MHz GPU / 1600MHz memory. The built in Twin Turbo feature bumps those clock speeds up conservatively, to 620MHz GPU / 1512MHz shader / 1600MHz memory. Let's be frank, that's nice for a novice, but we can overclock further than this!

Let's really see how far the MSI NX8600GT Twin Turbo videocard can handle being overclocked when it's installed into an Asus M2-CROSSHAIR motherboard with an AMD Athlon64 FX-62 processor.

Starting with the GeForce 8600GT core first, and with the Twin Turbo feature turned off, it is clocked at 600 MHz. Going up in 5 MHz increments, it was clear that the GeForce 8600GT GPU was a solid overclocker. The core easily cracked the 700 MHz mark and we settled down on a speed of 712 MHz!

Next up was the 256MB of GDDR3. Starting at 1600 MHz, the clock frequency was overclocked in 20 MHz jumps. I didn't expect too much from the memory as it's already pretty heavily overclocked from the reference card default of 1400MHz. The memory cracked the 1700 MHz mark like it was nothing, and topped out at 1754 MHz. Anything higher and RivaTuner would complain about the videocard failing the driver overclocking test.

So, from the pre-overclocked starting point PCSTATS pushed the MSI NX8600GT Twin Turbo videocard to 712MHz GPU / 1754MHz memory. Not bad for a mainstream videocard, not bad at all!

PCSTATS Test System Configurations

test system reference system processor: amd Athlon64 FX-62 (AM2) Clock Speed: 14 x 200 MHz = 2.8 GHz Motherboards: Asus M2-CROSSHAIR (NF 590 SLI) Videocard: MSI NX8600GT Twin Turbo Asus EAX1900XTX/2DHTV/512M/A Asus EAX1950PRO/HTDP/256M/A MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC MSI NX8800GTS-T2D320E-HD-OC nVidia GeForce 8600GTS SLI Foxconn 8600GTS-256 MSI NX8600GT-T2D256E-OC MSI NX8600GTS-T2D256E-OC Gigabyte GV-NX85T256H SLI Gigabyte GV-NX85T256H MSI NX7950GX2-T2D1GE MSI NX7900GTX-T2D512E Gigabyte GV-NX76GT256D-RH Biostar Sigma-Gate GeForce 7600GS Albatron 8600GT-256 Memory: Corsair Twin2X2048-6400C3 Hard Drive: 74GB Western Digital Raptor WD740 CDROM: AOpen Combo 52x Power Supply: PC Power & Cooling TurboCool 510 SLI Heatsink: Athlon64 FX-62 Reference Heatsink Software Setup: Microsoft WindowsXP SP2 Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate nVIDIA Forceware 6.70 nVIDIA Forceware 91.27 ATI Catalyst 7.7 Benchmarks: 3DMark05 3DMark06 FarCry Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Doom 3 Quake 4 FEAR Call of Juarez Lost Planet