Overclocking

To find the maximum overclock of our card we used a combination of GPUTool and our benchmarking suite.
The overclocks listed here were achieved with the default fan and voltage settings as defined in the VGA BIOS. Please note that every single sample overclocks differently, that's why our results here can only serve as a guideline for what you can expect from your card.



The overclocks of our card (without any changes to the voltage) are 945 MHz core (11% overclock) and 1310 MHz Memory (9% overclock). Good numbers, but not spectacular. When we first tested the HD 5970 reference, its maximum overclock was 780 / 1310. So the ASUS ARES increases substantially on possible GPU overclocking potential, but there is almost no improvement on memory.

Like the HD 5970 the ASUS ARES also supports GPU voltage control via SmartDoctor or any other software that can talk to the Volterra voltage regulator via I2C. When running at 1.40 V, I managed a maximum core clock of 1010 MHz, 990 MHz @ 1.30 V and 960 MHz @ 1.2 V. The card's default voltage is 1.175 V, where it reached 945 MHz.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies (945/1310) we ran a quick test of Call of Duty 4 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.


The actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 8.3%.

Temperatures

Temperatures are comfortably low. But given the noise levels of the fan I would have preferred higher load temperatures and less fan noise.

Clock Profiles

Modern graphics cards have several clock profiles that are selected to balance power draw and performance requirements.
The following table lists the clock settings for major performance scenarios and the GPU voltage that we measured. We measure on the pins of a coil or capacitor near the GPU voltage regulator.

GPU 1:

GPU 2: