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 are 743 MHz core (22% overclock) and 940 MHz Memory (12% overclock). The memory clock is a bit disappointing, but core is going strong at clock speeds that are higher than the GeForce GTX 480 reference clocks.

Please note that it is not possible anymore to overclock the shaders independently of the core. The ratio between core clock and shader clock is always 1:2.

ASUS also offers GPU voltage control with their SmartDoctor application. I used SmartDoctor to increase the GPU voltage from the default 0.975V to the maximum of 1.087V (as displayed in SmartDoctor).



The maximum overclock is now 797 MHz on the GPU, quite a nice increase. Temperatures of the card went up by around 3°C, together with a massive fan speed increase while the fan tries to keep the card cool.

Overclocked Performance

Using these clock frequencies (733/940) we ran a quick test of Call of Duty 4 to evaluate the gains from overclocking.


The actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 26.7%.

Temperatures

Idle temperatures are comfortably low, a lower fan speed in trade for higher temperatures would have helped with the idle noise. Under load the card is at what I would consider a healthy maximum for long term use.

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.