Overclocking

The overclocks listed in this section 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.



Maximum stable clocks of our card are 895 MHz core (14% overclock) and 1060 MHz Memory (6% overclock).
GPU overclocking is impressive, higher than many single GPU GTX 580 cards which typically see around 840 to 850 MHz. Compared to the GTX 590, which reached only 700 MHz in our review the difference is even bigger. Unfortunately memory does not scale so well, which is probably because of the changed PCB design.

Overclocked Performance

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


Actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 11.7%.

Temperatures

Temperatures of all GPUs in all scenarios is quite decent. Essentially the card runs 20% faster than GTX 590, but is still 2°C cooler, at more noise.

Voltage Tuning

The ASUS MARS II supports extremely limited overvolting. We could only raise the GPU voltage from 1.050 V to 1.075 V. This enabled overclocking to go up by around 20 MHz.
I would have loved to see how this card does with more voltage, especially considering that the beefed up VRM eliminates the chances of the card exploding. Unfortunately without more info on the voltage controller I can't write my own overvolting application that bypasses NVIDIA's limits.

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 important 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