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 910 MHz core (7% overclock) and 1045 MHz Memory (5% overclock). Compared to other GTS 450 cards tested today this overclock is quite slim. You do have to take into consideration the factory overclock which means the card is running 16% higher clocked than the reference design.
One explanation for the rather low overclock is that MSI's card is running at 1.08V in 3D, whereas other manufacturers chose to increase the voltage at cost of higher power draw and more fan noise.

Overclocked Performance

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


The actual 3D performance gained from overclocking is 5.8%.

Temperatures

Temperatures are very low, together with the super low fan noise this makes an excellent combination.

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.