GeForce 8800 series round-up

Overclocking:

We overclocked all five GeForce 8800's using a combination of Nvidia's nTune software and ATiTool version 0.26 (which supports overclocking GeForce 8800-series video cards). While the current driver doesn't have support for shader clock adjustments yet, Nvidia has promised that feature in a future driver release. The ETA on that driver is not clear at this moment in time, though.

The default clocks for the cards are as follows:

• BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB: 550MHz core / 1600MHz memory;
  
  
• EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX KO Superclocked ACS³ Edition: 626MHz core / 2000MHz memory;
  
  
• Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GTS TDH 320MB: 513MHz core / 1600MHz memory;
  
  
• XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB XXX Edition: 550MHz core / 1800MHz memory;
  
  
• XFX GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB XXX Edition: 630MHz core / 2000MHz memory.

And here's where we ended up after some blood, sweat and tears. Oh, and a bit of overclocking, too...

• BFGTech GeForce 8800 GTS OC 640MB: 624MHz core (13.5 percent increase) / 2006MHz memory (25.4 percent);
  
  
• EVGA e-GeForce 8800 GTX KO Superclocked ACS³ Edition: 640MHz core (2.2 percent) / 2066MHz memory (3.3 percent);
  
  
• Leadtek WinFast PX8800 GTS TDH 320MB: 629MHz core (22.6 percent) / 1872MHz memory (17 percent);
  
  
• XFX GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB XXX Edition: 596MHz core (8.3 percent) / 2014MHz memory (11.9 percent);
  
  
• XFX GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB XXX Edition: 634MHz core (0.6 percent) / 2062MHz memory (3.1 percent).

In order to gauge how much performance these clock speed increases were worth, we re-ran our F.E.A.R. tests at 2560x1600 2xAA 16xAF with maximum in-game details.

The meagre increases in clock speed on both the EVGA and XFX GeForce 8800 GTX video cards resulted in an incremental performance increase that you're not going to notice in real-world gaming. However, the performance increases delivered by the BFGTech and Leadtek cards was substantial enough for it to make a difference. XFX's GeForce 8800 GTS 640MB XXX Edition's massively higher stream processor clock meant it was able to keep up with BFGTech's card when overclocked, despite a near-30MHz core clock deficit.