Overclocking
OverclockingOverclocking the Gigabyte card proved to be a reasonable success. We were able to raise the core frequency from 500MHz to 580MHz and RAM speed from the default 990MHz to 1180MHz. No extra cooling was directed at the card and no extra voltage was applied. The overclock for the Gigabyte GV-RX18L256V-B was consistent with Radeon X1800 XL cards from other partners, too. DOOM 3 and Far Cry were re-run to see what affect the overclocked settings had on performance.
There's not quite enough extra oomph in DOOM 3 to displace an XFX GeForce 7800 GT out of third place, but, with Far Cry, the extra speed makes the game that much smoother. The enhanced clock speeds provide almost 20% extra performance when the games are card limited.
