Overclocking tests
It's with a little confidence and promise that one approaches overclocking Gainward cards. The Golden Sample naming scheme used to mean that Gainward's cards often went a little further than most. Putting its reputation on the line by overclocking the sample card, we tried to discern just what kind of headroom the card enjoyed under normal conditions, that is, with no extra fans or cooling in place. The usual three loops of 3DMark 2001SE with 4x AA and 8x AF were required to call the card stable at any given frequency. A final speed of 485MHz core and 970MHz memory put it in line with results obtained from other 5900's.
We'll re-run three benchmarks with overclocking results included.
A healthy boost that still can't rival the 5900 Ultra's benchmark. The Ultra card was aided by 256MB of memory in this test.
Overclocking helps, but there's something about this benchmark that a regular 5900 doesn't enjoy.
Quake III isn't going to stress 128MB of on-board memory. That's why the regular 5900 can surpass the Ultra's benchmark. 128MB-equipped 5900 cards seem to hover at around 470 - 500MHz core with average cooling. That's the kind of overclock enjoyed by Ultra-based cards. There's obviously a limit to how far one can push the NV35 core with ambient cooling, and we believe that extra cooling help will be required by the majority of NV35 cards if they're to be stable at anything more than 500MHz core. The same can be said for memory. The card would run at 1GHz, but it would begin artifacting quickly. Maybe Gainward's water-cooled FX 5900 Ultra will show us how it's really done.
