Overclocking

Video card overclocking is a great way to squeeze a bit of extra gaming performance out of your system without having to spend any money or sacrifice much stability. We tested each card to see what it could do. The levels we recorded are the maximum playable overclock, not the actual maximum level.

After pushing the X700 to the limit we found that it would go from stock levels of 420/430 (core/memory) to a maximum of 510.3/519.23. This overclock, which calculates to 21%/21% is pretty nice for a video card, especially one made by the chip manufacturer. At a maximum overclock the card was recorded at a steamy 61 degrees C. At this point the fan was spinning extremely quickly and was annoyingly loud. I was surprised by just how noisy the cooling fan would get- it was much louder than anything that came out of the 6600.

We did not expect a huge (additional) overclock from the BFG 6600 GT OC as this card was already overclocked a bit. The stock settings for the 6600 GT chip is 500/500, but the GT OC runs at 525/525. Since the card has a large cooler and memory sinks we figured it was capable of a good deal more, it was just that BFG wanted to be conservative. We got the card up to a playable overclock of 585/616. This comes out to about 11%/17%, which is acceptable but not impressive. If you use the stock 6600 setting you get 17%/25%- much better and certainly worthy of BFG's reputation.