Using synthetic benchmarks the video cards were again tested. While synthetic benchmarks are not necessarily indicative of real-life performance they are able to give us a good idea of comparative capabilities. Here, once again, the X800 GTO was able to stay on top of the other cards, with a clear trend line which put the 6600 GT below the X800 GTO, with the X700 Pro another step down and then finally the X600 XT.

Overclocking and Cooling

With its large cooler and included monitoring software the X800 GTO IceQ Turbo is designed to run at 500/1000, not its native 400/980. This overclock gives it a nice performance boost and makes the card extremely competitive given its cost. With the push of a button the card will enter Turbo mode which not only ramps up the clock speeds but changes the fan speed from Auto to 100%.

At idle the video card's GPU temperature is just 34 degrees C, while at idle with Turbo on it is 34 degrees. The cooler as kept load temperatures very tame- stock load temperatures maxed out at 44 degrees and Turbo was 47 degrees.

The maximum overclock at which this card would run with any stability was 600/1150. Here the card was running at a steamy 49 degrees (at load) but there were no signs of artifacting. I sat down and played Day of Defeat: Source for thirty minutes at this overclock with no stability problems at all. When I went past this level, 625/1166 for example, and there was noticeable artifacting. Below is a chart of the overclocking frequencies and the observed changes in the 3dMark05 score.