Associate
- Joined
- 1 Jan 2006
- Posts
- 252
- Location
- Sheffield
I've been experimenting with UNDER clocking my 8800GTS, so it uses less power and therefore generate less heat and noise when I'm not gaming. I use nTune to change the memory and core speeds, and have set up profiles for overclock, default and underclock.
I normally OC to 600 core and 900(1800) memory from 500 and 800(1600). For the underclock I've gone to 400 core and 400(800) memory for boring desktop stuff.
Earlier I forgot to overclock before I loaded up Oblivion. Now it ran slower and I realised what I had done, but then I thought - hang on... it's not that much slower! Considering the core is running a good 50% slower than my OC, and the memory much less than half, my average FPS wandering aroung Cheydinhal was 25-30 with everything maxed at 1680x1050, HDR and 2xAA!
So I tried lowering further, to 300 and 300(600), and it still ran really well, a few FPS slower, ocassionally going sub 20. And no, my drivers weren't kicking in with proper 3D settings when the game started, as that was disabled, I checked.
With the memory and core of the 8800GTS clocked more than 50% lower than my old 7600GT, its still streaming through the game with everything maxed.
It got me thinking really - these new graphics cards have a lot more to them than just raw core and memory speed, but thats the thing they are sold on - with people spending quite a premium for cards with factory OC'd core and memory, usually just 25, 50 or 100mhz increments, that can't make that much difference.
I know this is probably old news really, but it was quite a revelation to me. I guess it's the same as the move to Core 2 Duo Heaven from Pentium 4 Hell, everything runs quicker, even though its running slower
I normally OC to 600 core and 900(1800) memory from 500 and 800(1600). For the underclock I've gone to 400 core and 400(800) memory for boring desktop stuff.
Earlier I forgot to overclock before I loaded up Oblivion. Now it ran slower and I realised what I had done, but then I thought - hang on... it's not that much slower! Considering the core is running a good 50% slower than my OC, and the memory much less than half, my average FPS wandering aroung Cheydinhal was 25-30 with everything maxed at 1680x1050, HDR and 2xAA!
So I tried lowering further, to 300 and 300(600), and it still ran really well, a few FPS slower, ocassionally going sub 20. And no, my drivers weren't kicking in with proper 3D settings when the game started, as that was disabled, I checked.
With the memory and core of the 8800GTS clocked more than 50% lower than my old 7600GT, its still streaming through the game with everything maxed.
It got me thinking really - these new graphics cards have a lot more to them than just raw core and memory speed, but thats the thing they are sold on - with people spending quite a premium for cards with factory OC'd core and memory, usually just 25, 50 or 100mhz increments, that can't make that much difference.
I know this is probably old news really, but it was quite a revelation to me. I guess it's the same as the move to Core 2 Duo Heaven from Pentium 4 Hell, everything runs quicker, even though its running slower
Last edited:
