Overclocking

Here we'll take a look at the overclocked performance of the GeForce 7800 GTX 512MB. Bear in mind that the overclocked speeds are not representative of all boards of its kind, especially so as this is a reference board, however gains similar to these may be available elsewhere. The board tested here was able to overclock the core from its default speed of 550MHz to 594MHz, representing an 8.4% performance increase, whilst the memory moved from 850MHz to 890MHz, representing a 4.7% increase in memory bandwidth.

Far Cry, HDR (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
Default (550/850) 92.4 92.4 92.1 79.8 59.5
Overclocked (596/890) 89.5 89.5 89.3 81.7 63.3
% Increase -3.2% -3.2% -3.1% 2.4% 6.4%

Far Cry, 8xS TrAA & 16x AF (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
Default (550/850) 98.2 91.7 68.4 46.7 30.0
Overclocked (596/890) 94.9 92.4 72.6 49.7 31.9
% Increase -3.3% 0.7% 6.1% 6.3% 6.4%

Doom3 (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
Default (550/850) 138.2 142.1 141.4 136.9 124.9
Overclocked (596/890) 144.5 145.5 145.8 140.8 128.9
% Increase 4.6% 2.4% 3.1% 2.8% 3.2%

Doom3, 8xS TrAA & 16x AF (FPS) 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
Default (550/850) 131.9 119.9 90.6 62.2 40.6
Overclocked (596/890) 139.1 124.1 93.7 65.2 42.7
% Increase 5.5% 3.5% 3.4% 4.8% 5.2%

The normal rendering Doom 3 test is the most CPU limited of the cases tested here, and as such is has the lowest gains with overclocking, at a maximum of 3% at the more graphics limited resolutions. Each of the other tests represent a higher graphics workload and as such the gains are a little greater, ranging from about 5%-6%, which is in-between the memory and core overclock levels.