Advanced Tweaking Performance

When we look at the previous pages and the rendering technology, it did invite us to start some of our advanced tweaking, so at first we will look at some basic overclocking. This means that we will be looking a bit deeper in how far the performance can somehow be influenced by certain tweaks, either on the system or the graphics card itself. So what we have done is quite easy, we used ATITool to find a sort of maximum clock speed for both the core and memory and afterwards set the clocks via PowerStrip. Next to that we played with the Core 2 Duo processor and tweaked to deliver more for less. So we pushed the Gainward GeForce GTX 260 edition a bit further then initially set by Gainward, followed by some benchmarking with one of the newest game titles available. So read on and find out the gains of our easy tweaking on the performance and frame rates.

UbiSoft Far Cry 2

Caught between two rival factions in war torn Africa, you are sent to take out the Jackal, a certain mysterious character who has rekindled the conflict between the warlords, jeopardizing thousands of lives. In order to fulfill your mission you will have to play the factions against each other, to identify and really exploit their weaknesses, and neutralize their superior numbers and firepower with surprise, subversion, cunning and of course brute force. Far Cry 2 immerses players in an entirely new kind of gaming experience, featuring a custom made video game engine built from the ground up. Players discover a true open world game play set in Africa, brought to life by high definition next-gen technology. The game has realistic features such as the player having to use a map and navigation system to get around, and more life or death related features, such as the avatar having to use tools to dig bullets out of the body and pat himself down when on fire.

Gaming Results - 1600x1200 - E6700 2.80GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	69.90 fps
8x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	58.27 fps
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	72.74 fps
8x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	63.23 fps
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.
Gaming Results - 2560x1600 - E6700 2.80GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	49.55 fps
8x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	32.98 fps
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	54.78 fps
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	36.95 fps
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.

We are starting with our Core 2 Duo system running at only 2.80GHz and looking at the performance delivered in two phases. First we keep the GeForce GTX 260 from Gainward running at the default clock speeds, while afterwards we bump these up to almost the maximum levels we could achieve without some serious tweaking. This means that any decent GeForce GTX 260 should somehow be able to reach these overclocking levels. Of course not all cards are equal, but if your doesn't overclock well we would advice to check the cooling solution as it might not be fit as good as it should. Following our overclocking this is a nice increase in core and memory clock speed and does show a nice boost as well in frame rates. And the result for Far Cry 2 is more visible at the ultra widescreen resolutions, which do proof that the GeForce GTX 260 does have a lot going for it also in future games.

Gaming Results - 1600x1200 - E6700 3.00GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	71.24 fps
8x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	58.87 fps
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	74.56 fps
8x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	64.09 fps
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.
Gaming Results - 2560x1600 - E6700 2.80GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	49.91 fps
8x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	33.21 fps
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	55.70 fps
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	37.23 fps
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.

Next we up the stakes and reboot the system to increase the overclocking level of our Core 2 Duo processor to 3.00GHz and see what the effect would be as such. Once again we are keeping the GeForce GTX 260 running first at its default clocks. When we just stop there and look at the results we are not really sure what we should think of this. The extra boost on the CPU doesn't really show much of a difference and just slightly improves the game play performance. Once again we also increase the core and memory clock speed of the video accelerator and re-run the benchmark. And this does show similar results when compared to the previous results. This means that the central processing of the system doesn't have that much impact on the overall gaming frame rates, while the tweaks done on the GeForce GTX 260 card itself do show a nice boost in performance and smoother game play.

Gaming Results - 1600x1200 - E6700 3.20GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	72.40 fps
8x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	59.15 fps
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	76.40 fps
8x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	64.48 fps
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.
Gaming Results - 2560x1600 - E6700 2.80GHz - 2GB RAM
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	50.33 fps
8x AA/-- AF	576/1998MHz - 1242MHz (Shader)	33.20 fps
	GeForce GTX 260 896MB	Game Score
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	55.84 fps
4x AA/-- AF	675/2214MHz - 1458MHz (Shader)	37.30 fps
Results Interpretation: Higher index values are better.

Just to be save on our findings we went one step further and overclocked our Core 2 Duo once again, and this time we upped it all the way to 3.20GHz. The exact same procedure was followed, being keeping the GeForce GTX 260 from Gainward first at its default clock settings. Well we can keep to our conclusion on the effect of overclocking the CPU, since it doesn't make that much of a difference. Again when we overclocked our GeForce GTX 260 it does show a nice increase in performance. Of course when both are taking into account it does greater difference, but the major boost is coming from the increase core and memory clock speed realized on the graphics card. By all means we can say that the GT200 chip does a great job and has some more juice left to take any standard GeForce GTX 260 to a higher level, and that is also why a lot of NVIDIA partners have by now released several pre-overclocked versions of the GeForce GTX 260 series. We are just wondering why Gainward didn't launch any Golden Sample versions?