Recently we looked how the Radeon HD 4890 from ATI went in the overclocking department. Though today we take a closer look at how NVIDIA go with the new GeForce GTX 275 which has just been recently released to compete against the new ATI offering. While overclocking on NVIDIA cards is slightly more involved due to the fact that the drivers don't have any embedded overclocking software, these cards do only require the installation of a small program called RivaTuner to get around this. With RivaTuner installed and plenty of spare time, we went on our merry way to increasing the memory and core clock to a point which gave us a nice increase in performance, whilst still being completely stable. - TweakTown

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 OverClock Upgrade Review

Utilizing RivaTuner we took the time to increase the GPU, shader and memory clock. Bumping the card up 10-15MHz at a time and running a loop of 3DMark Vantage in between lets us find a sweet spot for clocks. Based on the GeForce GTX 200 series product we have a shader clock unlike the Radeon HD 4890, in this case we chose to keep it linked with the core, so meaning both increased together. What we ultimately ended up with was pretty impressive. The core was moved to 715MHz, their shader clock to 1585MHz and the 896MB of GDDR3 memory to 2444MHz effective, giving us a nice little increase in performance.

And like the Radeon HD 4890, we see a good boost in performance thanks to the overclock we've achieved. While we know that companies out there won't push the cards this high, we should see some companies who like to live on the edge give us a core of around 700MHz and a memory clock around 2400MHz effective. Over the next few weeks it's going to be interesting to see what both sides do when it comes to overclocked models. No doubt ATI will be able to close the gap between the Radeon HD 4890 and the GeForce GTX 275 with some overclocked models, but at the same time we don't doubt that NVIDIA aren't going to sit back.

Now at the end of it all, we can see that this GeForce GTX 275 offers some good potential when it comes to overclocking. While the task might take slightly longer than ATI offerings due to third party software needing to be installed, it really is nothing compared to the results that can be obtained in doing so. The one thing to remember though, is just because we achieved these clocks today it doesn't mean you will, some boards might not go as high, while others might choose to go even higher. And like the Radeon HD 4890, the GeForce GTX 275 extends the value the graphics card offers by giving us a decent overclock.

The best thing about this is that in a few of our tests we saw that the overclock helped make the difference between the game running silky smooth or just not. Overall, a great video card that shows serious overclocking potential. If you want to save some dollars and get some extra performance, just buy a stock clocked model and overclock yourself. And a card like the Gainward we used today is a particularly great option thanks to the aftermarket cooling on tap.