NVIDIA GeForce 2 GTS Roundup - July 2000

Overclocking The Core

About a moth ago, we took a look at how the GeForce 2 GTS overclocked. We found that with a .18 micron core, the GeForce 2 GTS was fairly easy to push to new levels. On the down-side, we also found that pushing the core speeds to those never before seen in video processors resulted in only marginal, almost unnoticeable, speed increases. We were out of luck justoverclocking the core alone, as the graph below shows.

This was quite disappointing, considering that, in the past overclocking the core was about the only way to get the most speed from your video card. One was left wondering if gaining speed by overclocking the GeForce 2 GTS was possible the way it was in previous cards. An alternate method of overclocking was needed in order to get the maximum speed out of a GeForce 2 GTS based card.

We were able to prove while writing this review is that heat is no longer a limiting factor in maximum overclockabilty of a card, as suspected. Unlike the hot running GeForce 256, the GeForce 2 GTS is relatively cool. Chip quality problems are hit long before heat becomes an issue. Information on a specific card's heat can be found in that card's section of this review and no correlation between chip temperature and maximum overclockabilty can be found.