Asus P5E3 Deluxe (Intel X38)
Intel Core 2 Quad QX6850 (3 GHz)
Crucial 2 x 1 GB DDR3 1333 MHz 7-7-7-20
Western Digital WD5000AAKS
Asus 12x DVD player
Cooler Master RealPower Pro 850W
Windows XP, Vista, Vista SP1
ForceWare 177.34 beta (GTX 260 and GTX 280 under Vista)
ForceWare 177.26 beta (GTX 280 under XP)
ForceWare 175.16 WHQL (9800 GTX, 9800 GX2, 8800 Ultra)
Catalyst 8.5 WHQL (HD 3870 X2
]
Overclocking
In overclocking tests, we were able to push the GeForce GTX 260 from 576/1242/999 MHz (GPU/ALU/memory) to 648/1397/1184 MHz, or 12% and 18% respectively. That’s good, and let us squeeze out a gain of 16%, or 8.4 frames per second, at 2560*1600 with Test Drive Unlimited – only 6% slower than the GTX 280!
Except that obviously we overclocked it too – from 602/1296/1107 MHz to 655/1410/1290 with very good stability, for gains of 9% and 16%. Test Drive Unlimited again benefited from the boost with a 13% increase in frame rate – which is quite good even next to the 16% we got with the 9800 GTX. Overall, those results are very coherent, especially for overclocking, which is not an exact science.