ASUS EN9800GX2 review - first look at 9800 GX2

Page 10 - 3DMark06 and Overclock

Synthetic test are done last. The truth that more and more people begin to understand is that those tests are highly overrated. Years ago when versions 99 and 2001 of the famous 3DMark test began gathering popularity as a frequent gamers test, and a high result became a mark of a good video card, the companies began to optimize their drivers and chips to be capable to prove themselves in any of the latest 3DMark “disciplines”.

Many people spend hundreds or even thousand of dollars just to obtain computer capable of “playing 3DMark”. And they still exist! But even if you're not one of them, you still might want to know how will your video card perform in 3DMark, is it in the best results of it's rang compared to card ana computer. Now after showing how the cards are holding on in the the most recent and heavy games, we cannot miss the opportunity to give you the delight of the synthetic test:

There is not much that can be said about the results, they are just points that don't really give you anything solid. It is likely though things will change with the upcoming 3DMark Vantage, which has full DirectX 10 support and on which engine a game is to be based. It's just that 3DMark06 too old...

And at last, the long awaited overclock test!

Here the severe bottleneck that leaves the cards potential unused, being caused by the processor is best noticed. ASUS EN9800GX2 overclocked to a healthy 25% for the core and shaders and about 8% for the memory. In other words from 600/1500/1000 core/shaders/memory, we reached 766/1915/1075MHz. And this way the points were 18270. Thing is one of our readers, having in his possession such a card, on default frequencies with C2D processor 8400@4380MHz showed us that he managed to get over 20 000 from the first try. So we pushed our Q6600 to higher frequencies and with the unstable 3740MHz the results had increased with about 1000 points!

We're also reminding you about theSapphire HD3870X2 review results, where the card reached little above 15 000 points with the dame Q6600 @ 3000MHz. Now these 600MHz more, gave it over 2000 points more, and if you look at other results from the older and the present review including HD3870X2, you'll see how much of a increase there is with higher processor frequencies!