Checking out the Overclocking Software
One of the features the card bundle offers is an ever useful software overclocking utility called iTracker. Typically, Riva Tuner is used to get inside videocard inner frequencies but, iTracker turned out to be a super easy interface designed specifically for the enthusiast in all of us.
As you can see in the screen shots, it’s not complicated software at all. The interface is quite simple offering five general settings, Optimized, Gaming, Default, Power Saving, and User Defined presets. Each setting automatically configures frequencies. Optimal, Gaming, and User Defined automatically offered settings that were far higher than a stock GTX 260 GPU. Naturally, I chose the User Defined option to see where the card frequencies max out.
Gamer OSD is included as well which comes in handy if you like recording some demos of you administering a thorough butt-woopin. Or, perhaps you want to provide some screen shots that show evidence of said butt-woopin. Either way, it’s a handy little recording utility that works for whatever your needs may be. It’s a Republic of Gamers thing!
How Far Did We Take It?
When it comes to video cards, it’s all about maxing out the Shader Clocks if you want to see some gains. The rest is of the frequencies like the core and memory are just icing on the cake. After much tweaking, we were able to achive a maximum 690 MHz Core, 1750 MHz Shader, and 2325 MHz Memory were achieved. If you’re paying attention, that’s higher than a GTX 285!
Dual Hotness Cranking Out the Frame Rates
Starting off the benchmarks with Vantage just seems required these days. It’s the one benchmark everyone can easily download and try out. For that reason, it was left to default installation settings so you can compare your own video card. Again, all benchmarks were performed using all the game’s highest settings available.
3DMark Vantage
As you can see, the card benefits greatly from the super quick overclock settings. The nice thing about this test system is that there is plenty of CPU power so the overclock is quite noticeable. Let’s see what real world games like Crysis, FarCry2, World at War, Left4Dead and Mirrors Edge say.