XFX Geforce 8800GTX XXX Edition

The first overclocked DirectX 10 cards have hit the station from NVIDIA.

While the original 8800GTXs were clocked at 550MHz core and 1800MHz memory, XFX have managed to squeeze out an extra 80MHz and 200MHz respectively, releasing the highest clocked card on the market. This means some toasty temperatures, with average under load temps operating around the 75°C mark.

Nonetheless the card handles the heat with no issue, comfortably smacking about any test we cared to throw at it, as those of the GTX ilk are wont to do.

In the 3DMark06 SM3.0 tests (4xAA, 8xAF), the card scored 3708, 3015 and 2679 at 1280x1024, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 respectively, giving an average eight percent performance increase on the vanilla version.

Half Life 2 scored 207.7fps, 186.88fps and 169.93fps at 1280x1024, 1600x1200 and 1920x1200 respectively, giving a six percent increase over the standard clocks.

An inventive person can find a bog standard GTX for about $830 these days, so you have to question whether an average seven percent increase in performance is worth a 17 percent price increase. Still, since XFX have done the hard work for you by weeding out the high performing chips and putting them in the XXX edition, it’s likely you’ll be able to push these even further again, and further than the stock cards can dream of as they rely more on luck for their overclockability. We managed 649MHz core and 2135MHz memory stable, although this required us to set the fan permanently to 100 percent – not a huge increase, and certainly not worth the noise.

Still, for those who are chasing the ultimate frame rates, need to feed a hungry 30", 2560x1600 monitor, figure SLI is a good idea and own 60 percent of the Bank of Canada, you won’t get faster than this, or as it may be, two of these.