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| Hardware
Monitoring With The Enhanced Winfast
GeForce 2 GTS |
| Good
Stuff... |
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The
drivers provided with the card are the standard
Detonator 3 6.18.
At the time of testing, newer Detonator
6.31 drivers were available and were used
throughout the testing of this card.
Another product included on the CD to
complement the driver software is called WinFox.
WinFox is an excellent utility that offers
numerous features.
Nestled discreetly in the Systray, this
utility offers us the ability to monitor our
hardware status as well as changing critical
settings like resolution, refresh rate, core MHz
and memory MHz.
Using the Speed-Runner utility, we are able
to test both core and memory timing before
accepting and applying them.
Once accepting our new settings, they are
implemented immediately without needing a reboot.
Once
our timings have been adjusted, it’s time to use
the Hardware Monitor.
Working in conjunction with a temperature
sensor immersed in thermal grease under the heat
sink, Hardware Monitor provides an accurate
readout of the GPU’s temperature as well as
other information like fan rpm and voltage.
This is an excellent tool when trying to
over-clock this card to its maximum potential.
We particularly liked the option for a
temperature alarm to prevent us from damaging the
chip, although as cool as this chip ran, I don’t
think we were in any danger of doing that.
At most the core temperature raised a total
of 10°C,
which is excellent.
If the core temperature reaches the preset
alarm point, an audible alarm sounds to let you
know the peak that you set has been exceeded.
So,
with all of these nice features for us to play
with, we felt it was time to start seeing what
this puppy was made of.
Running at a core 200MHz and memory at
333MHz we were able to up the timings to a stable
250MHz core (25% gain) and 390MHz on the memory
timings (17%).
What do you say we take these numbers and
put them to the test, shall we?
Overclocking
and Gaming Performance |
