Pushing an EVGA GTX 295 to its limits

Sledgehammer70

While OC'ing a GPU is easier than ever. I have taken the time to see just what my GTX 295 can do with air cooling. To note of the get go I was very impressed with my results.

Stock Settings:


Most graphic card companies these days offer their own tools for overclockers these days & EVGA in my opinion is leading the crowd with a simple tool that allows you to push you cards limits very quickly. Their tool is called EVGA Precision & it gives you access to tune your card or cards with a few clicks and slides.



I quickly jumped the gun and started playing around with the GPU settings and found that getting to its max OC without artifacts showing up in benchmarks was easily done in a few trys. One thing I did notice is having the GPU Fan Speed set at 80% range seemed to allow me to push past the 664 range and peak at 680Mhz Core clock.





As you can see I was easily able to push my GPU to a roughly 20% OC without much issues & the performance was easliy noticed in 3DMark Vantage with a gain of 2000 points. Now couple that with some faster CPU marks might boost the score even higher but as of now I am locked down on what I can OC my CPU to.

NO GPU OC
3DMark Score
P21729 3DMarks
CPU Score
44616
Graphics Score
18556

GPU OC
3DMark Score
P23849 3DMarks
CPU Score
46098
Graphics Score
20544

UPSLynx

That's a really nice increase.

Does EVGA Precision do artifacting tests itself (sort of like the spinning fuzzy cube in ATITool) or do you check it in separate games/benchmarks?

Sledgehammer70

As you can see the Precision tool has a test mode.. but most often it would pass the test but still have small issues in benchmarks.

Sledgehammer70

I have gotten the Core clock up to 712 and memory running at 1300 with just the stock cooler. I have to have the Fan running 100% which is louder than hell but keeps the chips at a nice 67C.