Overclocking Extravaganza: GTX 275's Complex Characteristics
by Derek Wilson on June 4, 2009 5:35 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Final Words
When it comes to overclocking, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 275 is a capable part. Other people out there have gotten higher core speeds than we did but we achieved a very high shader clock. Our memory speed was also decent. And with this test the overclocked GTX 275 shows it can compete with an overclocked Radeon HD 4890: the GTX 275 never trailed NVIDIA's own GTX 285 while the Radeon HD 4890 fell behind in a couple instances.
At the same time, while the 4890 doesn't always lead the GTX 285, when the 4890 does lead it also typically leads the fully overclocked GTX 275 as well. These parts trade blows, and it is difficult to say that one is hands down better than the other. It really depends on the game and what you need out of the hardware.
We did find the AMD hardware easier to quickly and efficiently tweak. Some of that may have to do with the fact that we only had two sliders to worry about, but the built in stress test is a nice plus. Of course, NVIDIA automatically tests the clocks when you try and set them, but it seemed like it would sometimes arbitrarily decide not to let us set a clock speed we had set before. Setting three different clocks can give us more control over the overclocking process, but that can be tough when we still don't know exactly the best way to balance these.
Our suggestion is to start with the core and get it as high as you can. After that, crank up your shader. Last would be memory. But you will definitely want to make sure you've got all three turned up at least a little to get the amplifying benefit these hardware resources have on each other.
Those hoping we would definitively recommend either NVIDIA or AMD for overclocking will be disappointed, as this just isn't the blowout necessary for that. Both camps have pluses and minuses, and readers should take that into account when making a purchasing decision. Additionally, we do want to stress that every retail card is different; there may be some AMD parts that can overclock higher than the one we tested, and there may be NVIDIA hardware that can achieve better results as well.
Regardless of what else comes into play, overclocking looks good on both the Radeon HD 4890 and the GeForce GTX 275.
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Shadowmage - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
Evenly matched? The 4890 OCed beats the GTX275 OCed in almost all benchmarks and wins considerably in every game at the resolution that I play at: 1680x1050. It also uses substantially less power and costs less than $200 (eg. ewiz deal at $160, newegg deal at $180), whereas the GTX275 still costs upwards of $220.walp - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
I just wanted to be polite. :4890 @ 1\1.2 is a really nice overclock. They do mention that the GTX275 did'nt overclock that well.
So I prefer (to be aside of the fanboyism-spectra) to call them evenly matched when talking about performance.
Good for you that 4890 is so cheap over there, here they cost about the same as the GTX275. (280$) :/
Powerdraw from a electrical cost-point of view is unimportant for me, since I have free electricity. (Long live the swedish King! lol..) ;)
But it is better from a heat-point-of-view to have less power-draw of course, yeah, so 4890 is (again:slightly) better than GTX275 at load. Its the other way around for idle though. (I would sincerely call this evenly matched in powerdraw).
I have no clue whatsoever how they compare when it comes to noise, but 4890 is really loud at load, thats for sure. ('But not anymore its not!')
\walp
Carfax - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
Except that the GTX 275 OC had a very moderate overclock compared to the greater overclock on the HD 4890.I don't see how Anandtech only got 700mhz out of the core.
li3k - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
well...A cursory search on google yieled the highest core overclocks obtainable on gtx 275 boards to be between 700 and 745mhz. If you can show us otherwise, please do.
As for myself, and other hardware enthusiasts I'd imagine, the maximum potential of a card comes from its maximum overclocked performance. The fact that the gtx 275 had a "moderate" maximum overclock compared to the 4890 should not come at the cost of the 4890 in a potential comparison.
I stand by my point.
Carfax - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
I just googled "GTX 275 overclock" and the first article that pops up is from Guru3d which shows the GTX 275 overclocking to 743mhz.Tweaktown did another one and got 715mhz, but they had no clue what they were doing and left the shaders linked.
Anyway, the point is though, if you're going to do an article on overclocking the GTX 275, why bother with a card that has such poor overclocking capability?
Anandtech's HD 4890 OC article specifically used an HD 4890 that was capable of hitting 1ghz on the core, because not all HD 4890s are capable of attaining such a high core speed.
Why couldn't they do the same for the GTX 275?
This article is B.S..
SiliconDoc - Saturday, June 6, 2009 - link
LOLYou can buy a GTX275 retail at 713 core - and they got theirs all the way up to 703 here ! roflmao
Worse yet they use their 4890 numbers from their specially delivered non retail "golden ATI secret channel" - as Derek the red rooster says here in their 4890 oc extrava article ! - LOL
" We absolutely must caution our readers once again that these are not off-the-shelf retail parts. These are parts sent directly to us from manufacturers and could very likely have a higher overclocking potential than retail parts. "
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3555...">http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3555...
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SO THE BIAS IS BLEEDING OUT LIKE A BIG FAT STUCK PIG... IF YOU HAVE ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER THAT IS...
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a red rooster fanboy like Derek and all his little raging red roosters here love it.
li3k - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
I have to agree...vote me down if you like, but the way this article is worded just reinforces the commonly held assumption that anandtech is biased towards intel/nvidia.
DerekWilson - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
thanks for the feedback ... but I'm not touching overclocked SLI and CF ... ugh!I didn't include the 4890 1/1.2 in idle power because it is redundant as it doesn't affect idle power. and came in at the same idle power as the other two. I wanted to save on graph space where i could because there was so much data -- plus we already covered that in the 4890 overclocking article. Sorry if I dropped too much out.
walp - Thursday, June 4, 2009 - link
Hmm, mkay.Was just confused by the fact that the sligthly overclocked 4890 wanted less juice than the original version in idle.
Maybe due to better VRM\mosfet underclocking or whatever. :)
At least do GTX275 SLI vs. 4890 CF, (and while doing that, just overclock them slightly, plz ;)
I have my finger on the 'ordering-another-4890-button', but wont buy another until anandtech.com reviews 4890 CF!
\walp
SiliconDoc - Monday, June 22, 2009 - link
Yes the gtx 275 wins even in overclocking... i wonder what went wrong with dereks tests...( no i don't !)...
http://www.techspot.com/review/164-radeon-4890-vs-...">http://www.techspot.com/review/164-radeon-4890-vs-...