NVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra

Overclocked Performance

As we mentioned earlier on in the review, the GeForce2 Ultra would be the perfect overclocker since it does have 4ns (250MHz) DDR SDRAM. Needless to say that we had no problem getting the Ultra up to 285MHz core and a 500MHz memory clock, and we benchmarked it using Quake III Arena (UT isn't responsive to overclocking because it isn't fill rate/memory bandwidth limited). So how fast did that make the already blazingly fast card?

The below scores were taken on a 1GHz Thunderbird to minimize CPU bottlenecks.

Even at 640 x 480, the overclocked GeForce2 Ultra takes an early lead over the competition, including a hefty lead over the non-overclocked Ultra.

With a 500MHz effective memory clock, it isn’t surprising that the overclocked Ultra can pull over 125 fps at 1024 x 768 x 32. 

The Ultra gives us a nice 10 fps boost when overclocked at 1280 x 1024, almost putting it at 100 fps at this high of a resolution in 32-bit color. 

The overclocked Ultra is the first to break the 60 fps barrier at 1600 x 1200 x 32, very impressive but very expensive.