XFX GeForce 9800 GTX 512MB Black Edition

Overclocking the 9800 GTX Black was a piece of cake; we took just two attempts to grab the sweet spot of this card: 850MHz core, 2125MHz shader and 2500MHz memory. 

That is an easy 600 point increase over the default score in Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage!

It seems that the GTX is severely bandwidth bottlenecked. Our first run was done at the same core and shader speeds but at a lower memory clock of 2350MHz. However, simply by raising the memory speed a mere 150MHz to what we have in the screenshot above, it gave us a return of almost 200 more 3DMarks.

At the rate this card is clocking, by slapping on an after-market Arctic Cooling Accelero XTREME 9800 tri-fan cooler and perhaps some hardware modifications which would void warranty (hint hint), enthusiasts should be having quite a lot of fun with the whole package.

XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 1GB Black Edition

The result we got from overclocking the GX2 was not as impressive as that of the GTX, but nonetheless we still got quite a boost in clocks.

Just shy of 12,000 points in Futuremark's 3DMark Vantage at overclocked speeds. (Uh yes we did spend some time attempting to clear the 12k ceiling by trying to clock the graphics card alone further, but apparently we've reached the limit of this sample here... *sheepish smile*) We think the GX2 Black Edition still has more juice in it, just that we need to look beyond the default cooling solution.

Anyhow, this overclocked GX2 Black Card at 775MHz core, 1900MHz shader and 2350MHz memory already blows everything away, considering a stock GX2 runs only a near-10,000 point score on the same test bed.

And, we have results in graphical form as well.