ASUS V7700 GeForce 2 GTS

Overclocking

As can be expected with almost all GeForce 2 GTS cards, the ASUS V7700 responded to overclocking very well. The nature of the GeForce 2 GTS makes it an excellent overclocking chip due to the .18 micron fab used in the chip's manufacture. What this translates to is lower resistance in the chip which results in less heat dissipation. Due to this, the heatsink and fan combination used by a GeForce 2 GTS card no longer plays the vital role it played in the .22 micron GeForce 256. Therefore, instead of cooling playing the most important role in overclockability, transistor conductivity (often referred to as chip quality) seems to play the most vital role. Transistor conductivity, a function of the ratio between the transistor length and width, varies during the fabrication process causing variations in the maximum overclocked speed that a chip can reach. Both card manufacturers and consumers do not know what quality the chip used in a particular card is, therefore the variation in overclockabilty between GeForce 2 GTS cards can not be predicted. This serves to explain why, although the V7700 is cooled with the use of more efficient thermal grease, it remains behind the thermally glued ELSA GLADIAC as far as maximum core speed goes. The ASUS was able to obtain a core speed of 235 MHz, 35 MHz above stock speed. The GLADIAC, on the other hand, was able to beat the V7700 by 5 MHz with a core clock speed of 240 MHz. Both speed are extremely acceptable, resulting in very fast cards.

Once again when overclocking the memory clock we find that chip quality (transistor conductivity) plays a vital role. Both the ASUS V7700 and the ELSA GLADIAC use 6 ns Infineon SGRAM chips. As we discussed earlier, these RAM chips are obviously superior to those found in earlier GeForce 256 DDR based cards simply due to the fact that they can readily obtain the speed at which they are rated: 166 MHz DDR. When overclocking, the chips exceed any speed found in GeForce 256 based cards, with the ASUS V7700 able to get to a maximum memory clock speed of 363 MHz, 30 MHz over stock. This varies slightly from the 375 MHz memory clock obtained with the ELSA GLADIAC, but once again keep in mind that this is not a function of the video card itself but rather of the RAM batch used in the card. With a total overclocked speed of 235/363 MHz, we had one of the fastest cards AnandTech has ever seen.