Overclocking:
While the
Leadtek Limited WinFast GTX260 EXTREME+ video card has a factory overclocked GPU (602MHz versus 576MHz stock), I was hopeful that it could do even more. In addition, knowing that another version of this card was available from Leadtek with the memory overclocked from 999MHz to 1107MHz had me thinking I would shoot for about the same.
Not discussed to this point in the review, Leadtek has bundled a special utility with the card called WinFox. The screenshots below show a couple of the screens, and overall the interface is crude. Many of the utilities just seem unnecessary, and others seem incomplete. For example, the below left screen shows the included hardware monitor, and only one value was actually provided on screen... the GPU temperature.
One portion that does work is for GPU and memory overclocking, and this is what I used to optimize the card's performance. The above right image shows the maximum speeds tested, which were a rather evil 666MHZ on the GPU (@ 10.6%) and 1066MHz on the memory (@ 6.7%). I did not experience any artifacts or other issues at these speeds, but did not go higher due to concerns about temperatures.
The charts below detail the performance increases made possible in three games with this overclock. The improvements weren't huge, but definitely in line with the overclock. Picking up 3-10 fps in these games isn't bad, and definitely worth the minimal effort.
