Overclocking

Having pushed our stock GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB to 955MHz and 1,910MHz for the GPU core and the stream processors respectively, and the memory to 4.5GHz (effective), we were hungry to see how far we could push the MSI. After all, a card with upgraded power delivery, GPU overvolting and enhanced cooling should fare even better. Without overvolting, we could push the GPU core to 975MHz (meaning the stream processors ran at 1,950MHz) while the memory was happy at the same 4.5GHz (effective) frequency as the reference card.

However, we wanted to go further, so we unlocked the voltage tweaking functions of MSI's Afterburner overclocking software and pushed onwards. With an extra 0.06mV (referred to as ‘+60’ in Afterburner), we finally settled on an impressive maximum 1,020MHz GPU core clock, a 2,040MHz stream processor frequency and 4.5GHz (effective) memory. These frequencies represent an amazing 24 per cent increase over the standard GPU speed, and a 13 per cent increase in memory frequency.


Unlike overclocking without overvolting, which saw fairly negligible increases in power consumption and thermal output, upping the GPU voltage, even by such a small amount as 60 mV, saw the power consumption rocket. When overclocked and overvolted to its maximum stable level, the MSI caused our test system to draw 343W from the wall; an increase of 20 per cent over the result using a standard GTX 560 Ti 1GB.

The performance benefits really do speak for themselves, though, and our overclocked MSI squeezed past a stock-clocked GeForce GTX 570 1.3GB in all three of our tests. This is a hugely impressive feat for a card that retails only a little more than £200, as standard GTX 570 1.3GB cards cost around £280.