To discover our sample’s overclocking abilities we used EVGA’s Precision X software and began raising power and thermal thresholds to the maximum allowed and then increased the voltage also to the maximum permitted. Then using Unigine’s Valley benchmark we began stability testing.
As this is very late in the GM206’s product cycle we knew that this was an extremely mature process and have long since worked out what can and cannot be done to most of them. This is why we had a sneaking suspicion that PNY may have given their OC Gaming GTX 960 a healthy factory overclock but they were still being very conservative. Put another way we had a feeling that PNY had left a lot of untapped potential for brave consumers to find – as there does come a point where more factory binning simply does not make financial sense.
In this regards we were right, there is still plenty of headroom for enthusiasts to find; however, what we were not expecting was the temperatures to stay so mild. Even when compared to the MSI Gaming 2 GeForce GTX 960 video card the PNY OC Gaming is a cooling beast. So much so that unless you get a bad overclocking chip thermal walls are not what you are going to run into. Instead you will run into NVIDIA’s acritical voltage limitation and that will be what finally limits your overclock.
With that being said we doubt many will be displeased with what they can push their card too, as 1498 on the core is nothing to sneeze at! To put this in perspective this represent an addition 232 Mhz over the factory overclock setting, or a whopping 320Mhz over NVIDIA reference levels. Put another way you can expect to get an addition 24.5 percent overclock on top of the already 33% factory overclock – for an amazing total overclock!
Even more impressive is that our already factory overclocked RAM ICs (they come with an 200Mhz effective overclock applied at the factory) can easily be pushed further and harder than most would expect. To be precise we easily turn 7200 into 7928 effective setting. This combination of insanely high GPU core setting with nosebleed RAM makes for one potent video card. So much so that it will be noticed in real world scenarios and can close the gap between a GeForce GTX 960 and 970. Brilliant stuff! It is just a shame that PNY left so much potential performance on the table. But as the old saying goes ” Fortuna Audaces Iuvat ” – Fortune Favors the Bold!
