Dell XPS 710 H2C Performance Gaming System
Overclocking the XPS 710 H2C
Before we concluded our testing, we spent some time overclocking the Dell XPS 710 H2C using NVIDIA's nTune software. To find the system's peak processor frequency, memory timing and video card frequencies, we slowly raised their respective sliders until we begun to see visual artifacts on-screen while running a game or benchmark, or until our test system was no longer stable.
Remembering that the XPS 710 H2C comes with its processor factory overclocked to 3.2GHz, up from the stock frequency of 2.66GHz, we weren't expecting much of an additional gain. However, we were amazed by what we were able to do. After an afternoon of overclocking and stability testing, we finally arrived at an overclocked processor frequency of 3.66GHz at stock voltage. That is a one GHz overclock from the stock QX6700 frequency; one word -- impressive. We were also able to overclock our pair of GeForce 8800 GTXs from their stock speed of 575 MHz core and 1800 MHz memory to 630 MHz core and 1900 MHz memory.
At this speed, the system was completely stable. We were able to run several benchmarks and we continued to use the system for the rest of the day, all without incident. Our impressive overclock earned us an equally impressive 3DMark06 score of 17985! This is the highest score we have achieved to date, here at HotHardware.
Throughout overclocking, the H2C fan, 120mm case fan, and video card fans were manually set to 100% throttle. This is a significant departure from the 3-5% throttle that the H2C and system fans normally operate at. Under 10% throttle, the system is barely audible but at full power the system is extremely loud. While fully overclocked and with an ambient case temperature of 23C, the processor managed 32C while idle and 44C under load. Considering how loud the system was, we were a bit disappointed by the system's temperature under load. Although we'd have to admit, 44C is still very respectable for a 1 GHz processor overclock, especially considering that there are four cores and all four are running a full 1GHz faster than stock speed.
|
|
Dell XPS 710 H2C Overclocked: 3.66GHz / 630MHz GPU / 1.90GHz Video Memory
Dell XPS 710 H2C Stock: 3.2GHz / 575MHz GPU / 1.80GHz Video Memory
Dell XPS 710 H2C Overclocked: 3.66GHz / 630MHz GPU / 1.90GHz Video Memory
Dell XPS 710 H2C Stock: 3.2GHz / 575MHz GPU / 1.80GHz Video Memory
While we had the card overclocked, we re-ran a couple of benchmarks to see how the higher clocks affected performance. Our rather impressive overclock translated into some big gains in our benchmarks, with a 15% gain in 3DMark06 and a 9% average frame rate increase in FEAR. Overall, we were very pleased with the results and impressed with how far we were able to push the system.
