V3 2000 Overclocking

The overclocking tests

We tested the all the Voodoo 3 cards on an open test system. Our results would probably have been worse if we tested on a closed case. Let the overclocking begin!

We first tried a mild 5% overclock to get our feet wet. We bumped up the speed from 143/143 to 150/150. We ran it through several Q3test timedemos, and ran a looping 3DMark 99 demo for about half an hour. The card performed fine at 150, and we decided it was time to try a higher setting.

We increased the speed up to 166/166 from 150/150. Our V3 2000 was now at the same speed as the standard V3 3000. Again, the card made it through several Q3test timedemos and a good number of 3DMark 99 looping benchmarks without crashing.

Going for the big one

Now confident with our success at 166/166 we decided to try for 183/183, the same clock speed as the V3 3500. As soon as we got into Windows, we knew the card wasn't going to make it. We could see small artifacts on the desktop, but we launched Q3test anyway just to see if we could get a few timedemos before crashing the system.

We didn't even make it to the start menu; the system crashed while it was loading Q3test. Poor thing, the little blue window was just stuck there. We hit the reset jumper and put the box to sleep.

We had to try using extra cooling. We pointed a spare chassis fan at the card, and tried again. This time we made it into Q3test and even managed to type a few letters in the console before the system locked up. We then stuck an old 486 fan onto the heatsink, and tried once again. With the chassis fan and the 486 fan, we managed to get 3 seconds into a timedemo. 183/183 wasn't going to happen.

We lowered the speed down to 175/175 and tried again with the chassis fan. The card made it through all our Q3test and 3DMark tests, and we were content with the speed. We stopped there and moved on to our V3 3000.