ATI RADEON 9600 XT: to OVERDRIVE, or not to OVERDRIVE?

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Anton Shilov over at X-Bitlabs drops word of their new article called ATI RADEON 9600 XT: to OVERDRIVE, or not to OVERDRIVE? is out.

A number of readers asked us about distinguishing between different RADEON 9600 XT based graphics cards with and without OVERDRIVE capability. Apparently, not all ?Powered by ATI? performance mainstream solutions of the most recent generation sport the highly advertised feature.

OVERDRIVE technology is a combination of hardware and software means that allow the graphics card to dynamically adjust clock-frequency of the chip depending on its temperature that is measured by a special on-chip thermal sensor. The OVERDRIVE capability has been available on mobile VPUs from ATI for some time now, while desktop graphics cards acquired the technique only in their latest generation ? the ?XT? series of processors.

Virtually all RADEON 9800 XT-based graphics cards, except those from ASUSTeK that handle their own SmartDoctor technology, have the OVERDRIVE feature enabled and fully functional ? graphics cards adjust their speed flawlessly, if you are lucky, you will get a substantial performance boost, if you are not lucky, you will get a tiny improvement you will hardly feel.

ATI RADEON 9600 XT: to OVERDRIVE, or not to OVERDRIVE?