Nvidia Geforce GT 240 comes with a 40nm core, which can easily be overclocked. We of course wondered whether Gainward GT240 Golden Sample can be overclocked further, and we resorted to using the provided ExpertTool application. This tool will let you alter the clocks as well as control fan speed. Still, in order to prevent any damage to the GPU, maximum overclock with this tool is limited to 650MHz. Maximum shader speeds allowed by ExpertTool stand at 1590MHz and the memory at 2200MHz.
 

The following photo shows the user interface in the overclocking window. As we already mentioned, Gainward overclocked the card from 550MHz core to 585MHz, 1340MHz shaders to 1424MHz and the memory from 1700MHz to 1890MHz.



All you need to do for overclocking is choose a desired speed, test the stability via the option “Test” and if everything is fine, save the settings. We immediately pushed the card to the max and our Golden Sample card took it like a champ.




The speeds displayed above resulted in 10% better 3Dmark06 results, 14% better Vantage Performance results and up to 14% better results in FarCry2. At 1680x1050 and antialiasing on, the card scored over 30fps which is a great result for Gainward GT 240 Golden Sample.

As far as noise goes, the fan was quiet even after overclocking which is great. Running at 650MHz we measured core temperatures at 70 degrees Celsius but it can be even cooler if you choose to increase the fan RPM. When the fan ran at 100% speed, the GPU temperatures ducked to 61 degrees Celsius, whereas idle temperatures were around 30 degrees Celsius.

Our test-rig with Geforce GT 240 in 3D mode consumed up to 176W, whereas idle operation resulted in minimum 81W. Our recently tested Gainward GT 220 consumed minimum 71W, whereas maximum total system consumption was at about 158W.