Asus ENGTS250 Dark Knight 1G, Cont’d
The card sports a standard dual-DVI output configuration, along with a composite video output. All of the usual output options are covered with included adapters.
The clock speeds here are similar to those of the reference card: 740 MHz on the core, 1,836 MHz on the shaders, and 1,100 MHz (2,200 MHz DDR) on the memory.
Overclocking
We overclocked the card using Asus’ bundled SmartDoctor utility. It’s a fairly standard utility with all the requisite settings we needed to get a good boost out of our ENGTS250 test sample.
The core overclock we achieved was very good for a GeForce GTS 250. We realized a 100 MHz increase on the core and 104 MHz from the shaders.
The memory also provided a reasonable boost, but it didn’t take us as far as we would have hoped. The highest stable memory clock we could achieve was 1,174 MHz (2,348 DDR).
(Ed.: it's worth noting here that you can achieve similar overclocking results, and set up custom profiles, using Nvidia's own System Tools with ESA support tool, found here)
Would you run the first passive card with negative air pressure?
@mi1ez. Not too sure how yours is set up. But for most living rooms I'm sure the average Ikea or Argos T.V. cabinet wouldn't have adequate airflow for that. Getting waffted with heat in the summer wouldn't be my choice.
I don't have a passive card. I was just curious really given what they said about the card drawing cool air from outside the case.
The MSI overclocking panel appears to claim the fan is at 600,000rpm!
I wonder if there's an option on the Asus ENGTS250 Dark Knight card that allows you to run the cooler passive when idle? Seems like the heatsink could pull that off easily, doesn't it? It would be nice to have silent card when in 2D
so the question is can you control RPM of the fan and if so, can you put it to 0% when idle?
Well I just bought the Asus ENGTS250 card based on this review, and not only is the memory clocked slower at 2000Mhz DDR, the card does not slow it's clocks in 2D mode leading to substantially higher power consumption at idle.
I'm not impressed.