The Graphics Card - Overclocking a Graphics Card
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Why settle for standard settings when you can push your graphics card to new heights? Overclocking a graphics card is easier than overclocking a processor. You can do it through Windows and see your results immediately without having to reboot constantly.
Cooling is just as big an issue for overclocked graphics cards as it is for processors. Some cards come with beefed-up coolers practically begging you to overclock them, and others come with stock coolers. If you really want to push your card to its limits and you’re encountering resistance, check out card coolers at www.frozencpu.com or www.2cooltek.com.
As we said before, overclocking is a risky business. You can prematurely age and even damage your equipment. Overclock at your own risk! The philosophy behind overclocking a graphics card is the same as that of overclocking a CPU: bump up the clock speed in small increments, test for stability by running something like 3DMark2001 SE, and repeat. With graphics cards, you can often overclock the core chipset and the memory separately. That’s the case with the Nvidia GeForce4 Ti series and ATI’s Radeon 9500/9700 chipsets. First, increase one by 5 to 10MHz, test for stability, and then increase the other; then test for stability, and so on.
When you push too hard, you’ll encounter graphical glitches, flashing textures, crashes, reboots, or other problems. Go back into the overclocking utility and back off the settings until your system is stable.
Overclocking Nvidia-Based Cards Nvidia drivers allow you to overclock Nvidia-based cards, but you have to enable the option. To do so, you’ll have to edit your registry.
1. Open the registry editor by clicking the Start menu and choosing Run. Type regedit into the text box and press ENTER. The registry editor will appear on your screen.
2. Back up the registry before you do anything else. Choose File | Export. A Save dialog appears. At the bottom of the dialog, click All where it says Export Range.
3. Navigate to a spot on your hard drive that you’ll remember, and click Save. You now have a backup to restore in case you mess up your registry and cause something not to work.
4. Assuming you’re running the latest Nvidia reference drivers, the registry editor works much like Windows Explorer. In the left pane, expand HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE by clicking the tiny plus sign next to it.
5. Expand SOFTWARE, then NVIDIA Corporation, and finally Global. Click NVTweak (don’t expand it; just select it), and then right-click in the right pane.
6. Choose New | DWORD Value. A new entry will appear in the right pane.
7. Name it Coolbits.
8. Right-click Coolbits and choose Modify. In the ensuing dialog box, make sure that Hexadecimal is selected, and in the text box under Value Data, enter 7. When you’re done, the registry should look like Figure 3-16.
Figure 3-16 The Coolbits registry DWORD enables GeForce overclocking.
9. Click OK, exit the registry editor, and reboot the PC.
10. Now enter the Nvidia driver options shown earlier. You’ll notice a new category labeled Clock Frequencies. Select it to see the overclocking page shown in Figure 3-17.
11. Check the box at the top of the page to overclock the card. The rest of the overclocking page consists of two sliders: one for the core chipset and the other for the memory. Although a button allows you to test the settings, you should run something more stringent like a current 3-D game or the old standby, 3DMark2001 SE.
Figure 3-17 The Nvidia overclocking page
Overclocking ATI-Based Cards with PowerStrip ATI’s drivers don’t have a convenient hidden overclocking tool like Nvidia’s drivers. Instead, you’ll have to use an application such as the wonderful PowerStrip (Figure 3-18) to help you overclock the card. A 30-day trialware version of PowerStrip can be downloaded at www.entechtaiwan.com/ps.htm.
Figure 3-18 PowerStrip version 3.30 is a handy videotweaking tool.
- Download and install PowerStrip. Once it’s installed, you can invoke it by right-clicking its icon in the systray (the area at the bottom right side of the Windows screen that shows the time and icons for programs running in the background) to open a menu with several options; choose Performance Profiles | Configure.
- The resulting screen contains two sliders on its left side. Next to them is the current clock frequency of both the core chipset and the memory. Note that it shows DDR memory at its native clock frequency, not its doubled, effective frequency. To overclock the card, simply manipulate the sliders and then click Apply.
You’ve built up a killer system so far. You have a state-of-the-art motherboard, a speed demon of a processor, lightning memory, and a monstrous gaming graphics card. Now that your eyes have something to feast upon, it’s time to treat your ears. Next up: the sound card and speakers.
 This chapter is from Build Your Own High Performance Gamers' Mod PC, by Chen and Durham (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004, ISBN: 0072229012). Check it out at your favorite bookstore today. Buy this book now. |
| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
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