Common overclocks with GeForce 8800 GT cards?

Using that Expertool software along with a Zalman vf900 fan/heatsinks, I'm able to reach a stable 787MHz core speed, 1033MHz memory speed, and an 1873MHz shader speed. Is this good for this card, or could it be pushed further?

P.S. I scraped the adhesive off of the RAMsinks that came with the Zalman fan, and I dotted each corner with a spot of super glue. In the middle of the sinks were amounts of Arctic Silver 5. That's also used under the fan cooling the core.

actually your above average, most cards typically top out on the core at around 720 MHz on the core with the stock voltage of about 1.05v. Some cards seem to ship with slightly higher voltage, around 1.1v. These cards with the proper cooling are typically hitting 750 MHz or higher.

A lot of the big overclockers seem to manage 800+ MHz with 1.2v using some rather simple mods, but obviously the cooling you use and the abilities of the core itself are gunna be restrictions. So if you have done no mods (other than cooling) I'd say thats very impressive. I was able to get 750 MHz out of a XFX 8800GT using a passive Arctic Cooling Accelero recently, but anything higher would be unstable.

And a note on the memory, its more important the quality of memory you have on the card than the cooling you have on the modules. Most 8800GTs shipped with 1ns modules from Hynix or Qimonda, and as those are rated for 1,000MHz they typically wont get much out of them. But some even shipped with even weaker 1.1ns modules rated for about 900 MHz.

good overclock none the less

For a while back there I was folding @ 763Mhz and 1907Mhz shader but really had to watch the temps or it became a wee bit unstable. If kept at about 64 degs C it was fine. If it got to 67 degs it went a wee bit wobbly. Stock cooling by the way. I must have that weaker ram Stangs on about as it sits at 900Mhz stock.

Welcome to DEV
And yes nice OC on stk voltage
My personal view on High CO'ing.....is do it for benching and bring it back down.
The way I see it OC'ing might grab you 10-15 FPS in gaming....not much of an increase....for possibally shorttening the life of your card.
I've got mine OC'ed (in my sig) for folding,but as you can see not a large OC.
I learned long ago its better to OC the CPU than the GPU...again JMO

I've heard a few people say that it's really unsafe running the memory higher than 1000MHz on these cards.. Is that true, or is that just a general overclocking rule (meaning running anything higher than it 'should be' can be dangerous)?

Also, something else I wanted to mention.. The manufacturer of my card is that BFG company. A few months back, my former roommate got angry over something and ripped my old Zalman fan off of my old card, ruining it for good. I wasn't there when it happened, but he apparently just held the card and basically twisted the copper heatsink until it just broke off. Anyway, the first thing that I did was put the stock heatsink and fan on, and I realized it was dead. Anyway, I sent the card back to BFG, and they sent me a new card. I thought overclocking voids the warranty? Not only that, but the stock heatsink itself was modded a bit, so it didn't even look like the original stock heatsink (the label was gone and I had cut away certain parts of the front of the heatsink). Do they just not care anymore about overclocking, or did I somehow get lucky?

Sounds like someone at BFG hated his/her job
And you got Real Lucky

On the same tack, how can they TELL you've overclocked it? It could easily be a manufacturing defect!

some companies like BFG and XFX are a bit more lenient with their warranties and generally will let you slip by with a physically damaged or altered card every now and again. Its good business really, they made a name for themselves by offering factory overclocked video cards and targeting the computer enthusiasts. If they were to get real picky with the warranties, enthusiasts would go to another company...we are a fickle bunch after all

And also, its very difficult to damage a video card through overclocking. Typically when you get too far either you wont have sufficient cooling or enough voltage to keep it stable and your pc will crash and revert back to default clock speeds before any real damage could be done. The real danger comes when you start physically modding the card to increase voltage to the gpu or memory as these physical mods can be detected visually and technically by doing those mods you void your warranty. Overclocking in general is said to void your warranty but since most people do it via software tools there is no evidence that you ever did any overclocking.

As for how safe it is running above 1,000mhz on the memory, like I said, it depends on the quality and rating of the memory modules. If the memory modules on your card are rated for 1ns, then they are rated to run at 1,000mhz and you may be able to get another 10% out of that if your lucky. But if your card came with higher end modules, such as the .8ns samsung GDDR3 modules used on the 9800 GTX series, then you have memory modules rated at 1250 mhz and you would have even further leg room.

So basically, better memory modules are always preferred and sometimes you dont need any voltage increase or cooling added to get the high clock speeds.

I've been messing around a bit with different speeds and different games, and it seems like I can run the memory at 1112MHz stable.. But lemme ask this, in terms of any kind of faster performance, would upping the clock speed be more 'performance-enhancing' than upping the memory speed? I've pushed this card pretty far and it seems as though any time I start having any kind of problems is when the shader clock is set too high. I can now get it to around 1930MHz stable, but anything higher is apparently too much. Should I just stick with my current speeds (now 772MHz core/1112MHz memory/1930MHz shader, or is there anything else I can push out of this card? Thanks for the replies.

I'm not an expert OC'er but looking at your figures I'd say you'd pretty much screwed everything you could get out of that card!

I run a dual 8800GT's on an XFX 780i SLI mobo

I fold 24/7 overclocked on both cards @ 702/1002/1769
My stock clocks are 600/900/1524

So you've done excellent as far as I'm concerned!!