Ok... it's been asked hundreds of times... how do I over clock my *insert card here*? And what should I set it to?
Well we can tell you what to do... but we can't tell you what to set it to because no two cards over clock the same.
This is what you do to over clock your video card:
Download Cool bits for NVIDIA cards (google it)
Download Radclocker for ATI cards (google it)
Cool bits and radclocker unlock the core frequencies option in advanced tab and your specific card on your display properties screen (when you right click, properties your desktop)...
You do not need to over clock 2d settings, if you see that... don’t worry about it... Don’t Touch IT!
When you over clock you increase the Graphics Processor speed, usually called the Core speed... it increases the MHz that it runs at, just like your CPU.
You want to slowly increase your Core and Memory MHz by 5 or 10mhz and test the settings in a game, some games will artifact faster than others, most people run 3d Mark 2001 SE to benchmark their over clocks and to test for artifacts. Artifacts are errors in the video, sometimes white spots, sometimes huge triangles without any image in them. These are caused either by heat, or lack of voltage which means you have reached your max OC
When you increase the MHz to it, you also increase the heat that it'll put out... just like your CPU... check your temperatures with a thermal probe... or just feel the back of the card where the core is located... if it's starting to get hot (it can be warm)... you need to upgrade your cooling... you might want to check to see how flat the GPU really is.(does not apply for most Radeon Cards) they don’t make these things perfectly flat so you might want to sand it down with some 600grit sand paper to make sure the cooler is making full contact... (Make sure you test to see if you’re making full contact with a little thermal paste and putting the cooler on and taking it off... it'll probably take a couple tries)
for most NVIDIA cards with minimal over clocking or just upgraded cooling, a vantec igloo is the best cooling upgrade, but for people who are extremely over clocking their cards a actual CPU heat sink would be the best, I’m not sure about the FX5700's and above which have elaborate coolers on them but a 60x60mm heat sink and fan is perfect for most MX and FX series cards.
With the Radeon video cards (9500, 9600XT, 9700, 9800) the best thing to do is to replace the heat sink with a 1U heat sink or similar, like in
Sovereignty's signature . You may want to remove the GPU shim to make full contact with the core. Which is dangerous, take a sharp knife and gently lift one corner of the shim a little and do that to all four corners several times. Apply a little force to lift it... but don’t rush it take your time and DO NOT try to stick the knife all the way under the shim. There are pictures in Sov's guide
eventually you will get to the max OC of your card... little "artifacts" pop up on the screen... the only way to get rid of these is to increase voltage thru a volt mod... which is risky... and not really worth it for most people... but it will get rid of the artifacts and allow you to over clock even higher... but adds alot more heat... again Sovereignty made a guide to
volt mod your card.
That’s about it... Hopefully with this guide you'll get some good results with your card.
Benchmark it with
3dMark 2001SE, and 3Dmark 2003 to compare to other peoples benchmarks.
Dev Hardware Forums Sponsor:
June 18th, 2004, 06:55 PM
This is what my computer contains: Motherboard: Nforce 2 Ultra 400 DDR. CPU: AMD Duron 1,3 gigs (really worthless, but i doubt thats thats the problem.) RAM: 768 MB DDR @ 400 mhz ( one 512 mb chip, and one 256 MB chip).
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