The main benefit of overclocking is to increase slightly the power of his computer at no cost or very low. In practice the gain is never great, but overclocking is a sport that hackers enjoy. The overclocking is of course the responsibility of those who practice and the author of this article can not be blamed for any damage you would suffer for your hardware. Firstly the fact to overclock your graphics card renders the warranty void of the manufacturer, even if it is true that it is difficult for the manufacturer to know how it was used by the Users.
The performance of graphics cards depend on the frequencies of GPU and memory video. Generally, a higher frequency corresponds to a better flow and consequently, better performance and higher frame rates in games, which is always a good thing. Some have identified it as 60 fps is the optimal value, but may vary from one person to another. This threshold of 60 fps is the subject of much debate. One of the most frequently used arguments based on the fact that films (and many high-definition video) are broadcast at 24 frames per second and yet seem perfectly fluid. In fact, in 3D gaming, the ideal framerate depends primarily on the genre.
Risk
The main risk of overclocking is to grill the graphics card overheating. In practice, the graphics are fairly resistant and DAMAGING risk is low, provided of course to ensure continuous cooling of the RAM and GPU5 card.
It is possible to play on two main parameters to improve the performance of its graphics card: the frequency of the graphics processing unit (GPU) and the frequency of the memory card. To overclock your graphics card, you can act on either course or both parameters at once. In general we proceed by stage to determine the maximum value that can support the GPU and RAM separately, then we can test the simultaneous activation of two parameters. It is sometimes necessary to compromise.
Overclocking Tips for ATi / Nvidia
1. Install the latest drivers from ATI or NVidia
The first thing to do above all is to ensure that we have installed the latest drivers for your graphics card. Ati and Nvidia provides drivers for all their range of graphics cards. In general there are 2 versions of drivers: drivers who are certified WHQL certified drivers for Microsoft and validated by the manufacturers and drivers in beta which may be more efficient but the risk of bugs. The latest ATI drivers (Catalyst) and Nvidia (Forceware) are available on the websites of manufacturers (ATI and Nvidia). It is important to regularly update the drivers for its graphics card, because the latest version fixes as and when the bugs discovered.
2. Data Backup
First backup your data, you can never be too careful when doing this type of manipulation. Today it has become very easy to overclock your graphics card because there are many utilities that allow you to increase the frequency of your card with a single click.
3. Powerstrip
The overclocking of graphics cards is relatively easy. Is best to use an overclocking tool, such as power strip. With Power Strip can be as good as any video card overclock.
However, there are specially designed for almost all graphics cards are small overclocking tools that the respective map are tuned to exactly. Installing this software is very simple, just follow the instructions, an icon should appear in the shortcuts on the taskbar at the bottom right. This comprehensive software has many features and it is possible to create profiles with different settings. To change the frequency of the graphics card, you must click the right mouse button on the icon and choose powerstrip performance profiles / configure.
It is then easy to change the frequencies of the graphics card using the 2 green arrows, you can change the frequency of memory (Memory Clock) and frequency of the GPU (Engine clock).
4. Cooling
An overclock of the GPU results in increased consumption by the GPU and memory associated therewith, said dedicated memory (I'm not talking about shared memory, GPUs using this kind of memory are not intended to OC). And as you learn in the first, an increase in consumption leads to an increase in heat dissipation. It is important to have a better cooling support for your system. If you had a very low cooling support then there is more chance to burnout your graphic card. If the temperature is too high - too high I would about 40-50 ° C on Windows or about 60-80 ° C during gaming then better do not overclock your Gpu.
5. Overclock Nvidia
For Nvidia cards, you can download a small "tweak" that lets you enable a feature in the properties of the graphics card drivers. You can download this file here . The screen below shows an example of the function clock frequencies which appears after activation. In the same way as the powerstrip software, it is now possible to increase the frequency of memory and GPU card.
6. The best frequency for Overclocking
Now that we know how to change the frequency of its graphics card, a question arises: what frequencies to choose for best performance. The first thing to do is not to dramatically increase the frequency of memory and / or GPU: the risk of crash the computer, see damage to the graphics card is not negligible. Fortunately, the software usually return to default settings if the frequency of the map is too large and the display is possible. To overclock the graphics card, it must be tested separately and the GPU memory by increasing the step frequency (steps of about 10MHz). At almost every frequency change, test in a 3D game or even better using a benchmark software like 3DMark.
Problems in Overclocking Graphic Card
It is safe to overclock a graphics card except that it can become unstable. It may not be very good for overclocking the graphics card at most. Because of that, you can have freeze and artifacts in games. Artifacts that can even happen when you do not play games because of overheating. It may be in games even if it does not overheat because the graphics card was overclocked too. In this case there must be lowered a bit frequency. A freeze is the image of the screen freezes. It can also be caused by the processor. I overclocked my Pentium 3 866 MHz to 995 MHz and because of that I freeze them in games and also Windows.
We can not know in advance where you can even overclock a graphics card because the overclock is not an exact science. Eg with my Geforce 4 TI 4800 SE can go 275/550 MHz to 325/675 MHz. With another Geforce 4 TI 4800 SE it may be possible to go for example to 332/672 MHz. So it's up to you to discover where we can go with your graphics card.
If you are eating a low-end or the first price, kind of noname, which is not stable enough, tension and poor diet quality is poor. It could be a factor limiting your overclock. The solution would be to change your diet for good. If you need help choosing your diet, ask me. Perhaps it just comes from your graphics card is not terrible for overclock. If you have a graphics card that gets hot, it'd be a good idea to change the fan if you intend to overclock. It may help to better overclock. But know that to change the fan will void the warranty.
