Aloha, would anybody be kind enough to give me the overclocking "low down?" Is overclocking a graphics card under the right temprature conditions; 1, reletaivly safe? (ie, no blowing up, or dying instantly) 2, worth the hassle? 3, gaining a noticeble amount of preformace? Im new to GPU overclocking, and my aging 8800gts 640mb could do with a boost. would the £20 thermalright cooler be worth the preformance gains?? gunna check out benchmarks now, but if anyone could help, it would be much apreciated.
1. Should be pretty much. 2. Could be, it's relatively easy but doesn't give much performance gain. But your e-peen will sure be larger. 3. Usually not.
generally what we did in the past was to overclock the low end cards with in a series to the top end cards speeds. Like an Ati 9800pro to XT speeds, and Nvidia 6800GT to Ultra speeds. It use to be much easier as the cards weren't that much different. Now when talking about a 8800GTS 640 that was and is pretty much the top end card because the 8800GTX is a different PCB even tho they both use the G80 core, your still missing a munp of memory. In short use the card as much as possible and forget overclocking it as there is hardly any difference tbh. When you start getting a slow down just upgrade, its far less hassle. Right now the 8800GTS 640 has a good second hand price still as some people are looking for a phyixs card or another to SLI with. Grab a 4850 or 4870 after selling and you'll be good for another year or so of gaming. lol!
As above, overclocking isn't a realistic substitute for buying a faster card. However, it is good fun, and it can give you minor performance increases.
ocing video cards are alot of fun imo.. I take them apart and re-do tims first thing- this is just a good thing to do as the factory tim job is usually horrible.. the cooler on the old gts should be fine- I volt modded my 8800gtx (it's a soldering job with a vr attached) I had a hr-03 plus cooler on it to handle the extra speed.. it can make a difference in games like crysis were (when released) a few frames could mean the difference between playable and enjoyable to being a whiner =] you need to get pretty big clocks from stock to justify the oc.. like the 260gtx I have now- it could be volt modded from the bios.. after that mod (1.8v) it runs 783 core, 1566 shader, 1152 memory.. 1152 seems to be the sweet spot without any issues there, you need to find this spot on your memory setting, too high and you'll end up with issues guaranteed, but you don't want to run to low either.. run it normally at 741 core, 1512 shader, 1152 memory for everything but crysis/warhead/vantage which need the squeeze at these clocks I can beat a oc'd 280gtx in vantage.. and that's the point in ocing really.. it's about taking a cheap card or cpu/whatever and bringing it up to the next level without burning a hole in your pocket stability is key to ocing though.. I don't consider running a oc unless it passes crysis for a couple hours burned up one card with a volt mod- it was an ati card back before the 8800gtx came out, and it was totally my fault.. stock voltage is fine- your not going to fry anything.. I pushed cards on air as fast as they can go, only thing you'll see is a crash or artifacts if your getting too hot.. usually 'fried' stock cards have to do with newbies running around in thier socks and zapping the card/board on install- or grounding issues with the case
thanks for the tips/info guys. yea, been tinkering for some fun, but thats about it really.. eventually im sure i'll upgrade the card. but right now, £ for preformance is pretty bad, so im stuck with the old thing for now. cheers.
The double slot referance cooler on the 8800's is great, you shouldn't need a new one, get rivatuner, monitor the temps with the montoring tool, and overclock and test with a game, crysis or something
I am pretty sure nvidia got Arctic cooling to design the reference coolers for the early 8800 series cards, there fantastic really, some people mod them with another fan but it generally dosen't increase cooling that much. I use to overclock alot when buying the mid range gear, but since i got the GTX280 i haven't done a thing really. well its rude not to but nothing perminate.
I bought a GTX260/216 and when running overclocked it surpasses benchmark scores for the GTX280. I'm quite impressed tbh, saved myself a fair bit of money and ended up with a pretty decent card. The only thing is it needs the fan running a bit faster to keep it cool. I use the EVGA Precision tweaker (v1.3.3) and it works a treat. Although v1.5.1 is the latest version.
i'd say theres no harm in seeing what you can get out of the card, you may be pleasantly surprised! just use the nvidia driver to oc first, its much easier to understand than riva tuner
i have to agree rivatuner is a bit complex for someone first starting. Of course when your ready you'll learn Nibitor, which basically envolves modifying a bios captured from your card, tweaking the clock speeds/timings/voltages and then flashing the card. Back when i ran with a 6800GT i found the limit of my card with software OC to be 425Mhz on the Core, after playing around with the bios i soon hit 450Mhz with ease never touched the volts. The limit was 500Mhz core, and that was a full 50Mhz over an Ultra and a full 150Mhz from stock. Dont sound big but it flew, creaming my friends brand new 7800GTX until he overclocked... The many reason i havent OC my GTX280 is i need 100% stability as the system is a workstation most of its time, and i cant afford it falling over. As soon as i am back at UNI i shall clock its nipples off!
Rivatuner is a very good program, easy to use for a beginner, while also providing enough options to satisfy most NBiTor is good, although it doesnt work with all cards, (all of mine, ;P) As a result, I havent been able to get any higher clocks, nor edit voltage, looks like a vmod is needed
im afraid i have to disagree there, riva tuner is indeed a great program and i use it personally but for a beginner it can be too complicated to get what you want out of it.
ok, so i did a bit of reading, looked around, played in ATItool and rivatuner, got my head around the basics, took my card from Core : 513 > 600 Shader : 1188 > 1389 (linked core & shader together to keep the harmony in rivatuner) Memory : 792 > 950 I never check the cards preformance in terms of FPS in any games (i plan on doing tests in fallout 3 at my native res' 1680 x 1050) but i did recieve a 600 - 800 point increase in 3dmark06. When i get my new watercooling pump, the CPU will be overclocked once more, i have reached 3.33ghz with 1:1 ratio with 800mhz ram. ((cpu is a e6400)) After some more reading, i started hearing about ratios, alot like how best CPU to RAM is 1:1 soo many different ideas and theorys, i decided to work out the ratios of my own stock speeds, and increase following my its rule. now, my maths is pretty bad, so correct me if im wrong, but i have 1 : 2.3 : 1.5 rounding up/down the stock speeds to 500 / 1200 / 800 i get 1 : 2.4 : 1.6 i increased the cards speeds up to Core : 560 Shader : 1344 Memory : 896 will try and post results (if any ) later on. also if its stable, a higher OC. thanks again for all your help. and yes, the 8800gts stock cooling is pretty good, max temps i hit with 70% fan was 73 degrees C. i think thats pretty good. but im not gunna go over 80 at full load. my own little barrier to stop any "bad" things.
i'd say 80c is a good figure, but dont freak until it hits 90c. its a good idea to set up riva tuner profiles and assign them to keyboard keys too, that way you can underclock for desktop work to save power and hit the overclock key when gaming
ahh, nice feature, thanks for the tip. im guessing a key with no "windows explorer" function would work, like F7 *guesses* & F8... does the speed switch instantly upon changing settings?
yeah its pretty much instant, you can even do it in game and see the fps rise! i always set them to the plus and minus keys on the num pad
