Linux overclocking?

[shizza]

I couldn't decide if I should post in the gfx OC forum or the Linux software forum, but I thought I'd get more replies here.

If I overclock my gpu in windows, does it stay overclocked if I reboot into linux? I did some googling and I found this utility which might work but is probably not as mature as some of the windows utilities:

http://www.linuxhardware.org/nvclock/

I think that if I overclock my CPU in the bios it would stay overclocked for any operating system, but I wasn't quite sure how GPU overclocking worked (since most people seem to use programs, not the BIOS, to do it).

This may influence my decision on whether to get a factory overclocked GPU or not. Currently I was going to buy an EVGA GF8800 GTS 640, due to the price, the fact that the warranty covers overclocking, and it also covers aftermarket coolers.

Thanks for your help!

 

[darkguset]

You have misunderstood how things work. These utilities, both in Windows and Linux and whatever system, apply settings on the videocard, and everytime you boot into an OS, they reapply the settings all over. So if you set the utility in Windows and then boot in Linux, the utility obviously will not load and hence won't overclock your card.
Now if you want to permanently overclock your card, there is only one way. Flash a BIOS with higher clocks on your card. From my understanding you are very novice PC user at least on the VGA area and should NOT try to perform the VGA BIOS flashing yet. You need to read quite a lot on the subject as this flashing may render your VGA completely useless (you may revert it back, BUT still you need to know what you are doing). If you know a friend who knows about that, you better have him do it with you, so he can explain the steps to you. Showing someone is a best learning experience. So even in case something goes wrong, he should be able to guide you out.

 

[shizza]

That's how I thought it worked. Just wanted to make sure before I purchased.

Thanks!

 

[PaCanc]

Just 2 questions:

Why would you overclock that card under Linux?
Are you playing intensive 3D games under Linux?

Because if you don't play, why bother?

 

[shizza]

Good questions.

I'm doing some research and wanted a SM4.0 (shader model 4.0 - aka DX10) capable card to play with, and after reading the graphics forum for a couple months I see that the midrange DX10 cards all suck. Since the performance of the card might influence my decision as to "X approach is feasible," I chose not to buy just any SM4.0 card.

In the past I've bought a 50$ SM3.0 card and found my approaches didn't yield anything interesting - but I think in retrospect it was because the card was so cheap it couldn't do shit regardless of the approach. I didn't want this to happen again.

Also, the consumer inside me doesn't want to buy a card for just research, I do occasionally play games and of course want to buy products that are worth performance/$.

All of these decisions lead me to the slightly higher than midrange SM4.0 cards, and since I'll be using OpenGL under Windows and Linux, I chose Nvidia over ATi, the latter of which has a very bad reputation under Linux, and a slightly less bad reputation for OpenGL.

I have Vista available to me, but not installed yet, so I might play around with DX10, but I'll mostly be using DX10 features under OpenGL, which I can do in XP/Linux.

I'm also interested in the effects overclocking have on my results - so I'll be interested in OCing in XP and Linux (and I'll be comparing the results of the two OSes too).

As to why I chose the 640M version of the card over the 320, I'll be doing some GPGPU stuff and I don't want to be limited in memory just like I don't want to be limited in performance. The GTX is way out of my pricerange, though (I don't like spending 350$ on the GTS as it is). If you create 1 8kx8k 32bit floating point texture, that's 1 gig of graphics memory - more than any card can handle (including that card from ATi - you'd have no room for the framebuffer, which is required). Games, though, use mostly dds compressed rgba8 textures since they're just using them for visual effect, rather than computation. Thus, for pure gaming, the 320 version makes sense depending on your monitor's resolution.

Also, lastly, I might occasionally game under both XP and Linux .

I hope this answers your questions, and possibly a bit more than you asked.