Please help OC'ing my Graphics and CPU

[brendz155]

I have a AMD II X3 445 and a XFX GEFORCE GT240 GDDR5

What tools can I use to OC my GT240? and whats is the highes OC it can take without breaking the 69 watt limit? PS i THINK, its 69watt

thanks.

Also what can I use to benchmark my GPU/CPU to see how much of a performace boost I get?

last thing (lol) is my CPU bootlenecking the GPU?, and while playing games how can I put my graphics card run at full speed all the time, because it clocks to slower speeds while not doing anything (or shall I keep it normal?)

 

[wolfram23]

GPU OCing: MSI Afterburner

OCing will increase the power consumption. 69W or whatever it is is the max power usage at stock... so it WILL go up above that.

3DMark benchmarks are great. You could do FurMark as a stability test and a benchmark to compare your OC settings. For CPU benching again 3DMark has a CPU suite, but also there's a bunch of calculation tests like LinX and SuperPI.

CPU shouldn't be much of a bottleneck but you could certainly gain some performance by OCing it.

 

[brendz155]

Thanks for the reply, so MSI afterburenr for GT240.

And while OC'ing the GPU, because the GT240 does not have a dedicated 6 pn power connector, if I OC it over the max' Wattage of the PCIE slot which I thing is 75W, what will happen?, will my PC be damged?

Also the power saving mode for my GPU/CPU, shall I use that? or switch it off?

thanks for youre reply.

 

[wolfram23]

If you can think of a reason why not having power savings is a good thing... then turn them off. Since I can't think of one (other than potentially messing up very high overclocks), IMO leave them on.

I don't think I've ever heard of a PCIe lane damaged from overclocking. More than likely it'll just cause the OC to be unstable.

 

[brendz155]

When you said the "PCIe lane damged". I mean because without the GT240 supporting the 6 pin, can I OC it, and how much.

thanks for youre reply

 

[wolfram23]

Yeah I know, and I don't know how much... I set mine to like 650mhz core 1750mhz mem for a bit, but I just run it at stock speeds now.

Just start OCing away and see what happens, go as high as you're comfortable with...

 

[brendz155]

So why did you change back to stock?

 

[wolfram23]

Because it's just a PhysX card, so I don't need it overclocked.

 

[brendz155]

But I though when its OC'd it bhad better perfirmance?

My GT240 is maxing at 70 Celcius

at stock. with auto fan speed.

 

[wolfram23]

70C is ok. You can certainly increase fan speed, default is like 35%.

Yes technically it does, just doesn't help for PhysX. The GPU usage is always pretty low, some games around 50%. Only once did I see it really get taxed, in Mafia 2 during a huge explosion so my FPS dropped there but otherwise it hasn't been a holdup. Aside from that, it's the 3rd GPU in my P55 board, so it's only on a 4x PCIe 1 lane which means low bandwidth, and it can't actually go over 82% usage due to this limitation so OCing hardly does anything for me.

I have both my 5850s OCed tho

Up from 725/1000 to 870/1200

 

[brendz155]

So should I even OC?

I mainly play the best graphically looking F2P games.

EG. MKZ A.V.A


Also whenever I use the PhysX feature like when I shoot a pane of glass, the FPS does drop ALOT, but then goes back to normal while doing non-PhysX things.

 

[wolfram23]

Yeah that's because it's a pretty low-mid card so it can't really handle PhysX + rendering. I have two 5850s for the rendering muscle, and my GT 240 is ONLY doing PhysX... In real PhysX games you'll at best get away with it set to "Low".

As for whether you should or shouldn't OC, it's all up to you. If you're happy with the framerates and game settings you use, then no. If you want to gain around 5 to maybe 10 fps, then yes.

Or just do it for fun. That's why I did it, initially.

 

[brendz155]

Also I like the CUDA, that this card has.

My old CPU/GPU were

Sempron LE-130 + GT8600 (laughs)

Big upgrade for me LOL

 

[brendz155]

Well anyway, how do you have 2 ATI's + GT240?

The reason I have a GT240 is because my board is Nvidia based.

I though you could not have a ATI on a nVidia based baord, and NVIDIA WITH SLI/CF with an ATI

 

[wolfram23]

GenL V1.04ff patch fixes that.

I wouldn't have done it, but the card was on sale like $40 off so I figured, what the hell for the price it'll be worth it. And it was

 

[brendz155]

So you modded some thinsg to have ATI + NVIDIA?

Anyway if I knew I could run a ATI on my Nvidia board I would have bought a ATI 5670 FU** SAKE

 

[brendz155]

hhaahaa. PhysX on a ATI card. I just had a look.

 

[brendz155]

Anyway thanks for youre help man. Brilliant, thanks

 

[wolfram23]

No prob glad to help

 

[brendz155]

LOL one last thing, what shall I use to render PhysX?

CPU or GPU?

I have noticed the when I use GPu I get really big drop is FPS.

but when I use the CPU its OK

I have a AMD II X3 445

 

[wolfram23]

Umm... well CPU usually results in constant FPS of like 5 because PhysX is made for extreme parallel processing which you get from CUDA on the GPU. So... well, if it works on CPU then do that, but I think you're just going to have to pass on PhysX until you can get a more powerful GPU.