Overclocking the GT 330m?

apav

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May 20, 2010
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Hi guys,

I got a GT 330m in my laptop and to ensure that I'm ready for Skyrim (aiming for high settings!) I decide I want to to overclock it! Now I have a couple questions as I never actually have OC'ed a card before...

1.) Here's a list of my current (default) clock speeds and the highest clock speeds I can turn it up to:

Core Clock: 500mhz=> 650mhz
Shader Clock: 1100mhz=> 1430mhz
Memory Clock: 790mhz=> 867mhz

Are these clock speeds good and safe? I tried it on Modern Warfare 3, I went from 30-45 average @ 80C (default) to 35-48 average @87C (oc'ed). No issues except for my gpu getting hot.

2.) Generally is overclocking safe? On my laptop (which doesn't have that great ventilation) should I be really pushing it that far for hours on end? I've played games like WoW on high/ultra for hours on end so I know my laptop can handle it, but will it severely shorten it's life or cause any internal issues?

3.) God forbid something happens to my laptop, and I have to send it back to the manufacturer, is there any way to tell I overclocked it (since I'm sure it voids the warranty) if I set it back to the default clock speeds? Like is there some sort of log my computer keeps of me messing around with the clock speeds?

4.) I'm not sure if my fans are on full blast (I mean they're loud but I'm not sure if they're the fastest I can't tell) so is there any way to manually adjust my fan speeds? I downloaded SpeedFan and I set my desired temps to really low (like 50C- obviously it will never reach there but the lowest I can get is fine), but I don't know what percent my fans are spinning at... is 86-87C for several hours dangerous for my laptop? Normally I'm 80C and for hours it's fine but I don't know if that increase in temperature is potentially harmful. Is there anyway to crank them up more?

Thanks for the help guys and I'm really new to this, really appreciate the help :D
 
1)If you aren't having any artifacts or texture corruption,then it's fine

2)I wouldn't recommend OC'ng a laptop GPU especially cards like GT 330M which are considered a low-mid range card,so OC'ng them won't give you a huge boost in performance and also laptops don't have a great cooling solution either

3)Not sure,but I think they can

4)Don't think so.Because laptops have locked BIOS.But it's worth it to try with software like MSI afterburner to see if you can change anything