Bob, I know what you mean.
I'm becoming obsessed with getting the most out of my meager Geforce SDR and my Duron 600. However, I am not one of those people who spends big bucks doing it. Just doesn't make sense to me to buy an expensive cooling rig just to get a few extra mhz when I could put that money toward my next upgrade. Still, I don't mind tweaking and low cost "enhancements".
My Duron is overclocked to 1007 mhz on a KT7 motherboard and it is rock solid. I'm considering doing a new voltage mod but that may entail more risk than I am willing to take. My video card is overclocked pretty far but works well. I also have a Geforce256 SDR. It's a VisionTek DVI model and it's overclocked to 150/210. I stuck a 486 fan on the GPU and some heatsinks on the DRAMs. This gained me 5 mhz on the core and nothing for increased memory speed. What I did gain is stability, where I could formerly only run the card at those speeds for 15 or so minutes I can now run for hours.
If you choose to overclock your video card get a copy of GeforceTweak. It has more options than the display driver with the coolbits trick and is easier to use and make speed changes. It's available at <A HREF="http://www.guru3d.com" target="_new">www.guru3d.com</A>. Also get the nVidia 10.80 drivers. They are very fast, not that I have tried them all. The 10.80 drivers are faster than, 5.33, 6.31, 6.47, 6.50, 6.67, 6.72, 7.17, 7.52, 7.58, 8.33, 10.50 and few others that I can't recall. My <A HREF="http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare.shtml?1377235" target="_new">3DMark2000 score</A> of 5644 and my <A HREF="http://gamershq.madonion.com/compare2k1.shtml?648959" target="_new">3DMark2001 score</A> of 2379 bear me out on this. Good scores for the combination of a Duron and Geforce256 SDR.
Good luck on whatever you decide to do.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 04/07/01 03:12 AM.</EM></FONT></P>