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What to Do in Case of Problems

During our tests, we didn’t run into any particular problems. But you can’t always be lucky, and it’s good to know how to react when you run afoul of Murphy’s Law.

Software overclocking: Security!

If you use software overclocking, there’s not much risk. If your overclocking causes crashes, all you need to do is remove life support from the brain-dead application via the Windows Task Manager and readjust to lower frequencies. Sometimes you might have to reboot. At the worst, if the overclocking utilities or the drivers refuse to return to a normal state, uninstalling and then reinstalling them should clear up the problem. That’s the great advantage of software overclocking – everything is easily reversible.

Hardware Overclocking: Cold Sweat Time

Conversely, hardware overclocking – modifying the BIOS – can generate problems that are a little more... exciting. First of all, the frequencies you had decided were stable after a few minutes of testing can prove to be problematic in time. In a case like this, you need to re-flash the BIOS with less ambitious settings.

But that presupposes your graphics card is operating normally. If, for one reason or another, you’ve asked it to run at frequencies that are really beyond its capabilities, then the card may not display anything at all, even during boot-up! In such a case, there are several ways to save the farm. First, have a second graphics card handy. Then all you do is plug it in, and it will handle the display chores while you do a re-flash on the main card. Happy owners of SLI or CrossFire motherboards can use a PCI Express graphics card; the rest of us will have to use a PCI card.

Another solution is to flash “blind.” When you boot to the diskette or USB key to be used for flashing, the sequence is always the same, and after a few seconds you can be sure that the computer is waiting for you to enter a command at the MS-DOS prompt. So all you need to do is enter the same command line as for the first flashing, but with the name of the original BIOS file. (That’s why we made a point of urging you to put that file on the key or diskette along with the modified BIOS file.)


Talkback


jimmysmitty 04/24/2008 7:35 AM
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jimmysmitty
I OC'ed my HD2900Pro 1GB to a 850MHz GPU (from 600MHz) and 2250MHz memory (from 1850MHz). So I technically got alomost a 50% OC. But mine is just a HD2900XT 1GB just down clocked.
brendano257 04/24/2008 10:23 AM
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brendano257
The HP disk utility asks me for DOS files to write to the disk where would I find these?
Shadow703793 04/24/2008 10:36 AM
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Shadow703793
To any one interested in modding nVidia BIOS:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] w=0&nojs=0
randomizer 04/25/2008 4:01 AM
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randomizer
Better than the "Overclock your card in 5 minutes" article.
randomizer 04/25/2008 4:13 AM
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randomizer
By the way, the first step in Nibitor is to select the device, before you can read the BIOS ;) I'd like to know how you "deleted" the "Extra" frequencies. Did you set them to 0 or did you actually set the number of performance levels to 3 instead?
jojesa 04/25/2008 6:43 AM
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jojesa
brendano257 visit www.bootdisk.com and get those files.
randomizer 04/25/2008 10:27 AM
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randomizer
A good idea for doing blind flashes is to have a second floppy (with the DOS files on obviously) but add a file called autoexec.bat with the following line in it:

nvlfash -4 -5 -6 -a -y file.rom

where file.rom is the filename and it could also be a .bin file. That will flash the card without you having to hope you typed it in right, just make sure you gave it a good minute or two before restarting so you don't corrupt the BIOS.
randomizer 04/25/2008 10:32 AM
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randomizer
Typo correction - the line in the autoexec.bat file should read:

nvflash -4 -5 -6 -a -y file.rom

Why can't I edit my own comments?
matthieu lamelot 04/25/2008 10:43 AM
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matthieu lamelot
randomizer :
By the way, the first step in Nibitor is to select the device, before you can read the BIOS I'd like to know how you "deleted" the "Extra" frequencies. Did you set them to 0 or did you actually set the number of performance levels to 3 instead?



Setting them to zero wouldn't work, you have to set them to dash ( - ), as you can see in the screenshot on page 6. AFAIK, Geforce 8 won't boot correctly if you suppress their "extra" performance level.
perzy 04/25/2008 11:27 AM
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perzy
with the really extremly bad cooling on todays GPU's ...a little plastic fan with sleeve bearings that runs slower and slower before it stops completly.. i'm very cautious. New cooling? Yeah, but that costs and then i get a 10% oc. Hmm.
randomizer 04/25/2008 11:29 AM
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randomizer
matthieu lamelot :
Setting them to zero wouldn't work, you have to set them to dash ( - ), as you can see in the screenshot on page 6. AFAIK, Geforce 8 won't boot correctly if you suppress their "extra" performance level.


It's worth a try, you might get lucky. ;) Besides, you can always blind flash back. Try setting the number of performance levels to 3 (first ticking the "change amount of active performance levels" box of course).
randomizer 04/25/2008 11:31 AM
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randomizer
perzy :
with the really extremly bad cooling on todays GPU's ...a little plastic fan with sleeve bearings that runs slower and slower before it stops completly.. i'm very cautious. New cooling? Yeah, but that costs and then i get a 10% oc. Hmm.


So you want them to jack the prices up more? We get ripped off as it is until a year after stuff get's released.
radium69 04/25/2008 12:40 PM
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radium69
benchmarks anywhere? i'd like to see performance in gaming benchmarks. Fairly interesting article. Could save me some $
randomizer 04/25/2008 12:56 PM
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randomizer
The performance benefit is usually
matthieu lamelot 04/25/2008 3:54 AM
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matthieu lamelot
radium69 :
benchmarks anywhere? i'd like to see performance in gaming benchmarks. Fairly interesting article. Could save me some $



Performance is as you would expect it to be : fairly on par with the frequency increase. Don't expect miracles here, but it's enough to climb one step on a manufacturer's performance scale. i.e. our overclocked Geforce 9600 GT was as fast as a regular 8800 GT. Of course you could go beyond that, should you manage to reach higher frequencies than us (better card, better cooling, voltage mod, etc.)
Junkdude75 04/25/2008 9:59 AM
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Junkdude75
My Radeon 2900 pro 512MB,
went from 507Mhz GPU and 514Mhz memory
to 846Mhz GPU and 890MHz memory.

Thank you fore the ispiration!
randomizer 04/26/2008 2:45 AM
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randomizer
You got a nice overclock on that 9600GT. Mine won't play nicely in Crysis until I drop to 750MHz. Unfortunately ATITool can't detect artifacts no matter how much they fill the window with yellow, but just looking for them myself I didn't see any at 770MHz. Crysis just caused driver crashes all the time, which fortunately recovered every time. I only have my memory at 936MHz, I don't know how high I can go with that, but probably not far. The same crashes occur with the shader clock above 1770MHz. This was done via rivatuner with 174.74 drivers.

Just to let you know, the coders of NiBiTor are working on fan control, but they don't have enough 9 series BIOSs (especially 9600GT).
chovav 04/27/2008 11:36 AM
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chovav
I got my 8800GT overclocked from 600Mhz Core to 691Mhz, 900Mhz memory to 1065Mhz and Shaders from 1500Mhz to 1728Mhz. It also ran stable at 700/1100/1750 but I decided to choose a little safer settings to flash the bios with. This overclock of about 17% gave me 16.3% better performance in 3D Mark 06! all that in no time! Thanks guys!!!
ferreguetti 04/28/2008 1:56 AM
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ferreguetti
Well you don't really need a floppy and it's really rare and hard to use it, what I did was, I have a windows 98 installation cd and i used that, works just fine...
randomizer 04/28/2008 2:11 AM
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randomizer
It's hard to use a floppy? I find it easier than using CDs, there's one less button to push. They are just real slow.

Note You are going to post a comment as anonymous.



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