Best offers
|
Core i7 I7-920 Quad Core Processor... | $349.99 Dell Home More info |
|
Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition Quad... | $195.99 Newegg.com More info |
|
P7P55D Motherboard (Intel Socket H... | $149.99 Newegg.com More info |
|
Core i5 750 Qaud Core Processor... | $199.99 Newegg.com More info |
|
M4A785TD-V EVO AMD 785G/SB710 Socket... | $99.99 Newegg.com More info |
- cpu overclocking software
- how to overclock nvidia graphics card
- overclocking graphics cards
- how to overclock graphics
- how to overclock graphics cards
- best cpu overclocking software
- overclocked graphics card
- overclock nvidia graphic card
- software overclocker
- what does overclocking graphics do
- cpu overclocking software asus
- overclocking graphics card software
- software overclock all motherboard
- qx6850 motherboard
- best pc hardware overclocking utility
Partners
The Games selection
adventure :
Ray
Adventure game, South Park style. Pick the way the story goes by picking an answer among those offered.
|
violent :
Interactive Buddy
Unwind on your interactive buddy: Do anything you want to him, it will earn you money, and you can buy other stuff to torture him with.
|
Sponsored links
- Email |
- Print |
- Comments (44) |
- Share
It turns out that there are several ways to overclock your graphics card. We’ll take a look at each one in turn. First of all, you should know that you can overclock your card either temporarily, using Windows software utilities, or permanently by flashing your BIOS.
The Flexibility of Software
The first method is the best known. There are numerous utilities for AMD/ATI and Nvidia graphics cards. Their functions are often similar. The best ones let you set the operating speed of the GPU and the memory, but also the cooling power, and some let you load complete overclocking profiles and configurations of 3D functions to suit the application you’ll use. In fact, these utilities multiply the possibilities offered by the cards’ drivers. This implies that the ForceWare or Catalyst drivers are not totally ignorant of overclocking... And in fact, Nvidia and especially ATI are emphasizing overclockability more and more, which has become a strong sales argument. Software overclocking is very flexible to use (generally all you do is slide the frequency cursors and click "OK"), but it’s not free of drawbacks. It depends on a memory-resident program. That program consumes a small part of system resources, and can crash. The programs can contain bugs, or be incompatible with certain cards, certain driver versions or certain operating systems. What’s more, each time you re-boot the system you have to reconfigure everything.
Under the Hood
In short, a more permanent, more robust solution would be preferable – as with CPU overclocking, which won’t change unless you voluntarily modify the motherboard’s BIOS. And in fact, it works the same way with a graphics card. Permanent overclocking requires a change to the settings that are "hard-wired" in the card’s own BIOS. But while all you need to do to access your motherboard BIOS settings is press F1, F2 or Del when your PC is booting, the graphics card’s BIOS is not that easily accessible. You need a special utility to read and edit settings and save the new version, which will then be written to the card itself by flashing with yet another utility. Sound complicated? It may be, but it’s not at all impossible. And we’re here to tell you how to do it.
Keep Cool and Spend Your Money
However, if all this scares you, you can always go with a factory overclocked version, when the vendor does it for you. Models like this are extremely common, since third-party graphics cards manufacturers have found overclocking to be one way to set themselves apart from the competition. Certain ones, like XFX, may even owe all their success to the wide range of overclocked models they offer. But you should know that most of the time, pre-overclocked cards make you pay a lot for the few extra performance percentage points they offer.
Test configuration
Our tests were run on our reference system with an Asus P5E3 motherboard, an Intel QX6850 processor and 2 GB of Crucial DDR3. The operating system installed was the 32-bit version of Windows Vista SP1. For each card, we used the most recent versions of the drivers available at the time of the test – that is, ForceWare 174.53 and Catalyst 8.3.

- Question About Overclocked Graphics Cards [Graphic & Displays]
- New graphic card needed? could Power supply manage it? [Graphic & Displays]
- How to overclock 8800 series cards?? [Graphic & Displays]
- Irritating Graphics Card Problem [Graphic & Displays]
- Graphics Card Shuts off during crysis [Graphic & Displays]
Questions? Ask Tom's community!
- 1 / 3
- Next
-
Sponsored links
Related forums topics
- Price/performance processors
- Dual Core - Intel vs. AMD
- What computers did you own in the old days? Share your story!
- Will this plat WoW?
- CPU Buyers' Guide (updated 10 May 2008)
- Do I really need to overclock?..truthfully
- GUIDE: Overclocking On EP/P35-DS3L v1.3.1 [UPDATED: 10/2/2008]
- Core 2 Quad and Duo Temperature Guide
- E6750 Overclocking issue - P5B Deluxe
- Phenom and Ati Card
- Motherboards FAQ Rev 02.26.05
- [LGA 1366] Best Motherboard, $ unlimited ???
- Asus P5K P35 Chipset boot problem!!!
- Warnings re: P5N32E-SLI






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.
The HP disk utility asks me for DOS files to write to the disk where would I find these?
To any one interested in modding nVidia BIOS:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/ [...] w=0&nojs=0
Better than the "Overclock your card in 5 minutes" article.
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?
brendano257 visit www.bootdisk.com and get those files.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
benchmarks anywhere? i'd like to see performance in gaming benchmarks. Fairly interesting article. Could save me some $
The performance benefit is usually
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.)
My Radeon 2900 pro 512MB,
went from 507Mhz GPU and 514Mhz memory
to 846Mhz GPU and 890MHz memory.
Thank you fore the ispiration!
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).
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!!!
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...
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.