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Videocards have three main things that affect their performance. These include the GPU core speed, video memory speed and the bandwidth of the interface between the videocard and the rest of the system (ie. AGP or PCI Express x16). There's not much that can be done about the video interface, but the core and memory speeds can both be changed.
Since the graphics core (or GPU) handles the actual rendering, overclocking it obviously helps the videocard push out polygons faster, increasing performance. The video memory acts similiar to the computers main memory. It stores video data and feeds it to the core as needed. The faster the memory is, the less the GPU has to wait. So, both have a major effect on 3D performance and the most dramatic gains will be seen when overclocking both the core and memory together. This guide will show you what you need to know to overclock both of them to get increased 3D performance.
Lets Begin...
The first thing you need to do is decide what you will use to overclock your video card. The software that is available for you to use varies for ATI and nVidia. I will only be covering Rivatuner right now, but there are plenty of others. One major advantage to Rivatuner is the fact that it will work for both ATI and Nvidia cards. Whatever you choose to use it will be relatively the same procedure that I describe below.
To start overclocking your card open up Rivatuner and find the box under 'driver settings' and click the 'customize' icon. From the menu that appears, select the first icon, 'system settings'.
Next, you need to check the box that says 'Enable driver-level hardware overclocking' to enable the sliders we will use to overclock your card. After you check it another box will apear. If you have not overclocked your card before and it is at stock speeds then just click the 'Detect now' button. Also, next to the box you checked (upper-right) their should be a dropdown box. Make sure 'performance 3D' is selected.
Now we are all ready to begin overclocking the card. To overclock you want to increase the settings very gradually and benchmark in between each time. Every time you change the settings you must press the 'test' button before it can be set. The 'test' button is at the bottom of the window.
It is also a good idea to watch your temps when overclocking your video card. This can be done within Rivatuner by selecting the 'Hardware monitoring' icon right here.
I would suggest leaving it open while benchmarking. If the temperature exceeds 70C at any time I would strongly suggest underclocking until you get better cooling.
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This is a work in progress. If you have any suggestions please post them so I can make this a better video card overclocking guide. Tell me anything you think I should explain further, something else I should include etc. The more questions you ask regarding video card overclocking and this guide in general and the more recommendations you make, the better this guide will be.
Last edited by KoolDrew on Sat Oct 21, 2006 12:35 pm; edited 1 time in total
I am going to. This guide isn't even close to done. I just worked on it a little, but then I realized what time it was and I had to do my homework. Since today is Firday I don't have to any homework right when I get home so I can work on it. I will cover the steps needed to overclock the card and test for stability.
Later on I will add more to it like cooling, volt modding, unlocking pixel shaders, softmodding etc.
I was going to finish it this weekend, but my internet connection was acting up. It is fine now so I will try to finish it when I get home from school today.
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