Niels

Overclocking can be managed in many ways, through the NVIDIA control panel, ATI control panel or third party software. In this article we'll show you how you can overclock the easy way, with the help of Rivatuner.

This article is really simple as all we'll show you is, how to manage this .. and of course throw in a couple of additional benchmarks. See this as an easy overclocking guide, which is a series we'll start more and more with newer graphics cards.

What is overclocking ? Your graphics card has clock generators that allow several 'domains' on your graphics card to be clocked faster. In current days there often is a lot of overclocking headroom. Because not only does a product need to have a safety tolerance, pre-overclocked graphics cards actually became a market to sell in.

The GeForce series has 3 domains we can play around with and try to clock faster. The core (ROP) domain, the shader processors domain and the graphics memory. Clocking these domains faster (MHz) often can result in performance increases of 5 to 10%. And in the land of graphics, that's the difference between fast and furious..

Tha ATI cards only has 2 options, Core clock and Memory clock. But the way of clocking your ATI graphics card is the same as here below.

In our vision, the best tool for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is Rivatuner.

So what are we doing today? :
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its compute clock cycles per second. It sounds hard, but it really can be done in less than a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners not to increase the frequency any higher then 5% (in total) of the core and memory clock MHz.

So here's what we need to do, download these two files.

Download:

* Download Rivatuner
* Download FurMark

Step 1:
After downloading, install Furmark. Furmark is very handy to use to define an overclock. With that application running in a window and Rivatuner next to it, you can gradually increase clock and memory frequency real-time and on the fly, while stressing the GPU fairly significant.

Some people prefer other software, OCCT GPU stress, Running 3DMark or a game each time after a frequency change. Everybody has his/her own preferences. Just use an application that is hard on the graphcis card. For ease of use we recommend Furmark.

Step 2:
Install the latest available Rivatuner (link above at download chapter). Rivatuner will support the GTX 275 right out of the box. Startup Rivatuner .. and we are good to go.

Starting to overclock / procedure:

First startup FurMark, disable full screen, , select stability test, select 640x480, hit GO. This will stress the GPU 100%, leave it running.

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Startup Rivatuner, select monitoring (you want to monitor GPU temperatures). The icon with the chip and magnifying glass

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Now click the little graphics card button at the lower 'customize' section. We can start the actual overclocking of GPU core and memory.

* Select 'Enable driver-level hardware overclocking' followed by 'detect now'. You'll now open up the three domains we are tweaking today.
* Unflag 'link clocks'

We now start to overclock the core clock first, then the shaders and lastly the memory. In Rivatuner increase GPU Core clock in 10 MHz increments. If you see artifacts either stop Furmark immediately or restart.

If you system locks up, restart, repeat procedure and drop down ~25 MHz. Keep monitoring that temperature. Above 90 Degrees C is not okay. The next on in line is the shader domain, we can gain a lot of performance here. Again, increase the clock frequency in small steps, after each incremental clock frequency increase, hit apply.

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This is roughly what you should have in your screen during the overclocking session.

Once that is done we need to seek the maximum for the memory, increase the clock frequency, typically one the memory frequency hits its maximum you'll spot little dots or small artifacts on your furmark screen. Once you hit that spot or have a system lockdown, drop back 25 to 50 MHz, we recommend dropping back 50 MHz.

Don't be to afraid about a few system lockups and restarts, really, it's part of the process. If you are afraid of that .. don't overclock. It's not for you my man. It is needed to find the maximum threshold of what you can achieve.

Also bare in mind that overclocking CAN damage your graphics card. You do this all at your own risk. But if you handle it delicately like shown above, the risk is not big.

Obviously results can differ per card, per brand and sure .. you need to have bit of luck as well. But fair enough, this is a pretty significant overclock.

Other tips to improve overclocking:

* Improve cooling, in Rivatuner often you can control the RPM fans speed of the graphics card. Increase RPM, increase airflow, get better cooling results.
* Remove cooler, apply good thermal compound and or new cooler.
* Create decent airflow inside your PC.
* Look around for voltage tweak utilities and increase GPU voltage (though this is fairly dangerous).


Article Written By Hilbert HagenDoorn (guru3d).

nelson

It seems my card didn't support the extra OC using FurMark, I reach the point to see glitches, but going back didn't help, I think I fried something. Well, improper heat management helped too.
My PC locks up everytime I use the NVidia drivers, If I use the VGA ones, it works, but of course with no accel. so I can't play anything.

I was OC using 3DMark, but it takes to much time for a result, but going too far just shuts down the graphics(error in driver and terminates it). FurMark is a lot faster but it seems dangerous too.

So, be careful, it's easy going to far with it.

At least gave me an excuse for buying a new VC, but having AGP couldn't go SLI with better toys