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Have you overclocked before  

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  1. 1. Have you overclocked before

    • Yep
      11
    • Nope
      8


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I just want some opinions on overclocking, I'm considering doing it to my viedo card, jsut wanna know how many people have done it.

Most people are scared from overclocking but in my past experiences as long as you don't go crazy it'll be fine. So anyone actually had nasty experiences, if so - what video card?

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I would suggest a better fan for your video card if you plan on overclocking. Good thermal compound would help too. RAM Sinks might help if you're going extreme.

 

Go here for just about everything you need. Incredible website, toll free number, and the best service I've run into in a long time. I do a lot of my work through them.

 

http://www.frozencpu.com

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From reading on most sites I visited, it seems to me that a jump of around 10% in the current speeds of different subsystems will usually do no harm, as long as it is properly cooled. The main thing to be concerned with is the cooling, you will not shorten the lifespan of the card if it is cooled properly and running at the normal operating temperature of the card at normal speeds. After all, most graphics cards manufacturers do provide tools to overclock anyway....

 

If you do the motherboard side of things, then it's knowing the multiplier/divider settings needed for each bus so that those systems don't play up.

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We overclocked a 300mhz to 500mhz at a LAN party in 1995 and it caught fire. Fried everything and the room smelled like burnt-toast. :cool:

 

 

 

As long as you have heat sinks/spreads on your RAM you should be ok. ATI cards in the past had overclocking software that came with the cards. I've overclocked various cards around 25% with minimal results (like 10 more fps). It's fun stuff. :D

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Ah, thanks everyone for the good feedback :)

It was with my old nvidia card i overclocked, since ATI don't supply their own overclocking software... it seems a bti dodgy :p

Still, 10mhz increases can't hurt. :)

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I've overclocked a few things in my time such as my friend and I overclocking his processor by 100 mHz(this was back in the days when 100 mHz made all the difference though) but I haven't yet overclocked a video card. But as others have said, and I'm sure you know, cooling is the most important factor.

 

As for overclocking, well I'll try to put this in fairly simple terms Zed... ;)

 

You know those old Looney Tunes shows when Wiley Coyote would have a knob on something that goes up as far as "10", so then he writes an "11" on it and turns the knob up to that?

 

Overclocking is pretty much the same thing ^_^

 

EDIT: Termie may have beat me to it, but my explanation was much better :D

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Originally posted by Reb Starblazer

You know those old Looney Tunes shows when Wiley Coyote would have a knob on something that goes up as far as "10", so then he writes an "11" on it and turns the knob up to that?

 

Overclocking is pretty much the same thing ^_^

 

EDIT: Termie may have beat me to it, but my explanation was much better :D

 

Reb wins. Termie loses. :p

 

Thanks. I guess I never did that, as I don't know how (unless I have to get a crayon and dram an 11 on my video card)

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To put it bluntly there is no reason NOT to overclock.

 

You can take a £50 cpu and turn it into a CPU that would cost you £400. Overclocking is simply exploiting a loophole in the manufacturing process of cpus and graphics cards.

 

For example for AMD to create a different production line for every processor in their range would make all the processors extremely costly, so they make all chips on the same line and then speed is set at the factory and can easily be upped to a higher specification by means of a bios tweak. (more work is involved for old processors)

 

With a Graphics card all you need is a an overclocking utility like Rivatuner, this will allow you to up the clock speeds of the GPU and the onboard ram of the card. Overclocking the ram is a little more problematic than overclocking the core clock speed as it is hardware dependant in that the RAM has a speed rating and can only pushed so far without adding extra voltage.

 

A real life example is this:- I took my XP2500+ which has a default speed of 1833mhz and upped the frontside bus to 217 and upped the multiplier to 11.5 this resulted in giving me a grand total of 2498Mhz. (this translates to being an XP3600 if you use the AMD performance rating calculation) I then overclocked my graphics card in the following way:- the default speed for the core was 275mhz i upped it to 371mhz and then i upped the ram speed from 270mhz to 317mhz. My lowly Radeon 9500 outperforms a 9700 pro which costs at least £100 more.

 

Basically I've got a whole lot more power from my CPU and graphics card at no extra cost.

 

Now it sounds easy doesnt it? well its not quite this straight forward. To achieve the stellar speeds that are indeed possible you need to up the CPU voltages and this is where the element of risk comes into the equation. More voltage = more heat, and heat is what will kill a processor in the end. Investing a few bucks on a good cooler and proper ventilation on your rig can make running at these speeds just as safe and reliable as running at stock speeds.

 

Basically if you wanna overclock be conservative and step the speed up a little at a time, its when you get greedy that you start to break things you see.

 

Termy if you need a hand lemme know and I'll walk you through the process of overclocking your graphics card, but believe me its not as dangerous as you've probably been led to believe.

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bah, i made a decently long post and it just got wiped cos someone linked me in msn >:(

 

Thanks Jah :D

I actually have 7 fans (when my ocmp was getting uilt the PC shop down the road was shutting down so i got 7 good quality fans for £4.50 each ;))

To be honest, i'm not completely sure about where they all are in my comp :S, though i'm positive at least 2 cool my processor meaning 2+ should be on my Graphics card :p (i didn't help too much during the building part :p)

Right here i have this program called Rage3d tweak, it looks promising and i actually do have past experience using the Default Nvidia overclocker :p (only 66mhz increased though)

 

Your example's a very cheery :D not having a job i am not exactly rich in any way :p but your improvements look tempting :)

 

Termy if you need a hand lemme know and I'll walk you through the process of overclocking your graphics card, but believe me its not as dangerous as you've probably been led to believe.

Too True, i have this conspiracy that companies spread rumours abotu overclocking so people will buy their newest card rather than overclock :p

Thanks again for the info.

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termy,

 

check this link.Omega Drivers

 

You have a radeon right? well this omega driver contains an optimized version of the latest Radeon catalyst 3.5 drivers and also has an integrated overclocking tool called radclocker which is by far and away the easiest tool to use.

 

If you wanna see just how much of a gain you get form overclocking i suggest using 3dmark2k1 which will show you just how much of a boost you get, Its worth doing a before and after benchmark.

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it's a poopy Radeon 7500 32MB DDR :/

Thanks for the link, Jah :thumbsup: I actually have a version of 3dmark but it never worked on ym comp, i'll download 2k1 one though :)

Oh and SoSky says hi :D i met him on a server last night :)

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It was jsut pure coincidence i met him though. It was on

!gamesurf.de 2/5 (Duel) [NF] - 212.122.148.102:28071

I don't think he was a regular there though.. liek i said, Just luck :)

He kicks ass now btw (6-2, :() :D

He gave me his e-mail address so if you want it i can pm you it :)

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