Things You'll Need:
- Riva Tuner from Guru3d.com
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Step 1
How To Overclock Your Video Card
Overclocking your video card (or graphics card), whether it be an Nvidia or ATI, is very simple when the correct program(s) are used. For this short and sweet write up, I will use a very reputable program called RIVA TUNER. It is available for download for free from www.guru3d.com. Just do a search for the latest version, as it is updated often and any direct link I post will expire within a short time.
First off I would like to state that in no way shape or form do I recommend doing this unless you are an average or advanced computer user that is willing to take a possible risk of hardware damage to your investment. I accept NO responsibility for any damage that may or may not be caused to your system by attempting an overclock, and this will also possibly void a manufacturer’s warranty. Do this at your OWN RISK. -
Step 2
With a lot of the advanced 3D games and programs out today, it is hard not to resist the urge to squeeze every last bit of GPU (graphics processing unit) power out of your hardware to get the best gaming or graphic design experience possible.
I will continue with the assumption that you have downloaded and installed RIVE TUNER from Guru3d.com. Once you run this program for the first time, it should display a window all about your graphics card or cards (if you are utilizing Nvidia’s SLI or ATI’s Crossfire) with 7 tabs on the top and info below it that you may or may not understand. The first bar below the tabs on the “MAIN” screen will show the card you have installed into your computer. Below that it will show some other info about BIT and RAM values…Ignore this second bar for now. Under “DRIVER SETTINGS” on the same page we started on, you will see “DRIVER SETTINGS” and a bar below it saying something like “FORCEWARE DETECTED” or similar. On the RIGHT side of this bar is a small arrow tip pointing down and to the right. If we click on this it will extend some options out (normally 5) that look like pictures. We want to click on the first on that looks like a graphics card. -
Step 3
This will open up a new window with 4 tabs on top. The first and second tabs are the only 2 we will be using. On the FIRST tab labeled “OVERCLOCKING” you will check the box that says “enable driver-level hardware overclocking” next to it. A box will also be next to this and you can select “performance 3D”. Now you will see 3 bars below labeled “core clock”, “shader clock” and “memory clock”. We want to check mark the small box below “core clock” that is labeled “linked clocks”. Now each of these bars should be filled with a blue bar that goes to a certain amount which is showing you the cards MAXIMUM clocks. We will be going nowhere NEAR these maximums by the way.
What you want to do is slowly start raising all the values by only a few MHZ at a time, and then running a game or graphically intense program after you have hit apply and saved the settings (if it offers you to save these settings on the next startup of windows, hit NO and just keep notes on the settings you are trying, so if your system crashes, it won’t be stuck on those settings, and this will save you a big headache). What you are looking for is obvious game or program crashes, lockups, or graphical “errors or artifacts” in the program you are testing with. The basic idea is to keep raising the levels of all 3 clocks SLOWLY until your computer and program you are running becomes unresponsive or crashes, wont boot etc…and then back the numbers back off slowly until you find a STABLE setting. -
Step 4
Once you find a stable setting you can go back into this window where you did the over clocking and select the second tab called “FAN” and select a DIRECT FAN CONTROL option that is in the upper right hand corner, and then go below and drag the bar to a HIGHER FAN SPEED if you so desire. This is done to give the card or cards extra cooling that they can possibly need due to the extra work they are doing because of the overclock. This step is fairly straight forward and you can’t really mess anything up with fan speeds, so feel free to play around and have fun turning your fans up and down :P You don’t need to leave the fans up high when just surfing the net or doing low end things, but you might want to if you’re a gamer or intense graphic user.
Once again, I take no responsibility for your choice to follow any of this advice if it leads to hardware failure. Do this at your own risk!
