How to Tweak an NVIDIA Graphics Card
Upgrading your graphics card is a great way to improve your PC’s performance while gaming. However, before shelling out for a new card, you may want to consider tweaking your existing card to squeeze out more performance than with its default settings. By overclocking your video card, you can push your card to the limit and many times increase graphics performance. Be aware, though, that overclocking will likely also require better cooling in your PC case.
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Instructions
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Download and install the latest driver for your video card. This can be done by going to NVIDIA’s website, selecting “Download Drivers,” and specifying your video card model and operating system. Double-click on the downloaded file, and an installation tool will help you through the installation process. Reboot your computer after the installation completes.
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Use the NVIDIA Control Panel to adjust settings on your card. This can be accessed by right clicking on the desktop and selecting “NVIDIA Control Panel.” The Control Panel will allow you to change display resolutions, adjust color settings and set up display profiles for specific video games.
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Download and install a tweaking utility for NVIDIA cards, such as NVIDIA's nTune, DXTweaker or RivaTuner. This will allow you to overclock your video card, giving your card more speed and power.
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Adjust your graphics card using the tweaking utility. To overclock your card for better performance, you can increase your core clock, shader clock and memory clock speeds by adjusting the slider bars. The core clock is how fast your card will run, the shader clock handles the shader processors' speed and the memory clock adjusts how fast the card's memory will run. Increasing the Mhz values for the clock speeds will make your card faster. Always make small adjustments when overclocking, as too large of an adjustment may cause system instability. Adjustments of 20 Mhz at a time are reasonable.
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Test your tweaks. When overclocking, it’s always important to make a small adjustment each time and then test your machine to ensure the system will still run properly. If your system becomes unstable, reverse your last change.
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Tips & Warnings
Always overclock with caution. Monitor your card's temperature when overclocking, ensuring it does not reach its maximum temperature rating.
Familiarize yourself with video setting basics before attempting to change any options.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit video card image by Florin Capilnean from Fotolia.com
