Does overclocking a video card do all that much?

[Maniac9127]

I see in reviews sometimes where someone overclocks the videocard a few MHz, and all it does is improve the framerate by a few frames/sec. Is it really worth it to void the warranty over a few frames? Or possibly spend 10-15 bucks on a chipset cooler? Is there something I'm missing? Possibly in intense areas it doesn't drop as much?

I dunno, I'm not sure it's all that worth it. I'd rather have a lifetime warranty than bragging rights on a few frames.

 

[themadmonk]

How would they know you overclocked? No sure way to tell it is the cause of a dead card. However overclocking the memory on GF2 increases the bandwith, which frees some of the bottleneck faced by it. I would say you get some boost, not like a ford mustang to a ferrari boost, but maybe up to a dodge viper. I didn't see great jumps in my 3DMark 2000 scores, but under games like Flight Simulator 2000, i definately saw where the overclocking benefited me.

 

[Sunner]

Actually, in 0-100 a Viper Venom 650 will beat all Ferrari's cept for the F50

 

[Yoshi]

Over clocking the core is a bit of a crap-shoot and usually does not result in too much gain. I think it's better to overclock the video RAM.

Systematically you could overclock the RAM to the max it will run at reliably, then increase the core speed from stock speed in increments of 1Mhz until you don't see any significant increase in overall performance.

 

[GuardianAli]

depends...while overclocking the core only gets a few fps more, overclocking the video ram doe to stuff...

I overclocked my MX card to the max it would go stability wise, and got an extra 20-25 frames a sec.

 

[MustangSVT]

i get 10% increase in fps and benchmarks. now.. that venom vs Ferrari might be true only on drag track, but it can't even come close to Ferrari on a race track.