polarbear6
Golden Member
I feel most of the information i have provided here is correct, If you find that there is something wrong please inform me. Thanks to the moderators for sticking this.
This is a small guide i made that will help people overclock there graphic cards. As there is no specific guide to over clocking a GPU, so i felt i should make one.
Most of the material i have written here is what i have collected from wikipedia mostly( only the idea not the text ).
All the software i used here can be googled and are mostly the first in the google query.
So first a little introduction to graphic cards.
Lets start by defining few commonly used terms.
Definitions
Manufacturing process/average half pitch distance: It is half the distance between identical features in an array./ Size of elements on a chip.
Die area: the length of a die multiplied by the width of the die. Typically surface area of the die.
Core clock speed : It represents the number of clock cycles the graphic card can do for a second.
Memory clock speed : It is the same as the core clock speed, Except of course that it is for the memory of the graphic card.All modern graphic card use DDR memory(Double data rate) there are many versions in this too, But the famous ones are GDDR,GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR3,GDDR5(only ati has this)
FOR GDDR,GDDR2 the memory speed is what is shown in GPUZ, For GDDR3 it is usually double and GDDR5 its four times.
Usually the speeds of a GPU are represented as core speed/memory speed.
Think of the core speed as internal clock and memory speed as the external clock/fsb/the speed of transaction of data between GPU and GPU memory(When comparing gpu with a cpu).
Some GPU's and there speeds:
Pipeline: In computing, a pipeline is a set of data processing elements connected in series, so that the output of one element is the input of the next one. The elements of a pipeline are often executed in parallel or in time-sliced fashion; in that case, some amount of buffer storage is often inserted between elements.
ROP: The Render Output Unit, often abbreviated as "ROP", and sometimes called (perhaps more properly) Raster Operations Pipeline, is one of the final steps in the rendering process of modern 3D accelerator boards. The pixel pipelines take pixel and texel information and process it, via specific matrix and vector operations, into a final pixel or depth value. The ROPs perform the transactions between the relevant buffers in the local memory - this includes writing or reading values, as well as blending them together.
Pixel Pipelines - The amount of pixel pipelines a graphics card has can have a great impact on the speed of the image rendering. This is all about pixel pushing power. A card with 8 pipelines can process twice as many pixels as a card of the same core speed and 4 pipelines.
Textures per pipeline - This only come into effect when multiple textures are needed on the one pixel. Simply put if a multiple texture is needed, then a graphics card with more textures per pipeline will be quicker. On single textured pixels the amount of texture per pipeline will have no effec
Memory Bandwidth: The memory bandwidth is the rate of data transferred from the GPU to the graphics memory.The higher it will be the lower will be the bottle necks.
Anti Aliasing: In digital signal processing, anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution signal at a lower resolution. Anti-aliasing is used in digital photography, computer graphics, digital audio, and many other applications. Some more clarity if required can be got at Reference
Overclocking prerequisite
Now lets start with the prerequisite of Overclocking.
First of all, All of you must realise that some graphic card vendors can cancel your warranty for your card if they found out that you have overclocked it. So always try a temporary overclock then a permanent overclock.
First of all there are two types of overclocking for a gpu
1) temporary
2)permanant
OC related Definitions:
Artifact: Well sometimes when your overclocking your gpu, You maybe pusing it to hard. It usually gives you signals when such a thing happends, They are called artifacts.
They are On screen distortions.green-flashing, random triangles appearing on the screen usually correspond to overheating problems on the GPU itself, while white, flashing dots appearing randomly (usually in groups) on the screen often mean that the card's RAM is overheating
Temperature of the card: There are to types of temperatures here:
1)Load: This refers to 100% load temperature, How 100% load can be obtained will be discussed in the stabilty test part.
2)Idle: this refers to the temperature of the gpu, when there is no intensive graphic operations going on
Gpu's can tolerate more temps than cpus. There cannot be a fixed range of tolerable and intolerable temperatures according to many forums and people.
But mostly try to keep the load temperatures below 80. Some people even go till 90c for load temperatures.
The best to determine this would be through artifact test i mentioned.
But a rough range can be drawn about the safe temperatures with this example:
Temporary OC
Software requirement for temporary overclock:
Google for them.
1)riva tuner/ ntuner
2)speed fan or ntuner(for nvidia cards)/Ati tool or GPUZ or any temperature monitoring tool.( i prefer speed fan cause they have graphs and is convineient when stress testing with a game )
3) some stressing software(will be covered in the stress testing section)
4)GPUZ for verifying the set speeds and oc.
Theory:
Oc basics : You can oc your card in three ways,
1)increasing core speed.
2)increasing memory speed: Remember increasing memory speed for GDDR3 or GDDR5 will double or increase it four times respectively.
3)increasing shader speed: This many people dont like to increase or not bothered about.
riva tuner: Its a little software that can be used on ATI as well as nvidia graphic card based pc.
Ntuner: This is only for nvidia cards!!
Temporary OC is the best way to see if a particular oc is safe or not.I recommend you do a temporary oc then a permanant oc.
Riva Tuner: This software remembers the oc you made and loads it every time you log into windows. so its not permanant.
Ntuner: Its effect last only till you restart your pc.
Oc through riva:First of UNTICK THE "Apply overclocking at Windows startup" box.We will tick it later when we are happy with the stabilty of a oc.
open riva by right clicking on the taskbar icon.click the customize button and select the first button from left.There set the fan speeds at 100% to be on the safe side.
now goto the customize button of the driver settings and select the first button from left again.
OVERCLOCKING:
Now that we already have RivaTuner and your stress testing software set up, it is time for the fun part... overclocking!
Before we begin, I would like to remind you that to get a stable overclock, you will have to spend a great deal of time testing for stability. Use your stress testing software, and run all your favorite games to see if there are any graphical problems that may suggest instability.
What we are going to do now is find the maximum stable overclock for the memory 1st, and then move on to find the max stable core speed.I personally give more importance to memory clock.
Overclocking the Memory
The lower slider in the RivaTuner overclocking screen is the Memory clock. Move it to the right to increase clockspeeds, and to the left to decrease clockspeeds. Now, this is what you must do:
Increase the Memory clock by 5MHz at a time. After each increase, run your stress testing software once and keep your eyes peeled for any weird rendering errors, artifacts, or glitches, (they all mean basically the same thing!) as explained in the stability testing guidelines above.
Once you notice some slight graphical anomalies, reduce the speed by 10MHz and run 3DMark once more. If there are no more anomalies, then run your stress testing software at least 4 times more and watch every run carefully for any weird glitches. Remember, Game Test 4 is usually the 1st one to show any anomalies.
If you are not sure, just lower the clockspeeds back to normal and run your stress testing software again to see if that little something you noticed was an error due to instability, or just something normal.
If everything is fine and running stable, then go play all your favorite games, especially the newer ones that stress the graphics card a lot. Check for any problems.
If you still see some glitches/errors, reduce the Memory clock by about 5MHz and try again. Keep doing this until you find the maximum stable speed.
Once you are done with overclocking the memory, reduce it back to the DEFAULT speeds. Now we will overclock the core.
Overclocking the Core/GPU
The upper slider in the RivaTuner overclocking screen is the Core clock. Move it to the right to increase clockspeeds, and to the left to decrease clockspeeds.
Do exactly the same thing as the guidelines for Overclocking the Memory (above), the only difference is you move the Core clock slider instead. Easy huh?
Once you find the maximum stable overclocked speed for the core/GPU, Combine the maximum stable Memory clock that you found earlier with this Core clock. Run your stress testing software a few times again just to make sure everything is stable. If it is unstable when both max overclocks are combined, then try reducing the speeds a little bit.
AS ALWAYS.... TEST! TEST! TEST!!!
Ntuner: Get it from the nvidia site, install it.Open the nvidia control panel and select the performance section and select "Adjust gpu settings".And follow the overclocking paragraph i have written above.
Permanant OC:
I assume that you have obtained your stable oc clock speeds by temporary oc. Now lets see how to make them permamnant.
For nvidia:
Making a permanant oc requires flashing the GPU's BIOS which is a bit advanced for a beginner so do it only on your own risk.
You will need three softwares for this
1)GPUZ: A little software used to display the driver settings of a card and get a bios copy of the card.
2)Nibitor: it is used for editing the bios files of graphic cards. But the edited files cannot be saved.
3)Nvflash: it is used to flash edited bios files or save the edited bios files.
You even download some bios files from various sites and flash them onto your card, Instead of making new ones and stress testing them.
You will even need a Bootable floppy or a pen drive to boot into the DOS mode.
1)Use gpuz to get your card's bios(click the small image in gpuz, Excatly below the logo of your chipset maker in gpuz.)
2)no its time to edit that that bios file using nibitor.
3)open nibitor,Just go to tools>read
BIOS>select your card>Go back to tools>Read BIOS>Read into NiBiTor. This will
bring up your clock speeds. You can manually enter in the new Core and memory
clocks and then save the file.
4)now you have the bios which has the oced settings. Now we will flash your GPU's bios with this bios to make the oc permanant.
5)Copy cwsdpmi.exe and nvFlash.exe (found inside the NVflash zipfile) to this floppy disk/USB drive together with the modded bios file, reboot your computer and make sure that your floppy drive (A)/USB is set as first bootable device. You can change boot order through the mainboard's BIOS. Once your pc has rebooted it will run the boot procedure and start loading a small DOS version which is needed to use NVflash. Once DOS has been successfully loaded the command prompt shows up:
6) Now, to flash your VGA card, type the following: nvflash -5 -6 xxxx.rom (where you replace xxxx with the name you gave to your modded bios file), and hit ENTER.
NVFLASH will now run through some security checks and will then flash your card. Once the BIOS flash has been done you will need to reboot your pc. That's it; you have made a successful bios mod.
For ATI
There are two programs that come to mind when we talk about over clocking a ATI graphics card
ATI tray tool:
First is Ati Tray Tools
First you'll have to install it. Then you'll have to enable the overclocking. Start by Right-Clicking the Ati Tray Tools Icon on the task bar.goto Overclocking setting>Hardware.
Now you will see sliders as earlier seen with riva tuner.
Make sure to save the current clocks and such as a profile like default or something so you can easily revert to the original settings if you experience problems.
Now you should make sure that the fan stays at 100% at all times at least for testing purposes so you have the maximum amount of cooling possible.
Now before you do any real overclocking you need to have a way to monitor your temperatures at least if you have a card in the x series or later. the 9X00 series didn't have temperature monitors I don't believe. At least not the lower end ones. Ati Tray tools offers two ways to do this. Either with a separate graph, or with system tray monitoring. I think when overclocking the graph is nicer since you can see trends of temperature and see when your card has peaked or not.
Right-Click on the Taskbar Icon and Choose hardware/Monitoring Graphing or System Tray Monitoring.
After all of this is set up, It's Time to overclock.
Now you should open the 3D Renderer as it will test your graphics card for stability at the higher clocks.
You can either tell the program to auto overclock the gpu or the memory or both one at a time of course(Not recommended, Error8 pointed out that it sets higher clock speeds). (if you do this do memory first and make sure it is stable as it is more likely to overclock the poorest of the two.) Or you can do small increments of each one then hit scan for artifacts after applying it and leave it testing until the temps are fine and you aren't experiancing artifacts.
Watch Your Temperatures and Good Luck. You don't want to see anything over 80's in Degree's Celcius Under Full load though most cards can handle Temperatures up to 100 C and still be alright even for day to day use though that is in no way recommended. Also if you have some thermal paste laying around you should put a new layer on your gpu before doing this overclocking as you will get better results with a clean heatsink/fan and new thermal paste as opposed to an old dust covered cooler with an old layer of thermal paste that is dried up.
ATI tool:
his program is very similar to ATI Tray tools, except it is a little bit simpler in the interface and the settings. Sometimes it can be used to tell you the number of pipes and exact versions of cores and available pixel pipes on your card however which can be very helpful for knowing if a mod is possible. The same website you can get it from is a great reference for different mods that can be done to graphics cards. http://www.techpowerup.com There is also a great link to a walkthrough on ATI tool a wiki for ati tool from techpowerup ATI Tool Wiki
Download and install it then open it up. Make sure the default settings are correct and save them before doing any overclocking.
Much of the steps are the same as before. Once again I recommend setting the fan speed to full to find your overclock then if temperatures are good, then you can play with different fan speed configurations.
The Temperatures can still be found on the program itself, but also on the taskbar where ati tool defaults the temperature instead of the icon. Also it is listed under the graph, both gpu and ambient temperatures.
nce you know where all of those things are at, you'll want to start overclocking so open the 3D Renderer. It has options for Auto Finding max core/max memory just like on ati tray tools. If you do have it find max core it should do artifact testing for you.
Take it slow and watch the temperatures even if you are letting it auto overclock. Don't be surprised with a blue screen it won't keep it running at that speed on the next start up. Also Its not unlike the catalyst control center to VPU Recover in that case, resetting everything to defaults. Some Games may artifact a lot others will run very very smooth. A good example is Warcraft III I artifact all the time with my overclock and never in any other application or game. That's It for number two.
THIS FINISHES THE OVERCLOCKING PART OF IT NOW COMES THE STABILTY TEST PART OF IT
Stabilty test is THE most important part of oc.Dont be overconfident and ignore this part.
First of all stabilty can be tested by using a game or by using seprate softwares.
i will try to talk about softwares as games is something which everyone knows.
There are many softwares available on the net that can be used for software testing, Some of em are:
1)ATI TOOL: I think we can even use it with nvidia, BUt i have never personally tried it. It can even be used for artifact's finding.
2)3dmark 2003: Its a bit old, Many people dont use this these days.
3)Fur mark: Thermal take says that it overly stress the gpu, Even the most demanding software also doesnt stress the gpu that much. But hey just to be sure you can use it.
4)OCCTGPU v0.64( recommended by Lopri)
Games and games look alikes.
When stressing out your gpu's always try to stress them with standard ones like CRYSIS or COD4.You can alternatively stress it with 3DMARk softwares.
some miscellenious ones/Game like stress testers:
Rthdribl: text
Nvidia only tools: Text
Aquamark3: Text
Cooling
Cooling is also a essential part of our discussion.
Few points i would like to make in this context:
1)Its always better to get a dual slot cooler as it keeps the chassis temperatures also under control, Instead of recirculating the hot air back into the case.
2)you can get custom make fans or after market coolers. But some vendors like XFX void your warranty for using them(personal experience).
Fixing the fan speed at 100%
Again this has the permanent way and the temporary way.
Temporary way: Goto Riva Tuner select the customize button for target adapter and select the left button. Now you can select the fan speed you want. Click the box next to Apply fan settings at windows startup.
Permanent way: This again has to do with BIOS flashing. Load the BIOS into Nibitor(refer to Permanent OC for how to do it) Select the fan speed you want and flash your current bios with the modified BIOS using NVFlash.
Yup thats all, Please post you valuable suggestions,comments everything.
I think I'm missing few points here and there, I will add them as soon as i remember them.
Reader's contribution/advices/recommendations
Zagood: He gave a link to a nice tutorial, Which deals with launcher options for Riva tuner.
Text
Lopri: He gave a link to a gpu stress test software.
Text
Stickied for a small time period at the OP's request.
Also added "STICKY" to the thread title.
Video Mod BFG10K.
This is a small guide i made that will help people overclock there graphic cards. As there is no specific guide to over clocking a GPU, so i felt i should make one.
Most of the material i have written here is what i have collected from wikipedia mostly( only the idea not the text ).
All the software i used here can be googled and are mostly the first in the google query.
So first a little introduction to graphic cards.
Lets start by defining few commonly used terms.
Definitions
Manufacturing process/average half pitch distance: It is half the distance between identical features in an array./ Size of elements on a chip.
Die area: the length of a die multiplied by the width of the die. Typically surface area of the die.
Core clock speed : It represents the number of clock cycles the graphic card can do for a second.
Memory clock speed : It is the same as the core clock speed, Except of course that it is for the memory of the graphic card.All modern graphic card use DDR memory(Double data rate) there are many versions in this too, But the famous ones are GDDR,GDDR2, GDDR3, GDDR3,GDDR5(only ati has this)
FOR GDDR,GDDR2 the memory speed is what is shown in GPUZ, For GDDR3 it is usually double and GDDR5 its four times.
Usually the speeds of a GPU are represented as core speed/memory speed.
Think of the core speed as internal clock and memory speed as the external clock/fsb/the speed of transaction of data between GPU and GPU memory(When comparing gpu with a cpu).
Some GPU's and there speeds:
Pipeline: In computing, a pipeline is a set of data processing elements connected in series, so that the output of one element is the input of the next one. The elements of a pipeline are often executed in parallel or in time-sliced fashion; in that case, some amount of buffer storage is often inserted between elements.
ROP: The Render Output Unit, often abbreviated as "ROP", and sometimes called (perhaps more properly) Raster Operations Pipeline, is one of the final steps in the rendering process of modern 3D accelerator boards. The pixel pipelines take pixel and texel information and process it, via specific matrix and vector operations, into a final pixel or depth value. The ROPs perform the transactions between the relevant buffers in the local memory - this includes writing or reading values, as well as blending them together.
Pixel Pipelines - The amount of pixel pipelines a graphics card has can have a great impact on the speed of the image rendering. This is all about pixel pushing power. A card with 8 pipelines can process twice as many pixels as a card of the same core speed and 4 pipelines.
Textures per pipeline - This only come into effect when multiple textures are needed on the one pixel. Simply put if a multiple texture is needed, then a graphics card with more textures per pipeline will be quicker. On single textured pixels the amount of texture per pipeline will have no effec
Memory Bandwidth: The memory bandwidth is the rate of data transferred from the GPU to the graphics memory.The higher it will be the lower will be the bottle necks.
Anti Aliasing: In digital signal processing, anti-aliasing is the technique of minimizing the distortion artifacts known as aliasing when representing a high-resolution signal at a lower resolution. Anti-aliasing is used in digital photography, computer graphics, digital audio, and many other applications. Some more clarity if required can be got at Reference
Overclocking prerequisite
Now lets start with the prerequisite of Overclocking.
First of all, All of you must realise that some graphic card vendors can cancel your warranty for your card if they found out that you have overclocked it. So always try a temporary overclock then a permanent overclock.
First of all there are two types of overclocking for a gpu
1) temporary
2)permanant
OC related Definitions:
Artifact: Well sometimes when your overclocking your gpu, You maybe pusing it to hard. It usually gives you signals when such a thing happends, They are called artifacts.
They are On screen distortions.green-flashing, random triangles appearing on the screen usually correspond to overheating problems on the GPU itself, while white, flashing dots appearing randomly (usually in groups) on the screen often mean that the card's RAM is overheating
Temperature of the card: There are to types of temperatures here:
1)Load: This refers to 100% load temperature, How 100% load can be obtained will be discussed in the stabilty test part.
2)Idle: this refers to the temperature of the gpu, when there is no intensive graphic operations going on
Gpu's can tolerate more temps than cpus. There cannot be a fixed range of tolerable and intolerable temperatures according to many forums and people.
But mostly try to keep the load temperatures below 80. Some people even go till 90c for load temperatures.
The best to determine this would be through artifact test i mentioned.
But a rough range can be drawn about the safe temperatures with this example:
Fan speed: This refers to the fan speed of your gpu.It can be altered as a percentage of the maximum fan speed. 100% is very loud but it will keep things cool.This setting is according to your comfort, If you can tolerate any noise then you can have it at 100%.
Temporary OC
Software requirement for temporary overclock:
Google for them.
1)riva tuner/ ntuner
2)speed fan or ntuner(for nvidia cards)/Ati tool or GPUZ or any temperature monitoring tool.( i prefer speed fan cause they have graphs and is convineient when stress testing with a game )
3) some stressing software(will be covered in the stress testing section)
4)GPUZ for verifying the set speeds and oc.
Theory:
Oc basics : You can oc your card in three ways,
1)increasing core speed.
2)increasing memory speed: Remember increasing memory speed for GDDR3 or GDDR5 will double or increase it four times respectively.
3)increasing shader speed: This many people dont like to increase or not bothered about.
riva tuner: Its a little software that can be used on ATI as well as nvidia graphic card based pc.
Ntuner: This is only for nvidia cards!!
Temporary OC is the best way to see if a particular oc is safe or not.I recommend you do a temporary oc then a permanant oc.
Riva Tuner: This software remembers the oc you made and loads it every time you log into windows. so its not permanant.
Ntuner: Its effect last only till you restart your pc.
Oc through riva:First of UNTICK THE "Apply overclocking at Windows startup" box.We will tick it later when we are happy with the stabilty of a oc.
open riva by right clicking on the taskbar icon.click the customize button and select the first button from left.There set the fan speeds at 100% to be on the safe side.
now goto the customize button of the driver settings and select the first button from left again.
OVERCLOCKING:
Now that we already have RivaTuner and your stress testing software set up, it is time for the fun part... overclocking!
Before we begin, I would like to remind you that to get a stable overclock, you will have to spend a great deal of time testing for stability. Use your stress testing software, and run all your favorite games to see if there are any graphical problems that may suggest instability.
What we are going to do now is find the maximum stable overclock for the memory 1st, and then move on to find the max stable core speed.I personally give more importance to memory clock.
Overclocking the Memory
The lower slider in the RivaTuner overclocking screen is the Memory clock. Move it to the right to increase clockspeeds, and to the left to decrease clockspeeds. Now, this is what you must do:
Increase the Memory clock by 5MHz at a time. After each increase, run your stress testing software once and keep your eyes peeled for any weird rendering errors, artifacts, or glitches, (they all mean basically the same thing!) as explained in the stability testing guidelines above.
Once you notice some slight graphical anomalies, reduce the speed by 10MHz and run 3DMark once more. If there are no more anomalies, then run your stress testing software at least 4 times more and watch every run carefully for any weird glitches. Remember, Game Test 4 is usually the 1st one to show any anomalies.
If you are not sure, just lower the clockspeeds back to normal and run your stress testing software again to see if that little something you noticed was an error due to instability, or just something normal.
If everything is fine and running stable, then go play all your favorite games, especially the newer ones that stress the graphics card a lot. Check for any problems.
If you still see some glitches/errors, reduce the Memory clock by about 5MHz and try again. Keep doing this until you find the maximum stable speed.
Once you are done with overclocking the memory, reduce it back to the DEFAULT speeds. Now we will overclock the core.
Overclocking the Core/GPU
The upper slider in the RivaTuner overclocking screen is the Core clock. Move it to the right to increase clockspeeds, and to the left to decrease clockspeeds.
Do exactly the same thing as the guidelines for Overclocking the Memory (above), the only difference is you move the Core clock slider instead. Easy huh?
Once you find the maximum stable overclocked speed for the core/GPU, Combine the maximum stable Memory clock that you found earlier with this Core clock. Run your stress testing software a few times again just to make sure everything is stable. If it is unstable when both max overclocks are combined, then try reducing the speeds a little bit.
AS ALWAYS.... TEST! TEST! TEST!!!
Ntuner: Get it from the nvidia site, install it.Open the nvidia control panel and select the performance section and select "Adjust gpu settings".And follow the overclocking paragraph i have written above.
Permanant OC:
I assume that you have obtained your stable oc clock speeds by temporary oc. Now lets see how to make them permamnant.
For nvidia:
Making a permanant oc requires flashing the GPU's BIOS which is a bit advanced for a beginner so do it only on your own risk.
You will need three softwares for this
1)GPUZ: A little software used to display the driver settings of a card and get a bios copy of the card.
2)Nibitor: it is used for editing the bios files of graphic cards. But the edited files cannot be saved.
3)Nvflash: it is used to flash edited bios files or save the edited bios files.
You even download some bios files from various sites and flash them onto your card, Instead of making new ones and stress testing them.
You will even need a Bootable floppy or a pen drive to boot into the DOS mode.
1)Use gpuz to get your card's bios(click the small image in gpuz, Excatly below the logo of your chipset maker in gpuz.)
2)no its time to edit that that bios file using nibitor.
3)open nibitor,Just go to tools>read
BIOS>select your card>Go back to tools>Read BIOS>Read into NiBiTor. This will
bring up your clock speeds. You can manually enter in the new Core and memory
clocks and then save the file.
4)now you have the bios which has the oced settings. Now we will flash your GPU's bios with this bios to make the oc permanant.
5)Copy cwsdpmi.exe and nvFlash.exe (found inside the NVflash zipfile) to this floppy disk/USB drive together with the modded bios file, reboot your computer and make sure that your floppy drive (A)/USB is set as first bootable device. You can change boot order through the mainboard's BIOS. Once your pc has rebooted it will run the boot procedure and start loading a small DOS version which is needed to use NVflash. Once DOS has been successfully loaded the command prompt shows up:
6) Now, to flash your VGA card, type the following: nvflash -5 -6 xxxx.rom (where you replace xxxx with the name you gave to your modded bios file), and hit ENTER.
NVFLASH will now run through some security checks and will then flash your card. Once the BIOS flash has been done you will need to reboot your pc. That's it; you have made a successful bios mod.
For ATI
There are two programs that come to mind when we talk about over clocking a ATI graphics card
ATI tray tool:
First is Ati Tray Tools
First you'll have to install it. Then you'll have to enable the overclocking. Start by Right-Clicking the Ati Tray Tools Icon on the task bar.goto Overclocking setting>Hardware.
Now you will see sliders as earlier seen with riva tuner.
Make sure to save the current clocks and such as a profile like default or something so you can easily revert to the original settings if you experience problems.
Now you should make sure that the fan stays at 100% at all times at least for testing purposes so you have the maximum amount of cooling possible.
Now before you do any real overclocking you need to have a way to monitor your temperatures at least if you have a card in the x series or later. the 9X00 series didn't have temperature monitors I don't believe. At least not the lower end ones. Ati Tray tools offers two ways to do this. Either with a separate graph, or with system tray monitoring. I think when overclocking the graph is nicer since you can see trends of temperature and see when your card has peaked or not.
Right-Click on the Taskbar Icon and Choose hardware/Monitoring Graphing or System Tray Monitoring.
After all of this is set up, It's Time to overclock.
Now you should open the 3D Renderer as it will test your graphics card for stability at the higher clocks.
You can either tell the program to auto overclock the gpu or the memory or both one at a time of course(Not recommended, Error8 pointed out that it sets higher clock speeds). (if you do this do memory first and make sure it is stable as it is more likely to overclock the poorest of the two.) Or you can do small increments of each one then hit scan for artifacts after applying it and leave it testing until the temps are fine and you aren't experiancing artifacts.
Watch Your Temperatures and Good Luck. You don't want to see anything over 80's in Degree's Celcius Under Full load though most cards can handle Temperatures up to 100 C and still be alright even for day to day use though that is in no way recommended. Also if you have some thermal paste laying around you should put a new layer on your gpu before doing this overclocking as you will get better results with a clean heatsink/fan and new thermal paste as opposed to an old dust covered cooler with an old layer of thermal paste that is dried up.
ATI tool:
his program is very similar to ATI Tray tools, except it is a little bit simpler in the interface and the settings. Sometimes it can be used to tell you the number of pipes and exact versions of cores and available pixel pipes on your card however which can be very helpful for knowing if a mod is possible. The same website you can get it from is a great reference for different mods that can be done to graphics cards. http://www.techpowerup.com There is also a great link to a walkthrough on ATI tool a wiki for ati tool from techpowerup ATI Tool Wiki
Download and install it then open it up. Make sure the default settings are correct and save them before doing any overclocking.
Much of the steps are the same as before. Once again I recommend setting the fan speed to full to find your overclock then if temperatures are good, then you can play with different fan speed configurations.
The Temperatures can still be found on the program itself, but also on the taskbar where ati tool defaults the temperature instead of the icon. Also it is listed under the graph, both gpu and ambient temperatures.
nce you know where all of those things are at, you'll want to start overclocking so open the 3D Renderer. It has options for Auto Finding max core/max memory just like on ati tray tools. If you do have it find max core it should do artifact testing for you.
Take it slow and watch the temperatures even if you are letting it auto overclock. Don't be surprised with a blue screen it won't keep it running at that speed on the next start up. Also Its not unlike the catalyst control center to VPU Recover in that case, resetting everything to defaults. Some Games may artifact a lot others will run very very smooth. A good example is Warcraft III I artifact all the time with my overclock and never in any other application or game. That's It for number two.
THIS FINISHES THE OVERCLOCKING PART OF IT NOW COMES THE STABILTY TEST PART OF IT
Stabilty test is THE most important part of oc.Dont be overconfident and ignore this part.
First of all stabilty can be tested by using a game or by using seprate softwares.
i will try to talk about softwares as games is something which everyone knows.
There are many softwares available on the net that can be used for software testing, Some of em are:
1)ATI TOOL: I think we can even use it with nvidia, BUt i have never personally tried it. It can even be used for artifact's finding.
2)3dmark 2003: Its a bit old, Many people dont use this these days.
3)Fur mark: Thermal take says that it overly stress the gpu, Even the most demanding software also doesnt stress the gpu that much. But hey just to be sure you can use it.
4)OCCTGPU v0.64( recommended by Lopri)
Games and games look alikes.
When stressing out your gpu's always try to stress them with standard ones like CRYSIS or COD4.You can alternatively stress it with 3DMARk softwares.
some miscellenious ones/Game like stress testers:
Rthdribl: text
Nvidia only tools: Text
Aquamark3: Text
Cooling
Cooling is also a essential part of our discussion.
Few points i would like to make in this context:
1)Its always better to get a dual slot cooler as it keeps the chassis temperatures also under control, Instead of recirculating the hot air back into the case.
2)you can get custom make fans or after market coolers. But some vendors like XFX void your warranty for using them(personal experience).
Fixing the fan speed at 100%
Again this has the permanent way and the temporary way.
Temporary way: Goto Riva Tuner select the customize button for target adapter and select the left button. Now you can select the fan speed you want. Click the box next to Apply fan settings at windows startup.
Permanent way: This again has to do with BIOS flashing. Load the BIOS into Nibitor(refer to Permanent OC for how to do it) Select the fan speed you want and flash your current bios with the modified BIOS using NVFlash.
Yup thats all, Please post you valuable suggestions,comments everything.
I think I'm missing few points here and there, I will add them as soon as i remember them.
Reader's contribution/advices/recommendations
Zagood: He gave a link to a nice tutorial, Which deals with launcher options for Riva tuner.
Text
Lopri: He gave a link to a gpu stress test software.
Text
Stickied for a small time period at the OP's request.
Also added "STICKY" to the thread title.
Video Mod BFG10K.
