Page 13 (Overclocking)
Overclocking & Tweaking
As most of you with most videocards know, you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. You can do this at two levels, namely tweaking by enabling registry or BIOS hacks, or very simple, tamper with Image Quality. And then there is overclocking, which will give you the best possible results by far.
What do we need?One of the best tool for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is our own Rivatuner that you can download here. If you own an ATI or NVIDIA graphics card then the manufacturer actually has very nice built in options for you that can be found in the display driver properties.
Where should we go ?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard but it really can be done in less then a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners not to increase the frequency any higher then 5% of the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 500 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest you don't increase the frequency any higher than 25 to 50 MHz.
More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 10-15 MHz and leave it at that. Usually when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 20 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today tested cards anyway but we'll show it still ;)
All in all... do it at your own risk.
The card at standard comes pre-overclocked. And despite it's passively cooled, there's definitely room for some more though. XFX card can be pushed towards a core frequency of 675 MHz, the memory at 945 MHz. Not bad, we can squeeze another few frames per second out of games.
Now we also did some testing here with Prey at 4xAA and 16xAF. I placed them in this chart:
Always bare in mind that our results are an indication and most definitely not a guarantee. Each product can actually differ a little with tweaking results. Your system for example makes a difference, PSU, FSB. Memory but also stuff like your surroundings, do you live in Greece ? it's rather hot over there isn't it ? Such factors all have an influence on overclocking.
be sure to try out our own made leading tweak and overclock software, RivaTuner.
