Page 16 - 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 than 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 still show it ;)
All in all... do it at your own risk.
The 8800 GTS 512MB is at standard at 650 (core) / 1625 (shaders) / 1600 (memory) clocks.
Overclocking: Prey
Prey tells the story of Tommy, a Cherokee garage mechanic stuck on a reservation going nowhere. Abducted along with his people to a menacing mother ship orbiting Earth, he sets out to save himself and his girlfriend and eventually his planet.
In Prey, players enter a living spaceship that enslaves alien races and devours humans for lunch. Prey turns the first-person-shooter genre upside-down with new gameplay features like wall-walking and gravity flipping, making for intense single- and multiplayer experiences. Prey is built on a heavily modified version of the Doom 3 engine and is developed by Human Head Studios under the direction of 3D Realms.
Image Quality setting:
- 4x Anti Aliasing
- 16x anisotropic filtering
There's definitely room for some more tweaking. Now both the BFG and POV cards are already overclocked. That doesn't mean it ends right there though. No both cards can be overclocked pretty much to the same frequency. We where able to push the core to 750 MHz, shaders to 1890 MHz and the memory towards a lovely 2200 MHz, at 1920x1200 that's good for an additional 8% performance.
