How to Overclock a Video Card

Posted on April 25th, 2009 by Marck

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Many gamers want to have a high-performance gaming computer, but parts for a high-end PC can be quite expensive. Computers on a budget have to tinker with the parts available to them to meet the standards of the most powerful and more expensive computer components available on the market. Overclocking your video card is one way for you to improve your computer’s performance to match some of the most powerful computers available on the market.

What is Overclocking?

The speed of a processor is determined in hertz, which in turn is defined by the clock rate. The clock rate is the number of clock cycles a processor (both the CPU and the GPU) has per second. Ideally, the clock rate of a processor should not be tinkered around with to prevent overheating. In theory, however, you can push the clock rate of a processor far enough to match the performance of a higher-level processor.

Warnings

Overclocking is not recommended by manufacturers of video cards. You may void the warranty if you overclock your video card.
You cannot overclock a built-in video card.
When you overclock the video card, make sure that the computer case has enough cooling devices to keep the inside of your computer working at the recommended temperature range. You may need to buy a bigger case and additional pipes. You may also need to buy cooling systems like heat pipes in case you overclock both the CPU and the GPU.

Overclocking Steps

Overclocking can get a bit tricky; not all video cards are made the same way. Remember that the steps described below are not interchangeable, and you need to follow the steps in the correct order.

Make of the Card

First you need to determine if you’re running an ATI card or an NVIDIA card:

Go to the Start Menu and activate the Run command. Type “dxdiag” on the command line.
Go to the “Display” tab and see if your machine is running an ATI or NVIDIA graphics card.
Before overclocking your card, make sure to update the device drivers.

Overclocking an ATI Card

If you have an ATI card, follow these steps:

Acquire or download a copy of RivaTuner.
From the RivaTuner window, click on the “Customize” tab and select the “Low Level System Settings” icon.
Enable low-level hardware overclocking. RivaTuner will prompt you to reboot the computer or detect the default frequency with the system still running. You may choose the “Detect Now” option if you don’t have any overclocking utility running on your system processes. If you want a more accurate reading of the clock rate of the graphics card, reboot the computer.
To tweak the clock rate, move the slider bars gradually along the limits set by the arrows on the core clock and memory clock options. Move the bars 5 MHz at a time, and click the “Test” button to see if the new settings are to your liking.

Overclocking an NVIDIA Card

If you have an NVIDIA card, follow these steps:

Enable the CoolBits tweak by opening RegEdit (type “regedit” on the command line) and search for the string “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak.”
Change the value of CoolBits to “3″ to activate it. Save all settings and open the NVIDIA control panel either from the system tray or from the Control Panel.
Set the utility to “Manual Overclocking,” and move the slider bar 5 MHz at a time.
Test the new clock rate settings by clicking on the “Test Changes” button.

Overclocking may seem to be intimidating at first, but it’s fairly easy to tweak settings that can give you a high-performance graphics card even with a less-expensive graphics card model.