Mar 11th 2008

In the past, overclocking is a difficult skill mastered only by extreme computer enthusiasts. This is no longer the case now. With some third party overclocking software, you can easily overclock your computer parts (mainly CPU, memory and video card). Here is a guide to overclock your video card…all by yourself.

1) Download RivaTuner

RivaTuner is one the leading tweak utility available for NVIDIA GeForce and ATI Radeon based videocards. It provides necessary tweak and simple interface to allow you to overclock your Nvidia or AMD based video card.

Download here. Once you have downloaded it, install it in your system.

2) Set Fan Speed

As you overclock the video card, it is a common behavior for the GPU to generate more heat. To prevent thing from getting too hot (and break your video card), you have to adjust the fan speed to provide more cooling.

In RivaTuner, click the “Customize”” button in the Target Adapter box and then click the Videocard icon to open the System Tweaks window. Click the Fan tab. Place a check next to “Enable low-level fan control”: Since we are overclocking the GPU to its extreme, we want to keep it as cool as possible. To do that, click Fixed (100% duty cycle). Now, push the slider all the way to the right (to 100%) and click Apply. This will make the fan run at full speed. Next, check the box “Apply fan settings at Windows startup” and “Restore fan settings after suspended mode”.

Click OK.

3) Adjust the Core Speed

Click the “Customize” button again. This time, go to the overclocking tab and place a check in the box “Enable low-level hardware overclocking”. This will require you to reboot your computer. After rebooting, go back to the Customize -> Video -> Overclocking page again. Now slowly drag the Core clock slider to the right, in increments of 25MHz. If the system become unstable, back down in increment of 5MHz until it become stable.

If you are using a Nvidia video card, you will see a dropdown menu at the top. Choose Performance 3D. There is also an additional slider that allows you to adjust the shader clock. To keep thing simple, we put a check beside the “Link clock” so that the shader clock will adjust itself accordingly to the Core clock. Once you have adjusted the Core clock timing, put a check beside “Apply overclocking at Windows startup”.

Click OK.

You may want to run a stress test before you proceed on to adjust the memory clock. That will take about an hour or two. If not, you can continue to overclock the memory clock.

4) Adjust the Memory Clock

The step here is the same as step 3, just that this time you are moving the memory clock slider. Start with a small increment of 5 – 10 MHz. Stop at the point when a yellow warning icon appears. This is what RivaTuner perceived to be the maximum setting. From this point, you might want to back down another 5MHz. Place a check beside the box “Apply overclocking at Windows startup”

5) Run stress test

Download Nvidia NeoForms. Install it and run it for an hour. If the system appears unstable, readjust the setting in RivaTuner. Repeat until everything seems fine.

You have just overclocked your video card, all by yourself.