A guide to overclocking a GPU?

**Savage** · 02-24-11, 11:43 AM

Well I orginally had a nvidia 9600 gt 512mb which I fried though it was 2 years old or so then I purchased another nvidia card, i forget the name, which some how was damaged during installion , so I was out 100$. I decided to try a ati card next, so I bought a radeon 4350. It works alright but lately I've been having dips in my fps. Pretty much I'm wondering if there's a guide or program that could overclock it. All have is the original cooling system that came in the Dell.
Ps: I only want to overclock it about .3 - .4 ghz.

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**Sawemoff** · 02-24-11, 12:03 PM

Make sure you have a GPU temp monitoring program first of all to make sure your GPU's cooler is capable of controling temps of an OC card. Second, there are several tools for OC a GPU, most of which are software based (almost no one does it the hard way). This isnt the guide you are looking for but its a good start. If your FPS is dropping, I would definitely check GPU temps first to make sure it isnt throttling itself, in which case an OC wont help much.

Side note, OC on a GPU gives usually marginal gains at best, but sometimes its only a small boost thats needed. You may just be risking additional damage to your card without getting the performance gains you are hoping for. Just food for thought, hope it helps.

**HeavyG** · 02-24-11, 07:31 PM

Actually, I have found that almost anytime you overclock your GPU, you will see noticeable differences in gaming and benchmarks. You almost always notice more in a GPU overclock than from a CPU overclock.

Now the question is will overclocking an ATI 4350 make any difference at all, or will it just immediately crash?

**Savage** · 02-24-11, 07:46 PM

I found a program called ati tool, it seems to be a overclocking program, but how bigs the risk to oc a card?

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**Sawemoff** · 02-24-11, 07:48 PM

Maybe I just have bad luck, I have done quite significant OC on some past cards and seen very little change in my benchmarks. That being said, the current GTX 275's I have run faster than 2x 285's, but they have a more than adequate cooler on them so they can stand a significant overclock.

**Sawemoff** · 02-24-11, 07:51 PM

Best way to tell is by temperature. See what your current temps are, look up what is considered safe for that card, and try very small increases in 1 setting at a time and see how that changes the temps under load. If a very small change causes a significant temp increase, you are risking damage to the card.

Another thing to look for is graphical defects when doing tests. If you oc a small ammount and run a benchmark test, you may see some abnormalities in the graphics, certain things not being represented correctly etc, I'm too lazy at the moment to look up a good article online but a quick google search will tell you what to look for. If you see anything like that, it means the oc is too much for the GPU to handle and you should step back down.

**HeavyG** · 02-24-11, 11:11 PM

For ATI, I always used the ATI Overdrive function in Catalyst.

The good news is with overclocking a graphics card is that you can't really burn up a graphics card unless you are doing some serious modding. There are some hard core modders out there that do on board volt mods to increase the voltage so they can push the card to the extreme limits. Doing this type of overclocking really requires some pro level equipment like a digital multimeter. I fiddled with this in the past on my ATI HD2900XT. It was time to get a new card, and I wanted to see how far I could push it. This mod required me to actually solder an additional variable resistor onto the board. I had to find a guide with the schematics so I could find where to test the voltage with my multimeter.

End result was that I got a huge overclock, but the card just ran WAY too hot. I couldn't keep it cool with the stock fan, and I didn't have water cooling. I removed the mod and sold the card.

Software overclocking is much safer, and if you push the card to the point where the overclock settings make the card run hot, the card SHOULD shut down before causing any permanent damage to the physical hardware. You should see signs of a potential crash before it happens, such as artifacting on your screen.... colorful flashing lights that shouldn't be there start appearing... then crash to desktop. If too extreme, your PC may freeze all together. Reboot after letting it cool down for a minute or two, adjust your clock settings, and try again.

**Savage** · 02-25-11, 07:54 PM

I adjusted the GPU +20 MHz and the memory +30 is that a good to start?

**HeavyG** · 02-25-11, 08:19 PM

What are the stock clock speeds? I would say that is a safe start, but only overclock one of them at a time. Find a stable overclock for your memory first, then start to bump up the GPU clock.