OC Video Card....Should I? How?

[Ratman_84]

Ok. Just want to know if I should overclock it. And if so, how to go about it.

My system specs are

Pentium 3 @450Mhz
128MB of SDRAM
Visiontek Xtasy Geforce 2 Ti

I got Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast and it's sweet. But i'm lagging and I don't want to. Imagine that. Mainly just in outdoor areas and areas with a lot of bad guys. Anyways, I was wondering with those system specs if I should even try overclocking. And if I should how should I go about that? I mean, do I up the memory clock or core or both? I tried moving up the memory clock and core speeds in equal incriments and that didn't seem to do anything. Should I just move the core speed up? Or just the memory? The core is currently at 250Mhz and the memory is at 400Mhz, the way it came out of the box. Any suggestions?

[onetrueday]

I would not suggest overclocking your video card. The reason is very simple, it's not worth the risk. I have 8 projecting heatsinks attached to my radeon8500, yet I run it at stock speed usually. Unlike your cpu, you dont have a temperature sensor on the videocard. This means that you could damage it.

I would strongly suggest getting some more ram. I would have to think that another 128meg stick might help a little. However, I can just assume that your setup might be destined to have some minor problems in heavy graphics parts of the game.

[YARDofSTUF]

try ur ram at 408, play for 35 mins

then try 415, then 420 and finally 425 if it works good between all other settings after playing the game, and if u want u can try 255 on ur core speed

[YARDofSTUF]

oh and use teh nvmax program

[aagiants]

i've overclocked 3 Vid card, (i know not that many) but i never modded any of them, i just OC to the max, then decrease by 10 MHZ

[wip3out]

The way I overclock vid card is by increasing the core by about 20 and the mem by 30. I then run the 3DMark2001 demo and look for artifacts and image distortion, if I see none I go up by 5 mhz core and 10mhz mem at a time until I see artifacts etc then I go back 5/10 on each.

When I have a core/mem I'm happy with I go and play Quake 3 and a few other games for 30 minutes each if I still see no image problems and it doesn't crash I keep the setting, otherwise I go down by 5 again.

Make sure to have good stock cooling a card cooler is also a good way to keep your card at reasonable temps ramsinks are also great for keeping the memory cool. I have a thermal probe on my Graphics card and the temp is very rarely over 40.C which in my oppinion is safe.

[Ratman_84]

Thanks for the replies. I figured i'm somewhat doomed considering my old, crusty system. But I wanted to see if I should try. Couple more questions popped into my mind though.


1. What is NVMax and how do I use it?

2. What driver revision should I use with my Geforce 2 Ti and system specs? I am currently using 23.11

[MikeyMan]

NvMax is a non nvidia tweaking utility. I used it when I had the 23.11s, it worked fine. The only problem I had was everyone once in awhile, my Geforce 3 settings would kick out to default. I'm not sure if it's because of nvmax or whatever reason. It works.

I'm using the latest dets, 28.32s. I had problems with nvmax so I deleted it and I am currently using nvidia quicktweak for my needs. Less options, but it's nvidia supported and hasn't failed working yet.

[wip3out]

Personally I used Power Strip for overclocking my graphics card.

http://www.rocketdownload.com/Details/Util/3495.htm

[Mark]

you can also try riva tuner http://www.majorgeeks.com/article.php?sid=737

it even comes with a refresh rate fix