overclocking videocard..

[ZEROKOOL]

well i tried a few differant way of overclocking my vid. card,a PNY Ti4200 64meg, 250/500 model and i use the coolbits reg mod. and one way i use is to just put the clock up to 275/550 and keep moving (slowly!!)in a 1:2 ratio or, as sugested on another forum, is to take the core, and pussytoe it up till u get artifiacts.. mine stops at about 315/325 depending...and then ram causes pc to basicly become non-op when oc'd past 550 in this maner, thats ok, i left it at 315/550 and tryed to play a game of ut2k3, well game had MADDD artifacts, so i decreased to about 300/550, well more artifacts, so i put it back down to 280/560 my normaly OC, and it works fine, is there anyway i can get it to stay up at 315/550?? i herd about volt-mods, and got no clue how to do it. this is my old rig a del optiplex150, a p3 1ghz 512mushkin ram(pc133) and thats about all that matters, will it run better in my new rig? a watercooled asusp4p800 a watercooled 2.8p4c i got a koolance case, and im still debating what ram to get, probably the OCZ pc4000 gold edition, i dont care if i physicly mod the card and or break it trying,as i will be getting SOMETHING new (probably a FX5900 or FX5900U) when Half Life2/Doom3 come out. oh yea, i plan on OC'ing the **** out of the new system hoping to hit 4ghz and 1100-1300mhz bus

[Austin]

Sorry but you've been using a dangerous method of o/c'ing. Start at default clocks and then find the limit of your RAM using small (5mhz?) increases and test thoroughly each time. When you find the limit then back off at least 10mhz. Repeat for your core. That's the best way to o/c your gfx card. Do NOT leave it close to the limits as this can stress your card too much and often leads to a fault developing or artifacts creeping in esp in games which test your card more.

You may get from 250/500 to 255/505 or you may get 325/625 but most likely somewhere between. You can get higher by using AGP Driving or over-volting the AGP Slot but both are likely to carry dire consequences. You can try disabling things like Fast Writes and Sideband but then this can offset the slightly higher clocks.

Using a 1ghz CPU will largely rule out any gfx o/c as the 4200 deserves something much more powerful. Add things like 2xAA+8xAF and ensure you use full details then up the res as perf hits for this should be minor and use up some of the untapped power of your gfx card. 4200 really gain well from a faster CPU so yes it will yield MUCH higher perf. If you o/c your P4 I would suggest using safer methods than you have for you gfx card!

[james4i]

i need help.

how to overclock Gainward Fx5200 128mb?

[Austin]

Same process. First you need tweaking sw or simply apply the Coolbits Registry Hack to show the std nVidia o/c'ing tool in Display Porperties -> Advanced.

You should find FX5200 is 250/400 (core/RAM) but don't be surprised if you're lower as it now seems common practice to sell low end cards underclocked with cheap parts on them. Look at the core of your card, if it has a fan it should o/c well otherwise (HS) leave it well alone and concentrate on the RAM. So I'd suggest doing the RAM first. Simply add 5mhz at a time to the clock and test thoroughly looking for instability, visual glitches etc. When you get instability (etc) put the card back to the revious setting and you've found your RAM's 'limit', then simply back off at least 10mhz as you don't want to operate too near the limit. Repeat the procedure for the core.