How To Overclock Your Graphics Card

Overclocking is more popular than ever. And since it's so easy to boost the frequency of your Intel processor, it would be a shame not to. But CPUs aren't the only components that can be overclocked. The GPUs on graphics cards can also be speeded up, and so can their memory. And since an affordable card only differs from more expensive ones in its clock speed, overclocking can be your key to some real savings.

Overclocking a GPU is a less common process than overclocking a CPU, and above all, it's more complex. One of the reasons for that is that a graphics card's BIOS is not as easily accessible as a motherboard's. This article will shed some light on the different methods that can be used and the results you can expect when overclocking your graphics card.

[Kakkoii]

Quote: "And since an affordable card only differs from more expensive ones in its clock speed"

That's quite false.

If that were true. Then why would I buy a Radeon HD 3870 clocked at 800mhz, instead of the Radeon 3450 clocked at 800mhz?

Because the more expensive the card, the better features it has. Clockspeed has almost nothing to do with it.

The more expensive cards have more pixel pipelines/stream processing units, higher memory bitrate, more memory usually, a kind that can be pushed faster.

Also, "Architecture" is a main part of it to.

Why do you think that while Nvidia's graphics cards are clocked lower.. They still seem to beat ATI's cards in benchmarks?

It's because Nvidia has a better processing architecture.

Simply overclocking your card will almost never bring you the kind of gain that buying a better card would. Cause clock frequency is a VERY small part of the differences between cards.

[Bonsai1214]

yeah, clockspeed has little to do with performance in graphics cards, but its an ego boost to say yours is running faster than mine...

rivatuner ftw if you have an nvidia card. i'm still rocking an mx440 in my pc at home and intel integrated on my laptop. haha

[Charlie2688]

I find it disturbing to read a comment like that coming from such a highly respectable site as TomsHardware O.o

[TheIneffableBob]

Tom's Hardware has gone way down in credibility over the years.

They've put up some truly terrible articles. One of the worst was a graphics card review which was translated from Chinese to English. Half of it didn't even make sense.

[Bonsai1214]

most graphics cards today are meant to be overlocked by the buyer. i believe ATI packaged tools with theirs to do it. (if not ATI, some company did)

and like i said, Rivatuner can boost any nvidia card without any problems

[Pathard]

You sir, are very correct. Even with all that though, it does increase performance, but only slightly.

Still, it's fun to do. I enjoy it. To bad it's not like over-clocking a CPU which can really make a difference.

[Tyrael]

We need more articles like these "How to"

[DarkArcani]

Yeah instead of every crap quality vid of GTA4. Good thing I haven't watched any of them. I don't want to ruin the fun of "Oh my god...I can do that!?"

[HuntTheWumpus]

Great comment and I completely agree with the both of you.

+bubs

[v1c1ous]

websites that have like 1-3 paragraphs on a page and have the gall to spread that info into like 5+ pages (all with 1-3 paragraphs on them)

if you took the time to break the info down into so many pages with just a few paragraphs and 2 or 3 pics, why can't you just half the number of pages and double the amount of content?

not that i am complaining about the extra clicking, its visually annoying, time consuming, and just plain dumb.

[TheIneffableBob]

They do that to generate ad revenue by having the ads refreshed.

I hate it.