Overclocking: Beware !!

[Custodian]

Just thought I'd post this as overclocking seems to be getting common, with even us amateurs risking it to try and get more for our money. Many mags and web sites are giving tips on doing it...but if you are considering it you must understand the possible consequences !!

My mate blew up his ATI Radeon 32Mb this weekend :{
This guy knows his stuff and has been tweaking his kit for many years. He has had the ATI card for 6 months (he got it in the states), but at the weekend he got the Giants game which is famous for it's graphics. He decided to overclock the ATI card to get more out of it... and for the rest of Saturday was in awe of what he was looking at. HOWEVER, on Sunday it would not work at all. No more 3D card - and no more games :{. (He is now borrowing my old STB card just to play anything at all)

So if you are going to overclock, make sure that you are prepared to lose the gadget (this applies to processors and RAM as well as graphics cards).

[NUTTER12qw12qw]

yeah i know what you mean. I OCed an elsa mx and it crashed after two days. I though it was fried, but i reinstalled windows and it works fine know, phew
i learnt my lesson!

[-=Punisher=-]

LoL Nut, nice to see you got it fixed at least. You sure it was cos it was OC'ed?

Hehe dunno If I'll be OCing mine now! On its way...

[NUTTER12qw12qw]

nah it wasn't because of OCing. but i though it was and im just glad it wasn't fried [initial suspicions].

I will only OC if i add proper cooling from now on. [which i dont know how to do, so i won't].

[Evil The Cat]

I'v been OCing things for a while now with no damage to anything but thats down to cooling. I wouldnt bother trying without cooling coz A) u cant get that much more out of anything B) screwing your expencive hardware is a real pain in the ass. I usally just push me old voodoo 2 well behond its limits on my old pc for fun, me GTS on this pc is being a real bitch so im leaving it alone. The oddest story I have heard is one of me mates had a voodoo 3 that actually melted onto his motherboard. :(

[NUTTER12qw12qw]

LOL
i used to have a voodoo3 2000, and that thing got quite hot without OCing. I never had probs with it though, just that i can see how not adding cooling could melt the sucker [if u OC].

the problem with my mx was probably something to do with fast-writes being on. But i don't want to OC because i just want a stable PC. Its still fast, maybe i'll OC when it starts to feel slow :) ...

[Custodian]

My thoughts exactly Nutter...
The processor is new, the graphics card is new, and everything is running loverly. Maybe in a year I will feel like I need more...and maybe then I will consider tweaking before buying new.

[[)REA[)]

I agree that if you have a good system (Geforce2 etc) there is no real need for overclocking just yet really.
But people should not be scared of OCing. If read a few good sites tips and make sure you know what you are doing it can be done very safely even without extra cooling. You see manufactures build such high failure margin into their products that you can take thier setting much higher. Also most cards will crash if you take them to high and thus stop you from going any higher and busting them. I have overclocked my MX from 175 core and 183 mem up to 220 and 205 without any problems and a massive increase in performance. If you want do do some extreme OCing then you will need extra cooling. But i'm not going to bother adding extra cooling fans because by the time most games released won't run on an MX, i will be cheap enough just to upgrade.

PS. If you are thinking of buying an MX based card and OCing it, get the Hurcules Prophet 2. It's the fastest MX card anyway but its also the safest and easiest MX to OC.

[NUTTER12qw12qw]

true true.
what sort of performance increase u get? on 3dmark defualt non OC o got 4100 [175 clock, 166 mem]. at 200 clock and 190 mem i got 4500.
I got a good performance increase in q3. At high detail 1024 res in 32 bit colour i got 60.1 fps in timedemo 1 [non OC 50fps]. Hmmmm

[[)REA[)]

Overclocking my Prophet 2 MX gave me 1,000 extra 3Dmark's! and the framerate in UT went up quite a lot.

[NUTTER12qw12qw]

thats good! what cpu? [im using duron 700mhz non OCed].
I was gonna get the hercules, but i got the elsa for £60 inc.vat, bargain. I still dont get how some people get like 6000 3dmarks though?!?

[Dr.Sebastian]

I OC'ed my HercMX to 200/200 and got an extra 500 3DMarks immediately.

I now get 4850-4900, but that's on a 1GHz T-bird/128MB RAM system....I was kind of hoping for more.

Mind you, that's the standard drivers - I tried the Dets and they screwed Half-Life completely :(

[NUTTER12qw12qw]

get Dets 6.34, they work with HL for me. i tried the det 7.17 and HL wouldn't load.

[I HATE BT]

lol
bloody overclockers :)

[Custodian]

Originally posted by NUTTER12qw12qw
I still dont get how some people get like 6000 3dmarks though?!?
Because we got a PIII800 and a GF2 GTS (=6800ish 3DMarks for me) :E

[Pike]

<boast> AMD 900 + GF2 = 6107 3D Marks :P (Unoverclocked)</boast>

[SKILL]

ok, my turn:
<boast>My herc mx can run at 230core/225mem with no extra cooling</boast> obviously i don't play games at that speed i use the much more conservative 220core/220mem, also if you leave the card at just below the highest you can clock it to and loop 3dmark2000 for a couple of hours the the card will run faster, now i just need a blue orb and a faster cpu the athlon 500 is slowing me up a lot, but i can get 4221 3dmarks, and 40 fps constantly in q3 at 1280x1024x32 with everything else on high :)

[NUTTER12qw12qw]

No no
i was talkign about people getting 5000-6000 on a mx!

[Schmoovey]

While ur all on about Geforcey's and overclockin' check this out,

http://www.guru3d.com/guide/quadro-modify/

[B1AS]

nutter m8
i got the Elsa as well. running it at 213 core and 203 memory on a Piii 700@945+ but @220/210 it gives me 5920 as best so far. I want 6000 soooooo badly! Not bad for £60. :)

If I take the card any higher it locks 3D2K ( think its cos me AGP bus is running @ 90mhz )
Guess I'll have to do like SKILL says and burn that baby in for a while.

[NUTTER12qw12qw]

yeah. You will notice the biggest performance increase in 32bit colour when u OC.
my q3 timedemo 1, demo 1. at 1024 all on high detail at 32 bit colour went from 50fps to 60 fps. when i OCed to 200core/190mem