How Do I Overclock My GTX260 and 7300LE Among Other Performance Questions
43 replies, posted
I have been running stock speeds since last year and I want to get some more power from my rig. I still haven't gone as far as overclocking.
Today I added an old 7300LE to take some stress off of the GTX260 to run my second monitor, hoping It would let me use it as targeting screen for DCS: Black Shark.
In the process of getting the 7300, I acquired:
2x 512mb DDR2 RAM
3x DC Brushless fans
1x Intel Pentium D820 2.8Ghz Core
1x DVD RW Drive
1x Samsung 250GB HDD
With three extra fans, I'm not too worried about heat gain from overclocking. Is there anything else I can do to increase performance? Here are my specs:
500GB HDD
Intel Core2 Duo E6850 @ 3Ghz
nVIDIA Geforce GTX260
nVIDIA Geforce 7300LE
4GB RAM
Windows Vista Home Premium 32Bit
To OC your videocard, I suggest RivaTuner to OC and Furmark to test stability.
For your CPU ask someone else. There's a good guide somewhere. You'll want to test stability with Prime95, though.
Any tips on not going overboard with it and killing my PC?
Take very small steps at a time (5-10mhz), then stability test it for at least several minutes.
[QUOTE=Shadaez;27726888]To OC your videocard, I suggest RivaTuner to OC and Furmark to test stability.
For your CPU ask someone else. There's a good guide somewhere. You'll want to test stability with Prime95, though.[/QUOTE]
I tried furmark myself, and it only taxed my gpu at around 75% (or so evga tells me), so probably not the best
The best think you can use for benchmarking is crysis. Itll tax your computer more than anything else
What is the difference between Memory Clock and Core Clock?
[QUOTE=Icedshot;27735583]I tried furmark myself, and it only taxed my gpu at around 75% (or so evga tells me), so probably not the best
The best think you can use for benchmarking is crysis. Itll tax your computer more than anything else[/QUOTE]
No it won't you're completely wrong.
[QUOTE=CoilingTesla;27735678]What is the difference between Memory Clock and Core Clock?[/QUOTE]
Memory clock is the speed of the video cards dedicated RAM memory, core clock is the speed of the graphics processor.
Core clock tends to be more sensitive to increase than memory clock, and where as the memory clock might happily take a 100 mhz increase the core clock might start giving problems after 30mhz. It depends on the card in question how far you can go really.
Furmark [i]should[/i] tax the GPU at very close to 100%. It together with a CPU benchmark program is probably the best benchmark for loading everything at 100%.
How do I go about raising my fan duty cycles? I have raised my GTX260's to 100% and the temperature went from ~80C to ~35C, how do I raise the cycles on the HDD fan, Processor fan, and cooling fan?
[editline]29th January 2011[/editline]
These are the GTX260's stock settings:
[img]http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5173/5399482280_ee0d604320_b.jpg[/img]
What do first?
[editline]29th January 2011[/editline]
Is SysTool a good overclocking tool?
[QUOTE=CoilingTesla;27737919]
Is SysTool a good overclocking tool?[/QUOTE]
Can you read at all?
[QUOTE=Shadaez;27726888]To OC your videocard, I suggest RivaTuner[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=chipset;27739830]Can you read at all?[/QUOTE]
I'm not just overclocking my video cards. Don't be an ass.
[QUOTE=CoilingTesla;27737919]How do I go about raising my fan duty cycles? I have raised my GTX260's to 100% and the temperature went from ~80C to ~35C, how do I raise the cycles on the HDD fan, Processor fan, and cooling fan?[/QUOTE]
HDDs tend not to have a fan controller, as the fans are usually case fans. And processor fans are normally controlled by something like Cool 'n' Quiet. doesn't stop you from changing it with something like Speedfan I think.
Speedfan will not recognize any fans other than the one in my 260. There are 2 case fans and a processor fan aswell.
Once you have found the maximum clock speed and such, you can create a custom BIOS image file with those numbers, and flash it to your card. This way, your card will always runs at its maximum potentials no matter which computer you install it on.
Mind explaining how? I've never dealt with the BIOS before.
Subsystems Diagnostic says that the GTX260 (stock) has 297MHz Memory Clock and 594MHz of that is effective, I have it set now at 1100MHz and it runs much better, and with no problems. It may be a stupid thing to ask, but is there anything I should worry about with it being nearly twice its effective clock?
You want to OC the CPU via BIOS only, unless you just want to test the stability before doing it via BIOS. I suggest doing it in the BIOS regardless, though. It's a skill that is nice to have. I think this is the guide I first read when I began overclocking [url]http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1804[/url] but really I learned from mostly trial and error and googling a few terms. Now I'm running a 3.2 Ghz 955 @ 4.1 Ghz at 50-60 Celsius under load.
I'll give that a look in a minute. What kind of performance increase did you get from OC'ing your CPU?
[editline]29th January 2011[/editline]
I still need to find out what motherboard I have, The owner's manual says nVIDIA nForce 980 SLI. It also says I have 8GB of RAM, so I'm not sure I can trust it.
[editline]29th January 2011[/editline]
That and the fact that it's from Dell.
[QUOTE=CoilingTesla;27743562]Mind explaining how? I've never dealt with the BIOS before.[/QUOTE]
Use Nibitor for dumping and editing the BIOS, and use nvflash to write it back to the card.
Just don't interrupt the flashing process, and don't edit any spaces that you don't know about.
Using NiBiTor, I tried to find my BIOS, but the .rom's I found in System32 did not show anything. Where should I look?
You suppose to DUMP the VGA BIOS from your graphics card first. GPU-Z allows you to do this by pressing this button:
[IMG]http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/2869/91388026el9.jpg[/IMG]
Is this a pre-built?
Yes, it's a Dell XPS720 with some upgrades.
How do I get to the settings for my CPU? GPU-Z only looks at video cards. How can I find out what kind of motherboard I have? Of course it only says Dell on it.
Speccy, CPU-Z
There are too many possibilities to check your specs and other stuff.
Also, you have a prebuilt Dell. Have a good day with accessing your BIOS and OC-ing your hardware.
Once something goes wrong with this computer I'm building one for myself. There was NO reason to have spent nearly 7 grand on this.
CoilingTesla's alt btw.
Why the dumb rating odellus?
[QUOTE=teslacoil;27760277]Once something goes wrong with this computer I'm building one for myself. There was NO reason to have spent nearly 7 grand on this.
CoilingTesla's alt btw.[/QUOTE]
My old computer was a 720 and it cost downwards of £1000, with all the highest options while customizing, how did you manage 7 grand?
Thats how much money has gone into it. It shit itself once and they had to send us another computer. My family will only buy a computer from Dell, so we've probably paid around 10 grand on computers in the last 3 years. Luckily, I convinced them to let me build the next one.
I've found a [URL="http://guide.opendns.com/track/click.php?curl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nvidia.com%2Fdocs%2FCP%2F45121%2Fnforce_680i_sli_overclocking.pdf&q=overclocking+nForce+680+SLI&head=%3Cb%3EnForce%3C%2Fb%3E+680i+%3Cb%3ESLI%3C%2Fb%3E+%3Cb%3EOverclocking%3C%2Fb%3E&network=yahoo-ysp&ad_grp=MAINRESULTS&ad_grp_pos=0&type=user_query"]45 page guide on overclocking the nForce 680 SLI and the Intel Core 2 Duo[/URL] from nVIDIA themselves.
You're wasting your time, I'm quite sure your BIOS have locked all overclocking potentials because you bought a prebuild.
I thought you could overclock from within the nVidia control panel, but maybe I'm wrong. RivaTuner is a great tool from what I hear, I normally don't overclock. This isn't the 90's, where a few extra MHz really made a difference. This is 2011, where it takes an extra 1GHz to be noticeable.
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