GeForce Overclocking!!

[MagicalVacation]

Hya there, I've been looking into improving the performance of my GeForce 4 Ti 4600 quite some time now. And I've heard from one of my classmates that overclocking your GeForce 4 Ti 4600 should really improve performance. He currently has a score of around 15000 on 3DMark2001 SE. I don't think I have to tell you, this is exactly what my wildest performance dreams are about.

Only problem is, I don't know the first thing about overclocking. I've never done it before in my life, I'm not familiar with all the different terms. I wouldn't even know where to start. Do I need extra cooling? Do I have to tinker with the actual hardware or is it all done with software? Is there a risk of permanent damage? A lot of questions as you can no doubt see.

I'm VERY interested in knowing more.

Thanx,

-MagicalVacation.

 

[Big B]

Understand that if the hardware dies from overclocking and the company finds out, they void your warranty.

However, if you don't try to jack the speed up right off the bat and take it slowly, you can get some nice increases without worry.

Anymore, the memory clock and the core clock (the GPU) are adjusted independently of each other. You'll need to get some sort of software to do this by. I personally like Riva Tuner, which can be had from Guru of 3D.

Take it slowly, only raising the clock speeds by a few MHz at a time (3-5MHz is good), running stuff like 3DMark 2001 (or even 2003) and other games that slap the video card around---which most first person shooters fit the bill. If you clock the RAM too far, you'll start noticing something like snow on your screen (and now I forget the name for it)---that's an indication that the RAM is about at it's breaking point. Cooling won't help you get further, since it has to do with how fast the transistors in the RAM can switch on and off. If the GPU goes to high, things will start locking up and/or crash back to the desktop. This will take time to figure out, and it's all based on what card you have. Some will overclock much better than others, even among the same brand.

I wouldn't modify the card unless you are a hard core overclocker. I overclock, but I typically don't do much in the way of modifying it. I have slapped some RAM sinks on the memory, but that's more to keep them cool than anything else. I can tell you that they do absolutly nothing to increase your overclocking potential. Of course, you may already have RAM sinks on your Ti4600---and in that case, leave the card alone.