LOL, Catchy title huh. Yeah I did OC my card to like 380 mhz and now when checking nvidia display at clock frequency I see it at 350 MHZ it was set back. Why? =Nm theres an option to keep these settings at start up. Also should I check leave card on at all times when over clocking? Isn't it on at all times the pc running? Does this mean on even when the rest of the PC is off. That doesn't really make sence.

Also my core clock default is 350 mhz. Isn't that pretty friken low? I mean I lookat cards like these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102492 with core clock at 500 MHZ.
I see cards with core at 1500 mhz. Im starting to think I should of looked more into Core clock frequencys then DDR3 and MB. The 6800 gs has sucky core clock compared to all these cards. Man I think pny Under CLocked my card why? CHECK THIS OUT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814141015 510 mhz core clock
Now I see a pricy clock with just 490 mhz core.
Heres my card except PCIX16 with 128 mb instead of 256 mb core clock 325 mhz. The X800 GTO has huge core clock frequencys like 800-900. HERES THE eVGA Geforce FX5500 256-A8-N313-LX Video Card - Retail With a memory clock 50 mhz higher then mine? I am completly and uderly confused.

Like CPUs, there are tons of different GPUs out there, each with their own clockspeed. And like CPUs, a higher clock speed doesn't necessarily mean a faster card.

Also, you can run your card OCed 24/7 if you want, I don't really see alot of problem in that. There's no real evidence that doing that instead of having it overclocked only if you need it will reduce the lifespan of your card. Plenty of suggestory evidence that overclocking will destroy your card, but there's alot of firm evidence that overclocking doesn't do much harm if done properly.

Anyway, I just realised you didn't even tell us what your card is. For all we know, you're talking about an 8 year old GeForce2 or something....

Is it safe to overclock your card when running some programs that are heavy on the GPU then moving it back down to default or close to it when doing things less heavy on the gpu? Not to stress the card as much? Im running a Pentium 4 Northwood Processor oc'd from 2.8 to 3.05 and a nvidia geforce pny 6800 gs overclocked to 390 mhz from 350 mhz. It idles at like 64 degrees right now which is great and thats with my desktop fan off.

I personally have a Northwood 2.4@3.31, and I had an X800XT 500/500@579/579. I didn't clock the GC 24/7 only because its so easy to clock it back down. My CPU is OCed 24/7.

And so far I've got no problems whatsoever.

You probably can push your 6800 a little more.

Personally I think there shouldn't be any problems overclocking, even 24/7. Or at least thats what I think from my understanding of how these silicon chips work. Of course, I'm not talking about raising the voltages, if you do that, its an entirely different matter.

Even if you did increase the voltage just a little, the life of the chip probably went down from 10 years to 7 (depending on how high), so it shouldn't make a difference anyway. A 7 year old chip screams for an upgrade

Where can you raise the voltage? Isn't not the memory clock frequency right? Mine is default 1.0 gHZ.

Thats the mem clock frequency. Voltages is a different thing, and thats done in BIOS. I wouldn't recommend messing with that unless you know exactly what you're doing. Damage done when playing with the voltage is permanent, and may cause more than just the GC/CPU to malfunction.

More on the mem clock frequency, changing that with the VCore produces some very nice results. Mess around there instead.

Hey, im still totally confused about the core clock thing.

I'm not very good at explaining it.

Think of baking cookies. In one kitchen, you can bake a batch of cookies in 5 mins, and in another, you can bake it in 10 mins. The first one you can bake 5 cookies in a batch, while the second one will only allow you to bake 20 cookies in a batch (oven not big enough?)

So the total cookies you can bake is more in the second kitchen, even though it takes longer to bake them.


In about the same way, the core clock works. An intel 3ghz goes through 3,000,000,000 cycles a second, while a comparable athlon does much less cycles a second, but when compared side by side, the athlon may do as much work as an Intel.

Remember that a higher clock MAY be beneficial in certain applications. Back to the kitchen scenario, if you only needed to produce 5 cookies...

Hope that helps. Maybe someone can correct me if I'm wrong.

So how does overclocking the core clock mhz make it better? Lol? More cookies in more time? But your just moving the core not the memory. If moving the bar up is good then why not get a card where that bar is already really high up ? {exmp. core clock 1000 mhZ}

Every mhz matters when you overclock a video card and you can see performance bost instantly.

I can see that you're still confused.

Back to the analogy: The 2 different kitchens represent 2 different types of cards, such as the ATI9700 and the ATI X800. I can't be bothered digging the specs now, but lets just for argument's sake say that the 9700 runs at a higher frequency than the X800.

Upping the core frequency on one of the cards, will reduce the amount of time taken to bake one batch of cookies. So there more or less always a performance increase when you overclock a card. However, you may be limited elsewhere, such as RAM (how fast your mixer can mix the cookie dough?)

My last overclock, increasing the clock didn't make much of a difference past a certain point, cos I was bottlenecked by my CPU.

Anyway, the scenario is that the 9700 has a higher clock than the X800. Again, go back to the analogy. The 9700 is like the 5 minute kitchen, and the X800 is the 10 minute kitchen. The 9700 might be able to make only 100 cookies each batch, but the X800 can make 1000. In an hour, the 9700 only produces 1200 cookies, but the X800 made 6000.

Now, change cookies to instructions, and make the time for each batch to fractions of a second, and the amount each batch to a few hundred thousand. Now you should get the idea.