Is it safe to OC a video card with is stock fan on it?

I have a 8800gt Card.. and was wondering if its safe to overclock it a bit. im am unsure what a safe temp is for a video card is all.
 

lovely?

Active Member
yeah its safe. set the fan anywhere between 45-60% and overclock the core and memory 100mhz each... that was plenty stable for me...
 
i turn up the speed of the fan for the GPU in bios, correct? also do u suggest OCing the video card with a 3rd party program or through bios? and do u need to set voltages like you do when overclocking a CPU?
 
where can i find a working version of that.. i tried installing and i got a error saying vista couldnt install the driver since it was unsigned or something
 

Jamin43

banned
i turn up the speed of the fan for the GPU in bios, correct? also do u suggest OCing the video card with a 3rd party program or through bios? and do u need to set voltages like you do when overclocking a CPU?

I see you have an EVGA card. Go to their website and sign up for Precision. You have to sign up to something in order to download it.

http://www.evga.com/precision/

It's a very user friendly application used to overclock their cards and control the fan speed. Just click and drag the GUI where you want the clock speed to be - same with fan speed.
 

mx344

New Member
^ yep, when i had my old 8400GS, i used riva,ntune, and evga precision, and i liked precision the best, it was soo simple to use the ui was great :good: for that program. I wish my 4670 overclockd like that 8400GS:( loved that thing.
 

konsole

Member
do some searches on the benefits of overclocking a video card. You may decide that its not worth the small performance increase. If you do decide to overclock the best way to see if the stock cooling setup is enough is to put a load on the card and then just play with the fan a bit to see if you can find a decent balance between cooling and noise. My 4870 runs at load at about 75 deg with a 35% fan speed. I can't imagine that 65% more fan speed isnt enough for some overclocking.
 

Fatback

VIP Member
do some searches on the benefits of overclocking a video card. You may decide that its not worth the small performance increase. If you do decide to overclock the best way to see if the stock cooling setup is enough is to put a load on the card and then just play with the fan a bit to see if you can find a decent balance between cooling and noise. My 4870 runs at load at about 75 deg with a 35% fan speed. I can't imagine that 65% more fan speed isnt enough for some overclocking.

My 4850 runs a load about 55C with my fan at 70% and I can barely hear it over my loud CPU fan. Noise doesn't bother me my computer sound like a 747 coming on to the runway getting ready for take off.
 

Twist86

Active Member
Precision is idiot proof and very simple...which I love about it.

Rivatuner is nice if you use fan profiles though...if I remember right you can actually have it overclock and underclock on certain settings (not 100% sure)
 
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lovely?

Active Member
i think so. in 2d mode it can be underclocked, and in 3d mode it will automatically overclock. i've never actually done that before...
 

diduknowthat

formerly liuliuboy
The 8800GT has a horrible stock heatsink, you probably won't get too much out of it. Right now my passive Accelero X1 keeps it a good 10ºC cooler than the stock heatsink on full blast, that's how bad it is.
 
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