first time overclocker ... ntune or rivatuner?

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djjimmy2k2

New Member
hey. im trying to OC my 7900GS. ive never done it before so i thought id have a go at using a simple program like ntune to do it. i heard that ntune only works on nvidia mobos but that giving it a go wouldnt do any harm, just that if it didnt work it just wouldnt raise the values.

so last night i upped the GPU from the stock 450/660 to 500/690. i only did that bit because i found a thread on another forum by someone who did the same. anyway it worked great and raised my framerate in unreal tournament 3 from an average 25fps to 28fps. thing is, i had a look at the performance stats in nvidia monitorview and it said that the core value hadnt gone up and was still running at 450 rather than the 500 i tried to OC it to. and then i come back to the pc today and both values have been reset to stock. is it that ntune wont work properly cos i havent got a nvidia mobo or is it something else?

can i expect rivatuner to not make any difference or should i give it a go? if i OC my GPU will i have to change any other values, like for my fan, or can i get it up to a certain set of values without having to change anything else? if so what settings can i get it up to without changing anything other than the core and memory values?

thanks for the help.

P.S. i have a dell pc, which apparently are all but unoverclockable except for the GPU.
 
use rivatuner or ATITool for your gfx and clock gen is a decent software oc for your CPU, i have to use all software oc's on my laptop and those are the three I play with and it works perfect. ATITool is my favortie though cuz it shows real time GPU temps and a few other nice feautres
 
ride3k said:
use rivatuner or ATITool for your gfx and clock gen is a decent software oc for your CPU, i have to use all software oc's on my laptop and those are the three I play with and it works perfect. ATITool is my favortie though cuz it shows real time GPU temps and a few other nice feautres
Click to expand...

Like a Artifact Checker :P

Don't forget to check temperatures when overclocking!
 
thanks ride3k. like i said though, im only overclocking my GPU. my CPU is good enough for me already (core 2 duo E6600), so i dont need an app for that. thanks for recommending the others though.

ive tried getting the settings up with ntune again and ive got them up to 571/715, but (leading onto your point oscaryu1) the temp went up to 86C after playing UT3 for 10 mins so ive also upped the fan from 25% to 40%. that 15% rise has resulted in the temp going down from 86C to around 78-79C during UT3. and when idle it was 55C with the fan at 25% but now with the fan at 40% its about 45-48C. what should the optimal temps be for the card when idle and during performance heavy tasks?

does anyone have any idea what the ideal OC settings for a 7900GS are? i dont want to burn my card out but i do want to get some decent performance. so i dont want the settings at the highest they can go but i do want a bit of a performance improvement.

thanks for the help.
 
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This is totally of opinion but I go 100 on my fans when I overclock just for that extra cushion. And I have never had my gpu fan run at a hundred unless I made it and my temps would rise quite a bit into the high 70's so thats why I run the gpu fan on 100 when overclocking maybe you should try it? It won't hurt anything if you do and I would say it would hurt more if you didn't.
 
would that wear the fan out though? you said that youve never had your fans run at 100 but you put them to that so does it mean the value that your fans can go up to if they need it. do they run at whatever speed they need only when they need and slow down when they dont?
 
djjimmy2k2 said:
would that wear the fan out though? you said that youve never had your fans run at 100 but you put them to that so does it mean the value that your fans can go up to if they need it. do they run at whatever speed they need only when they need and slow down when they dont?
Click to expand...

Yes, noise level would increase and fan wear would be faster... but temperatures would be cooler. Value does not increase over speed of the fan. Some will increase speed when heat increases, while one stay at one constant speed. I've heard that Speedfan can change these speeds.
 
About them running the speed that they need to that is what I am unsure about you would like to think that they would as the temp goes up run a bit faster to offset it but I don't like anything running 80c in my computer but maybe the psu.


Since i have had my gts I have never seen the fan change speed even at 79c so I just used riva tuner to set it at 100 only when I get ready to play the games. and then back to stock afterward.

I would say running the fan at 100% would surely wear it out faster but if only for while games are being played will be much safer than all of the time.


There is an obvious risk you must take when overclocking. If you even want to call it that.
 
I've been overclocking GPUs for a while, and I've only had one fan die on me: the stock fan on a BFG 6600. But by then, a decent VGA cooler cost half as much as an XFX 6800GT/GS, so I just got a new one. AGP cards were pretty cheap, since PCIe was already out. I overclocked the XFX and eventually moved up to my current rig.

I performed a postmortem on the BFG. The fan had died due to dust buildup which clogged it and then burned it out. When the fan went, the core temp skyrocketed and cooked the thermal paste into powder. The core was still able to operate for basic desktop functionality, but overheated within 30 seconds of any graphics acceleration (i.e.-gaming).

Turn up the fan speed, make sure you keep it free of dust, and you should be fine. As I stated, it was the only time I'd ever had a fan burn out on me, and I'd OC'd two cards for several years before that with their fans running at full speed 100% of the time. The XFX ran for more than a year heavily OC'd with fan speed maxed out, and is still fully functional. It's going into a basic work box for my dad this Christmas.
 
Can't you also, with rivatuner and ntune, increase the fanspeed with the temp? Don't worry about wearing out the fan.
 
Hmm...my nTune stuff allows me to crank my fan speed up to 142.86% of stock max speed. This is on an EVGA 8600GTS (soon to be replaced by an 8800GTS when the new cores hit for that line).

After running an extended idle test (not to check real world performance, just a quick thing because I'm lazy), it has lowered idle temps from 52c to 48c. For reference, board is Asus M2N-E SLI, CPU is AMD Athlon X64 FX62 running @ 3.0GHz, case is Antec 900. CPU stays steady at 24c, system holds at 30c, before and after fan speed increase--so it's not like the higher fan speed is doing anything to airflow or spreading the hot air around to any great degree.

But it's noisy as a sumbitch, lol
 
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