Overclocking My Card, Which levels are safe? Options

[blueshogun96]

Ok, my current PC is crap for running modern games. I gots a Intel Celeron 2.6GHz, 256 MB ram, GeForce 5200 128 MB ram PCI (not express), and I forgot what my front side bus is. the Celeron is bad enough, but the fact that my gfx card is pci, that makes it even worse, and yes I do realize that a 5200 is low end. The reason why I use pci is because I don't have AGP slot, another reason why COMPAQ computers SUCK!!! Don't ever buy one if you are a serious gamer/developer like me. Ok, enough about that, my card gives me option where I can overclock my core clock frequency and my memory clock frequency. It was originally set to 250MHz for the core and 500MHz for memory. Yesterday I have risen the core frequency from 250 MHz to 310 MHz. I left the memory clock alone for now. The standard speed for a PCI slot is (afaik) 33MHz. Please tell me, which levels would be too high for my card? I don't want to dammage my hardware because not only is a GeForce 5200 the best thing in town I bought the last PCI card in town. And I currently can't afford the parts to build a new pc with PCI-E and an AMD 64 w/ 6 Gigs of ram. Thanks.

EDIT: The maximum for each are 500 MHz for my core freq. and 1.2GHz for my memory freq. Thanks again.

This post has been edited by blueshogun96: Mar 17 2005, 07:11 PM

[X_Gamer7]

Onboard components like onboard sound is also connected by the PCI bus and AGP is only an extention of the PCI bus so it too runs at two times the PCI clock.
Most PCI cards and components will work up to 37 or 38MHz but somewhere around that you may run into problems. The card or the whole system may become unstable around that mark but to know for sure you have to test it out.
If you can set such a divider manually you can try it. Running the PCI a bit slower shouldn't be a problem but above 38MHz you will soon run into trouble because PCI components are only meant to run at 33MHz and the graphic card will reach 75+MHz instead of the original 66MHz.

As far as overclocking the memory and core....first off, let me tell you that you will not see ANY difference in the games you want to play by overclocking a PCI card, it's just not going to happen. The card frequency of 33MHz is a bottleneck as it is, that is why PCI cards suck compared to AGP. But, if you really really want to overclock, download this benchmark tool called 3dmark2001se (www.3dmark.com) and install it. Now when overclocking your card, start with the core and raise it in 5 MHz incriments and after every increment, run 3dmark2001se and see if there are any visual defects (color distortion, random lines, checkerboard looks, etc). After you have found the highest setting the core can handle before giving visual artifacts, go -7MHz from that speed and keep it there. Next do the same thing for the memory, except go in 10MHz incriments and lower it 10MHz after you found the highest it can go.
-Later

[blueshogun96]

Thanks for your reply. I'll give it a shot when I get to a computer where I can download it. Does it tell me how hot my card is getting?