Coolbits 2

[MartinW 0]

Have any of you nVidia boys tried it???

It's not a separate overclocking utility like you would think; rather it's a feature of the nVidia driver that's hidden. nVidia in their wisdom obviously decided to keep it hidden without a registry change so that naughty people wouldn't get carried away and blow up their cards. :chuckle:

Any way, you can do it the hard way and alter the registry yourself, or have a bash the easy way and use the following utility. :dance:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=815

Once installed you will find the overclocking section in the 3D settings section of the Control Panel, complete with lots of overclocking options. You can allow Coolbits to automatically overclock, set the best stable overclock or set your own overclocking settings. :???:

I used the best stable setting and achieved a noticeable increase in FPS in FSX. My card is capable of running much higher in a stable fashion so when I get round to it I'll give it a bash.

My card is the 7900gtx which runs very cool at stock frequencies and is very overclockable.

Warning: Overclocking can seriously damage your hardware and void the waranty, do not attempt unless you are aware of this, and always overclock in 'very' small increments and test thoroughly for artefacts and stability each time. Also monitor temperatures very closely baring in mind the cards thermal limitations.

I'll let you know what transpires if I go for higher speeds.

[dgor 0]

Thanks Martin - will let you know how I get on.

I'm completely new to overclocking so how far do you think I could safely overclock a 7600GT that's already been slightly OC'ed in the factory?

Dave :-)

[mutley 4,498]

Thanks Martin,

I will definitely give it a try.

Cheers

[MartinW 0]

620/1600 I have seen with that card Dave but that was with a Zalman cooler.

What sort of cooler do you have, if it's passive then you are limited. However you can add a fan to a passive cooler.

Try the gentle/stable overclock provided by Coolbits first, it will only overclock a tad but you should see an improvement in performance. The improvement will be more in games than FSX as FSX is CPU dependent.

BE VERY careful though. Just a little bit at a time and test thoroughly for weird visual artefacts and excessive temperature.

Remember thoughtless overclocking can damage your card.

Remember to use the 'test' function to check after each small increase.

The GPU has thermal throttling to protect it in case of overheat but you still need to be careful, do some research to find out your max recommended temp. :-)

[MartinW 0]

I recall that the smelly old Mut has the same card as me, the 7900gtx, in which case it's claimed in the reviews for the card that it can handle 700/1800 without difficulty, at the moment I'm just up a tad but will 'incrementally try higher when I get in the mood for a thrill.

[dgor 0]

Martin, the cooler is just the stock fan I'm afraid.

I tried the "Find Optimal" option and it put them up quite a bit with no stability problems, however that was with the computer idle. I have since reset them to their default values, and am going to load up Battlefield 2 (my most gfx-dependant game) and see what it gives me with the "Find Optimal" option then. If it's stable I'll keep it and try her in FS9. (nope, still haven't got FSX!)

Do you think I should leave it so that the fan always runs at its highest speed? It's a noisy little thing :dance:

Dave

[mutley 4,498]

I used the find optimal feature and edged that the settings up to 1700 / 700 tried the test button and nothing happened :dance:

Also, is is wise to always run the fan at it's highest speed?

[dgor 0]

Hi,

I loaded up BF2 and midway through used the Find Optimal feature. It gave me a new core clock speed of 617MHz (as opposed to the original 580MHz) and a memory clock of 1616MHz (1450MHz standard). I left the "always run fan at highest speed" option out so that the fan will only speed up when it needs to BF2 ran very well, with no instability or artefacts. Even after an hour of constant playing the core temperature of the card did not rise above 71*C, comfortably off my slowdown threshold of 115*C.

Grr...now when I hit the test button so I can apply the settings (out of BF2), it puts the speeds up higher than I want them. If I change them I need to hit the Test button again and the whole process starts again - anyone know a way around this?

[MartinW 0]

Don't know why you are using ‘find optimal’ while in the game Dave.

Find optimal just sets a stable optimal setting as far as I can tell, you don't have to run the game, pause it and then set optimal. Just set optimal while at the desktop and leave at that.

I will do some research on this and see what I can find out.

As for fan speed always max, I find with mine that if I un-tick it is re ticked when I reboot. My card is very noisy and never seems to change volume; I have suspected before that the RPM never changes. :-)

A. The 'fan always on' option is for cards with the OTES (i.e. 5800U) or similar cooling system in which shuts off in 2d mode. It will force fan on even in 2D mode. Of course this means the fans on the hs/f be designed such a way that this option can work.

[dgor 0]

Don't know why you are using ‘find optimal’ while in the game Dave.

Find optimal just sets a stable optimal setting as far as I can tell, you don't have to run the game, pause it and then set optimal. Just set optimal while at the desktop and leave at that.

I will do some research on this and see what I can find out.

Hi,

I thought that if I did it on the desktop it would set a different speed than it would when the card is actually under load, mabye I was wrong - like I said, completely new to overclocking! :dance:

[MartinW 0]

Just run it on the desktop and Once content with the Clock Frequencies and performance, opt to load these settings at start up to avoid the necessity of going through the entire process over again. :-)

[MartinW 0]

Getting the hang of this now.

I just tried setting the max frequencies manually, it then demands that you test the frequencies if you try to click apply. If you click test and it doesn't like the settings it backs them off to the max it will go. If it likes your settings it leaves them be.

Anyway, at the max it would let me go, (1700/700) it slammed my 3D Mark 06 score in half. :sadblinky:

It was obviously overheating and throttling back, despite my temperature readings still under 40, obviously my temp reading is nonsense, either a driver issue or a thermal sensor issue, any way it was way too high.

Reverted back to optimum, 1664/685 and the score was:

6673

sm2.0 = 2713

HDR SM3.0 = 2614

CPU = 2703

So that’s obviously my max, don't know if better cooling would enable me to go higher.

Does show though that the 'optimum' setting does the trick in Coolbits, no reason to try higher.

By the way, I discovered that it occasionally jams the frequency on your previous manually adjusted setting and hides 'apply'

In that case set back to factory default and then run optimum again but only click apply after running optimum, not test.