How do i know whats stable when overclocking ? my 8600gt inspiron 1720 scores...

I had my 1st ever dabble in overclocking ,but im not sure how i know whats stable/safe or not ??

machine in my sig, i get around 3870 standard 3d mark 06 score
so i overclocked it using the nvid control panel overclokingand went up a bit more each time...

475/400 - 3870 standard

500/400 - 4079

530/451 - 4323

575/500 - 4677

625/550 - 5049 !!


then i stopped, as i wasnt sure what was safe ???? on the 625/550 i played cod 4 for about half hour , and also played some crysis, and it was fine,and i dabbled increasing settings too

what i want to know tho, is how do i know how far to push it and what could damage my machine ?

i have riva tuner but dont really know how to use it properly

and are they good scores/results for my card and machine ?

thanks folks !!

 

Yea, those are nice scores !
What driver are you using (the newest 169.25?) ?

 

Are those benchmarks in 1280x1024 resolution? If so, those scores are comparable with the GDDR3 8600M GT. Good job!

 

No it's 1024x768

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81852

I think it depends on your temps. If overclocking makes your GPU run at around 90C then I think it's a bit dangerous. Ask the overclockers

BTW, what drivers are you using?

 

just check there are no artifacts , if you get artifacts on the screen (white dots for memory artifacts and weird colours genrally for gpu) then you know there is a problem

 

If you come over 85C its not so smart, but under 85C the machine has no problems i think...

Also remember to se after artifacts when you running 3dmark...=)

 

Odds are those are the 1280x854 scores that the unregistered 3dmark06 will default to on 1440x900 screens.

 

thanks for the replies

how do i check artifacts ?? ive not heard of this before

also how do i check exactly what temperatures it reached ? is there a way of running and recording the temps as i play ?

im using 169.04 drivers, and ran in 1074x768 , i think i ran one in 1440x900 on my laptop screen and it got the same score

are the new drivers worth updating to ? ive been offline for a few days, are they real new ? any benefits ?

im just going to do dinner so il put one on right now....

 

1280x800 -

http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultanalyzer.jsp?projectType=14&XLID=0&UID=12825620

1440x900-

http://service.futuremark.com/orb/resultanalyzer.jsp?projectType=14&XLID=0&UID=12825366


how do they measure up ? have no idea what tempo im reaching tho ?

 

It's in the link in my first post

Here it is again: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81852

You need RivaTuner for that. You can also use it to overclock.

 

Follow this link: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81852

Here you can find you temperature, and ofc see the temp. while playing

While you are clocking you can puch the card until you se artifacts in 3dmark, then you have to clock back little bit

Artifacts=errors

 

ATItool Rivatuner and Ntune all work for both OC'ing and Temp monitoring.

 

I personally use riva tuner, its good to play a game with an overclock, but my favorite feature is that i can look back in time with its graph to check when i had the highest temp

i havent tried the other clockers, well, i havent tried ati tool since two laptops ago

 

I use PCWizard 2008, it gives a ton of system info that on the whole is generally useless, but if you minimize it, it puts a output in the upper right corner of your screen ( unfortunately doesn't display over full screen games ) that gives CPU temp, CPU load, GPU temp, and a few other things.

 

I'm really considering OC'ing my 1720 when it arrives, it's the same spec as yours. When it was OC'd what kind of FPS did you get in Crysis and so forth and on which detail? Thanks!

 

not sure of frame rates exactly as i dont test, but on standard settings it runs real fine on all settings medium on 1024x768 on my big tv ,which is its bative res, and that looks a lot better than the same res on the 17" laptop screen,i can run it in same settings on the laptop in 1440x900 on its native seting with a little overclocking and it looks great,but when im at home i prefer the bigger screen but cant do that res on that,its best to use the screen your playing on in its native res !
it looks fabulous as it is and fully playable on this machine,the only thing your missing out on is the finer detailing that a real high spec desktop can produce, i had a little go on it once overclocked and that would allow for little tweaks on the settings,but ive not had a chance to go right through it yet seeing what exactly it allows

i have bf2 runs full wack and superb as youd expect

pro evo 2008 - runs all on high top setting and looks and plays superb

colin mcrae dirt- runs all on medium but that looks absoloutly brilliant, had it running side by side on a machine running it all in top settings and the only difference was a bit more detail on the grass and a bit more of a metalic chine on the cars

call of duty 4 - runs brilliantly and looks amazing

crysis - looks amazing still and runs great, il take some screen shots for you when i play it in a bit !

when you get your machine youl love it, ive had mine about 3 weeks and its just brilliant and couldnt fault it !


....
to everyone else ...

thanks fellas, il give riva a try out, just got back ina dn ready for a few hours gaming after the fone jacker crimbo special

so do i just run rivatuner as i play and how do i look back at what temps i was reaching ? would be good if someone could exaplain the steps

ie... 1 start riva tuner
2.do whatever in riva

3 start game

etc ??

thanks !