Is overclocking bad in this particular situtation?

Well generally overclocking = bad, because the extra heat produced shortens the lifespan of cards. However I've got a rather unique situation here...where my overclock speeds are sometimes even cooler than my underclocked speeds. I'm not really sure how my fans work, but it seems like they won't kick in unless my GPU is under heavy load.

Hence when I'm overlocked to 600/900 and playing heavy load games like COD4, Crysis and even TF2, more heat is produced and my fans goes up to 6000rpm and that keeps my GPU cooled at about 82 C. On the other hand, a totally non graphic intensive game like WC3 goes up to 82 C as well when my GPU is underclocked to 375/502, but my system feels no need to cool the system so the fans remain spinning at about 1000 - 2000rpm.

In short, I get roughly the same temperatures whether my games are overclocked or underclocked, and in some cases it's actually cooler while overclocked. Since I've read that basically the main thing that's bad with overclocking is that the extra heat produced, does it really matter in my case since temperatures are the same both ways?

 

It's the heat and also voltage in most cases.

If you don't see much difference and the OC is not more than 10%,I don't think you have much to worry about.

 

Voltage should not be changing (unless you have made changes somehow)

Heat is the enemy here and if you run at 82C (hot but not rediculously so) at all times then more than likely you are not going to run into an issue.

Note you are still shortening the lifespan... but odds are you won't be using this machine in 10-15 years anyway.

 

I always crank my fans up when OCing the vid card, at stock settings my idle temps are nearly as high as my load temps with the fans cranked. In an effort to reduce noise, I think the cards run too warm at idle, with riva tuner i set 2 fan profiles, 80% when less than 60c and 100% when over.

 

Is there anyway to even adjust my fan speed with Rivatuner?

 

If the GPU has its own fan then yes, a lot of notebooks dont, theres just one fan that cools the whole system.

 

Gotcha, thanks man. I kind of figured Sagers/Clevo's/AW's had that, but not exactly Vaio's.