overclocking, test

what is a good program to use to test my overclocking for stability? this is on an nividia go7600. thank you.

 

You can use any benchmark like 3dMark05, 3dMark06, Aquamark. Every single game is a tester for stability.

 

For CPUs, a common test for stability is Prime95 running for several hours. For graphics cards, you can use benchmarks like 3dmark (loop it continuously), go into games yourself look for artifacts, or use the "Scan for artifacts" function of ATITool. "Scan for artifacts" really stresses the GPU, so if your overclock passes then it is most likely stable. I know the program name is ATITool but you can use it on Geforce cards as well.

 

One thing to keep in mind is that even if you pass all the tests you can think of, it might still not be 100% stable. It's awfully common to see people complain of stability issues, and when you ask them if they're overclocking, they go "yeah, but I know that's not the problem, cos I've run stability tests on it, it must be this f%#&¤# hardware manufacturer that sold me some defective <insert a few expletives here>".
Then *if* you convince them to reset their hardware to stock speeds, the problems tend to go away.

The morale? Feel free to overclock, but if you ever encounter stability issues, this should be your prime suspect. Even if the instability happens two years after you did the actual overclocking, and no matter how much you've tested the stability.

But yeah, Prime95 or SuperPI are common for stress testing the CPU. 3dMark or such are obvious candidates for GPU. And just playing games is a good test too.

And leave your system running for as long as you can. Let it run these tests several hours in a stretch at minimum. Leave your computer switched on (and preferably under constant load) for a week or so if you can.

 

I have noticed that actual gaming will show instabilities even on tested freqs. So on my card I test with Att for artifacts, and then lower Gpu/Mem by 10 MHz from the top artifact free speed. That proved to be quite safe.

Cheers,

Ivan

 

so... when u overclock your video card u get graphic defects?

i thought u could have a little boost of performance without errors...

in this forum i get amazed every day

 

You might. That's the point of overclocking. You run the card faster than it's meant to. Hopefully you can find a point at which it's stable and gives no errors. If you're unlucky, it becomes unstable, and starts showing corrupted graphics (or if you're really lucky, it crashes your computer and prevents you from booting up again)

The same goes for voerclocking other hardware. it works fine, until the point where it doesn't. That shouldn't be surprising to anyone.