overclocking noobie questions!

so ive been using stock 6770m for about a month
and as being a general comp noob, i wasnt really sure about doing overclocks at first

but now i think i should give msi burner a try, nahm saying?
i mean 6770m seems like a card with great potential
so i dont wanna limit the performance of my great baby.

so yea ive got some noob

1) is it bad to keep swtiching the coreclcok and memory?

- i was playing apb online (aka free gta) and on highest settings i got like 40 fps which is fine but not great so i decided to experiment by overclocking and stocking back and forth to see the differences and im wondering if doing such action can be harmful to the cards.
i mean to my common knowledge, if my average time of solving 10 math questions is 10 mintes and the teacher keeps saying do it in 10 minutes! do it in 5 minutes! do it in 10 minutes! back and forth iwould be kinda frustrated nahm sayinn?

2) does overclocking reduce the lifespan of the GPU?

or is it all about the temperatures?

3) any recommendations of mid-core core and memory core ?

i mean somepeople like it HARDcore but im more like a mid-core guy..

4) whats the best benchmarks to see if the overclocked gpu is stable?

seems like most people run atitools and such, but i read best benchmark is actual gaming, or gpu intensive tasks


yeaah bunch of questions dudes
help out a noob plz would appreciate it

 

1. No, just don't go too high. Also, don't push the memory too far, because you can't monitor it's temp. Use GPU-z or HWMonitor(best one) to monitor temps.

2. Possibly, but if you have a stable overclock that doesn't run over 90C you should be fine.

3. Try overclocking in increments of 25MHz or 50MHz. I don't like to overclock my memory over 100MHz high since I can't monitor the temps.

4. Run Furmark and Prime95 at the same time. If you GPU doesn't go over 90C and the laptop doesn't get flakey, you're good. Prime95 will make your CPU hit 95C+.

But, honestly your not going to notice difference between your current 40 FPS and an overclocked 45 FPS.

 

I don't recommend doing this though.. want to test if it stable? just play the game u wanted to play.

 

Goal of overclocking is to improve your game performance, so play your targeted game, improvement = good!

 

Sure, your overclock might be stable with one game, but not on the next. Running Prime95 and Furmark is a sure fire way to find out if you're completely stable.

 

I run furmark for 15 mins to check if its stable and then test it with skyrim.