My friend PowerStrip

PowerStrip, for those who dont know, is a nice utility which allows you to overclock your video card.

At first I was sceptical about using it. After all, overclock DOES void warranty and could lead to permanent damage to the hardware. However, my GeForce4 MX440 came with a stock fan which so far I havent been disapointed with.

So I gave PowerStrip a go. It has 2 sliders to control GPU and memory clocks. The standard timings are:

GPU= 249Mhz
mem= 333Mhz

and I was able to push my card to the following without visual glitches

GPU= 300Mhz
mem= 400Mhz

I just finished playing GTA3 for a little over a hour. Not only did the card perform normally, but it suprised me that before I had some lag when there were explosing or driving very fast, but now, nothing. The card worked wonders.

To anyone with an old video card with a fan, or a very good heatsink/heatspreader, I recommend using this utility. Sure beats buying a new videocard... for now.

How about a link??? But for me I use RadLinker, ill try this thing.

Oh yea, thats what I forgot. I got the utility off a Maximum PC cd for the month of April, but heres a link if ya want.

http://www.entechtaiwan.net/util/ps.shtm

Cool any suggestions for settings to make Halo PC run better? Here is what I have:
P4 2.8
9800 pro (128mb)
1 gig ram
800 MHz motherboard

Cool any suggestions for settings to make Halo PC run better?

Yeah.

[b]Throw it out.[/b]

:biggrin:

Turn off all other applications. Your computer should run it just fine as long as you don't have programs running all over creation.

800Mhz motherboard? what the heck does that mean?

And with a 9800pro you gotta be doing something wrong if Halo lags. lol. Unless your using the highest screen resolution.

If you want to overclock, remember it voids warrenty and I suggest overclocking in small increments, say like 10Mhz or 20Mhz, apply changes, until you reach the point when you see visual artifacts. Then, bring it back down until the glitches go away. Play a game for a while.

I havent tried running Halo since my new CPU and extra RAM. And since I just overclocked like 2 hours ago, the only game I tried was GTA3.

800Mhz Motherboard usually means the bus bandwidth. 800Mhz is pretty damn high though. If your bus is 800Mhz and you've got a 9800 ... are you also encoding video while you play?

Get the latest patch for it too.

you know that debate we always have over fun vs. r_speeds?

you know, the one nobody can post any convincing arguments to support?

well the idea of overclocking anything in your pc, is about as lame.

i have yet, to hear one convincing argument to support it..

yeah, call me cheap, but why prematurely age your system, unless you feel that just because it exists, its already an obsolete piece of s**t :biggrin:

seriously guys, the gain, is not worth the pain, your pc will endure.

Wild Card said:
I just finished playing GTA3 for a little over a hour. Not only did the card perform normally, but it suprised me that before I had some lag when there were explosing or driving very fast, but now, nothing. The card worked wonders.

I've heard that they added some kind of replay function to GTA 3 that recorded everything all the time and that this was the reason to why GTA 3 lagged on computers that were quite good (like mine for example :/ )

Well, its not like my video card is worth alot. And getting better frame rates (noticably) is IMO worth it for me. Although you'll never catch me overclocking my CPU or RAM, but me "old" video card can sure be overclocked. Might save be from buying another one sooner.

As far as I know, I havent seen or heard of any replay function in GTA3. And I just finished the game.. well, the missions anyways.

If I had water cooling I'd overclock my PC, heat damage is the only real concern with overclocking...

omegaslayer4777 said:
Cool any suggestions for settings to make Halo PC run better? Here is what I have:
P4 2.8
9800 pro (128mb)
1 gig ram
800 MHz motherboard

Try turning off shadows and that shiny metal effect in the graphics options. Seems any hardware will lag with those options on, must be an ignored issue with their software.

Orph, do you honestly know what overclocking does? It doesn't 'age' the hardware as much as you're thinking. If you have that outlook you'd purposely lower the speed of your CPU because you didn't want it to age, because it's maximum potential is damaging?

The only risk when overclocking is that the Fan might not cool the hardware fast enough, to an extent of course. With overclocking tools they usually test these ranges and scopes (do you reconize the term 'Testing Loops'?)

Also, are you suggesting that overclocking doesn't do anything? I'm honestly asking because I'm wondering your point of view.

On many BIOS you have to overclock your CPU to the correct voltage and speed since the board you might be using supports many frequencies and speeds. That is overclocking, and it's well within the hardwares performance limits.

I really don't understand what you mean by hardware aging. It's not as if you're overloading the connections. I don't have a piece of s**t for a computer, but I still overclock items in it. Why? Because your computer will never, NEVER be fast enough, nor will it ever perform as smoothly as you'd like.

Sorry if seems like I'm laying into you today, Orph, but you're just letting your comments tread into unknowledgeable territory :smile:

Well, my overclocking has worked out fine so far.

don't stress it crono, i am used to it.

i do indeed know what transpires during overclocking, i also know that lowering the power could potentially damage the parts more, so that was foolish of you to say :wink:

i did however say that i have heard NO convincing arguments, i did NOT say there were none. there is a distinct difference.

the gain (for the normal user, excluding drastic measures like water-cooling) is not worth the damage, be it minor damage as you obviously imply, or more stressful damage.

but IMO any damage, no matter how slight, can be considered prematurely aging.

as i said, don't stress it crono.. it wouldn't matter if you always found my opinion flawed, ain't gonna stop me from posting it :biggrin:

well, the conviencing difference Orph. GTA3 used to have lower FPS when there was explosions or when I was driving fast, or rainning, or fog. But now, I get pretty constant frames. At least to the eye. They may vary, but my eyes dont see it.

I never said drastically underclock your hardware (which is how it get's damaged).

However, you should be aware that items come underclocked, such as processors. Depending on what board and such you're using. Most processors, when you install them are running at about 1ghz, when they're anywhere from 1.4 - 2.0 ghz processors. You have to manually set them, and that is 'overclocking'. But by the time any of these effects would do anything you'd most likely have new hardware, it usually takes years for degrading of this magnitude to occur.

I don't mean stop posting, I meant that you shouldn't state your opinion as fact, which you do oh so often :smile:

Crono said:
I never said drastically underclock your hardware (which is how it get's damaged).

You mean overclock :razz:

Wild Card said:

Crono said:
I never said drastically underclock your hardware (which is how it get's damaged).

You mean overclock :razz:

no WC he said under :smile:

and crono, if my opinion sounds to you as if i said fact.. we have a chaotic future you and i... jeff is just now learning the nuances of my wording.

when i post a fact, i will say the word FACT, otherwise, its opinion.. this advice will save you many ulcers when swapping posts counts with me :smile:

I dont get it. How does underclocking something damage it?

The only way I can see underclocking really damage anything is if the processor or piece of hardware isn't a multiple of the other hardware. In specifics, if the processor is not a multiple of the bus speed, some major issues can occur.

The same sort of issue can occur with Overclocking, however, if everything syncs up you really only have to worry about cooling. Hardware not being cooled well enough is how things fry and get damaged.
Other then all that, there's really nothing to worry about (however, finding the right clock value is the tough part :smile: ).

If you run something outside of spec, you shorten it's lifespan, because the higher speed means more heat (whether you cool it more or not, internal temperature will be higher), because a higher frequency of operation consumes more power. Underclocking won't damage your PC at all. People do this in some cases where they want to use a passive heatsink, and it's perfectly fine.

It's not as if you're overloading the connections.

That is exactly what you are doing! The reason people can overclock is because they only actually make a couple different processor lines. When a wafer of cores is finished, they test each one to see how fast it can go while staying within set heat/voltage limits, then badge them up accordingly. If you buy a 2.6GHz processor, it could have been made right next to and in the exact same way as a 3GHz one, but Intel just decided that the one you bought should only be used at 2.6 (or whatever). This may not be because it didn't meet the 3ghz requirements either, if they have a good process going, then most of the cores made may be able to run at the higher speeds, so they have to sell a perfectly good part that would be able to run at 3GHz as a 2.6 (say). This may not seem to make any business sense at first, but it does. Anyway, the result is that you buy your 2.6, and can run it at 3, while staying within spec - if you run over the spec, you are overloading the transistor junctions, which may cause current to leak through them, which will eventually (still after a long time) break them (independant of cooling).

Most processors, when you install them are running at about 1ghz, when they're anywhere from 1.4 - 2.0 ghz processors.

Umm... what? If you buy a P4 2.8, and put it in a compatible motherboard, it runs at 2.8. There's no speedstep on desktops (yet).

Back to the original topic, why use powerstrip when you can just use the overclocking utility that comes in the drivers?

Are you saying my clock values are wrong?

umm... I don't think so. The frequencies you gave for your card seem perfectly reasonable to me.

marks day on calendar

you know jeff, you almost agree'd with me.. i am flabbergasted

anywhos.. try omegacorner.com

Oh, God here we go again.

I'm well aware of the life span issue, what I was saying is that its a small factor. By saying Overloading the connections I mean frying, as in, immediatly NOTICABLY damaged. Which it isn't, unless you astronaumically overclock things.

Also, every processor I've installed that was over 1ghz required overclocking to run at the proper frequency and speed. However, I only experienced this with Athlons, and the only reason I can think of is that AMD complient boards are backwards compatable.

Anyway, whatever, I believe WC has his stuff running at the speed he wants ... come to think of it ... wasn't it WC's thread that we argued in last time? .... glares at WildCard

I'm starting to see a patern that I don't like here. :\

Well if you say you are well aware of the lifespan issue, why argue with Orph when he says overclocking ages the processor faster? Surely he only said exactly what you have just said you are aware of, only for some reason you argued with him? Yes, you put 'not as much as you say', but.. he didn't say how much, he only said it will age faster, which is usually true... hardly worth arguing over :smile:

/me slips jeff a fiver

Right, except, his insinuation was that it damages the piece of hardware rapidly. Here let me find it ...

"the gain (for the normal user, excluding drastic measures like water-cooling) is not worth the damage, be it minor damage as you obviously imply, or more stressful damage."

This is not true, it IS worth it. It'd be cheaper to overclock a video card now and then buy another in a year or two instead of buying a new video card which can do what your card can do now with overclocking. That would mean without overclocking you'd buy 3 video cards (over a certain span) instead of 2.

But, I mostly got an impression that that was what he was talking about. Sorry, if you think I acted 'pre-maturly'. Does that make sense? I was commenting on what he, seemed, to mean, rather then what he literally said. I'm pretty sure Orph, in some way, understood that based on reading his resulting posts.

Anyway, it's a moot point because the damage that occurs isn't enough for someone to have a hissy fit over, especially if they only based their opinion of the hardware on performance. I'm can almost guarentee they'd be onto a new system by the time their old 'aging' hardware stopped working. That was my whole point I suppose.

ok, let me try to elaborate a smidgen..

i have, for a few minutes overclocked two cards, on two separate occasions.

neither gave me a noticeable boost, granted, they were both rather cheap cards, but understand, me being poor, they are still valuable to me.

the gain, was not worth the possibility of even one single day of not being able to use them.. as with my luck, they would conk out, during the time of year when i could not afford to replace them.

poor people, value each day with their hardware, this old 450 i am on now, has a voodoo banshee driving its video.. bought it when it was the biggest kid on the block, still works... granted, its only task is internet explorer, but it works.

and no, it wasn't this card that i overclocked..

i hope, that shines some light on the subject, at least in so far as when i said, the gain isn't worth it.

A processr's lifespan (even with overclocking) is such that when it dies you ought to have bought a new one already.

Wild Card said:
PowerStrip, for those who dont know, is a nice utility which allows you to overclock your video card.

So I gave PowerStrip a go. It has 2 sliders to control GPU and memory clocks. The standard timings are:

GPU= 249Mhz
mem= 333Mhz

this sounds very much like something i tried just over a month ago. all except the standard timings.

the software i was using determined that my clock speeds were ;

GPU 450Mhz

mem 850 Mhz

i suppose, with hindsight, it would have been better to check this. bah, i didn't even see any noticable difference before it died. :sad: so there ended a Gforce4 Ti 4600, that wasn't even a year old :sad:

the strange thing is, that the replacement card has those exact same timings, and believe me, thats the timings the f**kers gonna keep.

my advice on overclocking?

don't do it unless you know what your doing, and whats at stake.

mazemaster said:
A processr's lifespan (even with overclocking) is such that when it dies you ought to have bought a new one already.

sadly, even though i agree 100%, "ought to" and "able to" are seldom coexistent

Crono said:
Anyway, whatever, I believe WC has his stuff running at the speed he wants ... come to think of it ... wasn't it WC's thread that we argued in last time? .... glares at WildCard

I'm starting to see a patern that I don't like here. :\

slips Orph a 10

Usually if your your video card dies it either

A) fryed by touching something else.
B) Simply couldn't handle the voltage you set.
C) the Fan died, thus there is no cooling (this happened to me on a video card that wasn't overclocked and now the 3d registers are fried or something to that effect).
D) A connection has been physically broken somehow.

All in all there's many many things that can kill any hardware, static is another one ... simply having your computer sit on the ground is a risk fact that you seldom think of, this is usually taken care of with the metal in the case though.

Just because you can't afford another video card ... ever isn't a reason to accept limits. What if it works well for many years? What if it dies anyway because it has shoddy soldering?

You can't control any of this, and the real fact is, if you want to get really technical, the gold material used for the pins and other connections, all the soldering, gets 'damaged' just by being used in general, so to be, no offense, anal retentive, and say that slightly overclocking something isn't worth it isn't really true.

Right now, I have my GeForce4 running at about the same performance as a some of the early FX cards. The only difference being that my card doesn't have as many pixel shaders. Anyway, the only time you notice overclocking really is in games and such, so bah.

say that slightly overclocking something isn't worth it isn't really true. Right now, I have my GeForce4 running at about the same performance as a some of the early FX cards. The only difference being that my card doesn't have as many pixel shaders.

Well you obviously aren't only 'slightly' overclocking are you. Slightly overclocking is a complete waste of time. If you overclock your CPU by 50MHz, you haven't acheived anything, and if in the unlikley event that you do fry your CPU doing so, you may not get a replacement, because they are able to tell if something died due to overclocking. The only worthwhile overclocks are the big ones, e.g. P42.4 overclock to 3GHz, Celeron 300 to 450, etc. That way, you are getting almost exactly the faster CPU, for a much lower price. If you go from 2.4 to 2.45, this is a pointless overclock. 'But you can never have too many MHz' - fine, but is it really worth the risk, however small, of frying your CPU, when all you are going to get out of it is an extra 2%?

You forgot the graphics card dying because despite the fan not breaking, it got too hot. And "B) Simply couldn't handle the voltage you set" - typically this is not adjustable with out soldering extra components onto the board.

Dude, are you just trying to cause a conflict or something??This is going in circles.

No s**t overclocking isn't anything drastic unless you've done it in large amounts. However, what if that 2%, as you so called it, was all it needed to run differently?

Secondly, I didn't say anything about sending anything back to manufacturers, Of course they know what their product looks like burnt out from overclocking and they (whomever manufactured the hardware) knows how to achieve those results.

Letting your card get too hot and overheat will overload it and 'fry' it. However, I never said my card was fried, or were you talking about something else there?

I didn't realize I wrote voltage, I meant to write frequency, that part was my mistake. But other then that, stop looking for a minute detail in my writing that you can try to form into a hypothesis about my understanding of things. You're being critical of things that are moot points, such as my wording. It's not like this is a scientific journal. And I'm not exactly wrong either, you just don't like how I'm wording things, they probably sound misleading, I just personally can't tell the difference anymore.

OK

I just don't think you were justified in attacking Orph, just because he doesn't want to overclock because he doesnt want to risk damaging anything.

You don't need PowerStrip to overclock an nVidia card. Just add a couple little registry entries as shown here:
http://www.earthv.com/tips_detail.asp?TipID=56

Wild Card said:
As far as I know, I havent seen or heard of any replay function in GTA3. And I just finished the game.. well, the missions anyways.

There is a button you can press to play a replay of the last 30 seks or so of the game.

Hornpipe2 said:
You don't need PowerStrip to overclock an nVidia card. Just add a couple little registry entries as shown here:
http://www.earthv.com/tips_detail.asp?TipID=56

somehow Powerstrip feels safer :razz:
I have an MSI videocard, and it the MSI drivers have the overclock-function built-in.

If I set the overclocking thingy to auto-adjust, it sets my core speed about 33 mhz higher ... fine by me :smile:

Bah. I just turned those sliders up about 50 mhz each, and it worked out fine. No overheating, and an extra 1 FPS in games! Woo!

I use the finest in heatsink technology to keep my video card RAM cool: (and yes, I really do have this on my card)
http://www.afrotechmods.com/ram.htm

Jeff I wasn't attacking Orph, I was honestly asking and questioning his reasoning, there's a big difference. If I was attacking him I would have been arrogant and condencending.

I appologize if what I said looks like an attack.

Hornpipe2 said:
Bah. I just turned those sliders up about 50 mhz each, and it worked out fine. No overheating, and an extra 1 FPS in games! Woo!

I use the finest in heatsink technology to keep my video card RAM cool: (and yes, I really do have this on my card)
http://www.afrotechmods.com/ram.htm

You gotta be kidding? That f**king works? Now I know why I'd been saving my 2000+ pennies :biggrin:

I don't know if it's so much that it "works" as "it doesn't break". So I figured I'd try it out.