10-28-2006, 02:50 AM
Jarulf's several posts about his new mighty 7900GTX had me thinking about my own 7600GS. It's certainly not in the same league as a 7900GTX, but it's a great card for the price. I paid about $85 CDN after rebate (which was an incredibly awesome deal and should have deserved a "DeeBye's Freebies" thread", and it performs somewhere between a 6600GT and a 7600GT. I can play Oblivion on "high" settings @ 1024x768 @ 45 fps.
Well, one thing I remember about the research I did before I bought it is that the 7600GS is apparently a great overclocker. It's essentially an underclocked 7600GT with a passive heatsink instead of a fan. None of the pipelines are disabled in any way. They just underclocked it, exchanged the fan for a passive heatsink, and used a more energy-efficient design.
I don't have a whole lot of experience overclocking videocards, but what I do know is that temperature governs the limit to which one can overclock. I've recently been keeping tabs on my GPU temperatures, and I can already tell that my 7600GS is a great candidate for overclocking. It idles at 39°C, and after an hour of the 3DMARK05 demo (my son liked watching it okay?), it only crept up to 43°C. 30 seconds at idle and it is back down to 39°C again.
I've already enabled CoolBits in my nVidia Control Panel, so I have access to the clock frequency settings. My 7600GS is factory clocked at 420 MHz core / 400 MHz memory. I'm not looking for incredible bleeding-edge performance. I'm looking for a slight but noticeable performance increase, without even coming close to risking damage. What settings would you recommend, and is there any specific program that I should use to stress test my card after adjusting my clock settings?
Well, one thing I remember about the research I did before I bought it is that the 7600GS is apparently a great overclocker. It's essentially an underclocked 7600GT with a passive heatsink instead of a fan. None of the pipelines are disabled in any way. They just underclocked it, exchanged the fan for a passive heatsink, and used a more energy-efficient design.
I don't have a whole lot of experience overclocking videocards, but what I do know is that temperature governs the limit to which one can overclock. I've recently been keeping tabs on my GPU temperatures, and I can already tell that my 7600GS is a great candidate for overclocking. It idles at 39°C, and after an hour of the 3DMARK05 demo (my son liked watching it okay?), it only crept up to 43°C. 30 seconds at idle and it is back down to 39°C again.
I've already enabled CoolBits in my nVidia Control Panel, so I have access to the clock frequency settings. My 7600GS is factory clocked at 420 MHz core / 400 MHz memory. I'm not looking for incredible bleeding-edge performance. I'm looking for a slight but noticeable performance increase, without even coming close to risking damage. What settings would you recommend, and is there any specific program that I should use to stress test my card after adjusting my clock settings?