Heard something about bring out the true capabilities of a graphics card?

Question

Someone told me that it was possible to use software to make your graphics card better. I think it was called Overclocking or something? I have an Nvidia 6800XT 256mb 256 Bit DDR 3 Agp8x

Answer 1

Despite what many may say, overclocking a graphics card is an art. It is not as straightforward as one might be lead to believe. Fortunately, all Nvidia graphics card come with an overclocking program built in to it called "Coolbits." Coolbits is by far the easiest way to overclock a Nvidia card. For detail instructions, please read PC World Magazine's article

"PC Hardware: Free Speed: Overclocking Your PC
Performance Boosting Basics" -- written by Jim Aspinwall, pcworld (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,119267-page,2/article.html)


"...Most of the overclocking buzz is not about turning a PC into a supercomputer. Instead, it's about gamers being able to see, navigate, run, and shoot faster and smoother. Not surprisingly, you can overclock the processors on your graphics card in much the same way you would your main CPU. Video gaming has come a long way since Pong first appeared on TV-style monitors in the early 1980s. Even if you don't play video games, boosting the performance of your graphics system can enhance the enjoyment of videos and business presentations.

Your graphics speed boost comes from within, without your having to pop the case. To start, simply download the appropriate graphics board hacking tool for the brand of card you have. NVidia has even built overclocking settings into its latest drivers. To enable them, open the Windows Registry editor by going to Start, Run, typing regedit, and pressing Enter. Navigate to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SOFTWARE/NVIDIA Corporation/Global/NVTweak/," right-click the right pane of the editor and choose to add a new DWord called coolbits. Edit that entry and give it a hex value of 3, then close your Registry editor. The NVidia tab (Figure 5) under your PC's advanced display properties settings will now feature a "Clock Frequency Settings" page that allows you to adjust memory and graphics chip clock speeds for your board. Click the "Detect Optimal Frequencies" button if you want the utility to try to find safe overclocked settings for your graphics board."
---
Besides Coolbits, you can use the free utility Rivatuner to overclock your graphics card. Rivaturner is much more sophisticated than Coolbits and allows for finer control over the card. Read more about it from PC World Magazine's article:

"Graphics Enhancers" -- written by Kirk Steers, pcworld (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,127665-page,4-c,tipstroubleshooting/article.html)

Answer 2

You do not want to mess with the defaults unless you are willing to possibly damage your card and the system. If you do not have proper cooling it will overheat if you mess around with overclocking. There are some guides available on the internet.
Here is a basic example:
http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Hardware/Guides/OCguide/
I do not want to sound negative and I know that some overclock their systems successfully, but these are usually those who are not concerned with damaging their systems. Good Luck with what ever you decide!

Answer 3

The easiest way to overclock is called ntune which u can download for free from nvidia.com and they have nvmonitor to see the temperture of ur graphics card mobo and ur cpu. Ntune does the overlocking for u