This is a guide on how to overclock your graphics card. This can be a dangerous process because it often causes overheating, and may cause permanent damage to your graphics card. Overclocking will void the warranty on your card, if you have it. If anything goes wrong, I cannot be held responsible, it is your own problem. I would recommend reading through this guide before starting.
You will need two programs:
It doesn't matter which card you have, the programs will work with any cards. Once you have installed the programs, run them. RivaTuner can be used to overclock and to change fan speeds, and ATI Tools can be used to overclock and test for artefacts. I personally think ATI Tools is better for overclocking, because it has an easier interface to use. You should start off with RivaTuner to change the fan speeds, because overclocking makes your graphics card run hotter than usual. So first open up RivaTuner, and under the heading "Driver Settings" click the little box next to customise.
Then Click on the first icon.
Then Click on the tab labelled "Fan."
I would recommend setting it to 60% first. Once set to 60% click "Apply." If you want RivaTuner to load the fan speeds when the computer starts up, then check the box "Apply fan settings at Windows startup," and click the "Save" button. Click OK and close RivaTuner.
Now open ATI Tools. This part can take a long time, so you need to be patient. You can see on the left of the window there are "Find Max Core" and "Find Max Mem." DO NOT CLICK ON THESE. ATI Tools pushes the card a lot, and may cause permanent damage to your graphics card. Under the columns labelled "3D perf," increase the numbers, only by five at a time. Pushing too much at a time can cause the card to overload. After increasing the clocks by 5, click on "Scan for Artifacts." This puts your card under stress so it can test if there are any flaws in the graphics.
Do it for at least 20 minutes before stopping and increasing the clock. If there are artifacts then it means the clock is too high, so you need to decrease it. Once there are artifacts found and you decreased the clock, do the artifacts scan for 30 minutes or more, in case it finds anything new. If the temperature goes too high during the scan, stop it immediately. A temperature above 80-90 degrees Celsius would be high. If the temperature is too high, increase the fan speed with RivaTuner. Once you find a stable clock, save at the top and create a profile name. You can make ATI Tools run this on startup if you want. Click on "Settings" in the bottom right corner. Click the drop-down menu, and then click on "Startup." Check the boxes "Every time ATI Tool is launched, load profile;" and "Load on Windows Startup Via." Under "Every time ATI Tool is launched, load profile," select the profile you saved earlier, and under "Load on Windows Startup Via," select "Registry Key." You have successfully overclocked your graphics card.
