While there is no doubt about o'cing shortening the life expectancy of your hardware. I had my XPS Gen1's Mobility 9800 on a permanent overclock of 400/375 from 350/300, for over a year and it ran like it was made that way. It is smart to do your research and use available tools (atitool, coolbits) to help you find your max safe overclocks. This will reduce the chance of you frying your card. Also read the forums here... we have done a lot of work already for you.
When you do overclock, dont go for the limits right away. Advance slowly and this will give your card a chance to adjust to the increased temps with less chance of side effects.
Overclocking a graphics card is different with different cards. For example the Mobility Radeon 9800 from the XPS Gen1 was a very easy overclocker. You install a utility like atitool, go in and adjust your clocks, memory timings, etc. then hit apply and your set. There is even profiles you can set for certain apps and games.
In contrast, the 7800GTX and 7900 series of mobile cards from Dell are "locked" to their stock clocks. These cards are overclockable, but you will need to flash a custom bios to the video card with the upgraded clocks. When you want to go back to stock, you just flash back to the stock clocks. It is more of a pain than the 9800, but you do what you have to.
When researching overclock limits, sometimes it is wise to physically take the card out and write the numbers on the gpu and memory chips down. You will then be able to cross reference the chips via the web to find out their true specifications. You will want to know the temperature threshold (max temp) and the rated speeds of the memory chips as this will give you an idea of the chips "official" limits. In a lot of cases card makers will underclock chips on lower cost cards like the 7900GS. The GS's stock clocks are 375/1000 and the card is easily overclockable to 600/1200 with almost no heat increase. Do make sure you install some monitoring utilities like I9KFanGui, atitool, and coolbits to keep an eye on temps, artifacting, and other bad stuff.
And last but not least, dont be afraid to try overclocking. Just pray that when the card frys, you can set the clocks back to default!!!!
When you do overclock, dont go for the limits right away. Advance slowly and this will give your card a chance to adjust to the increased temps with less chance of side effects.
Overclocking a graphics card is different with different cards. For example the Mobility Radeon 9800 from the XPS Gen1 was a very easy overclocker. You install a utility like atitool, go in and adjust your clocks, memory timings, etc. then hit apply and your set. There is even profiles you can set for certain apps and games.
In contrast, the 7800GTX and 7900 series of mobile cards from Dell are "locked" to their stock clocks. These cards are overclockable, but you will need to flash a custom bios to the video card with the upgraded clocks. When you want to go back to stock, you just flash back to the stock clocks. It is more of a pain than the 9800, but you do what you have to.
When researching overclock limits, sometimes it is wise to physically take the card out and write the numbers on the gpu and memory chips down. You will then be able to cross reference the chips via the web to find out their true specifications. You will want to know the temperature threshold (max temp) and the rated speeds of the memory chips as this will give you an idea of the chips "official" limits. In a lot of cases card makers will underclock chips on lower cost cards like the 7900GS. The GS's stock clocks are 375/1000 and the card is easily overclockable to 600/1200 with almost no heat increase. Do make sure you install some monitoring utilities like I9KFanGui, atitool, and coolbits to keep an eye on temps, artifacting, and other bad stuff.
And last but not least, dont be afraid to try overclocking. Just pray that when the card frys, you can set the clocks back to default!!!!
