As most of you with videocards know, you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. You can do this at two levels, namely tweaking by enabling registry or BIOS hacks, or very simple, tamper with Image Quality. And then there is overclocking, which will give you the best possible results by far.

What do we need?
One of the best tool for overclocking NVIDIA and ATI videocards is our own Rivatuner that you can download here. If you own an ATI or NVIDIA graphics card then the manufacturer actually has very nice built in options for you that can be found in the display driver properties.

Where should we go ?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard, but it really can be done in less than a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners not to increase the frequency any higher then 5% of the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 600 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest you don't increase the frequency any higher than 30 to 50 MHz.

More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 10-15 MHz and leave it at that. Usually when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 20 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today tested cards anyway, but we'll still show it ;)

All in all... do it at your own risk.

Check this out:

Next to the fact that the products were already overclocked pretty well, you need to be reminded of this: the OCX versions are the highest specced cards, these have been pre-selected for high clocks. Meaning in the end .. they'll likely overclock even better. And it showed for sure:

Default clock frequencies in MHz:

• 9600 GT OCX - 650 core / 1625 shaders / 1800 memory
• 8800 GT OCX - 600 core / 1500 shaders / 1800 memory

BFG OCX clock frequencies in MHz:

• 9600 GT OCX - 725 core / 1850 shaders / 1944 memory
• 8800 GT OCX - 700 core / 1728 shaders / 2000 memory

Overclocked frequencies in MHz:

• 9600 GT OCX - 775 core / 1977 shaders / 2300 memory
• 8800 GT OCX - 764 core / 1885 shaders / 2319 memory

This is a really significant and extensive end-result. Remember, compare that to the clocks of a reference specced model and try to understand the significance & dynamics.

The game is Mass Effect -- Settings:

• Noise Filter on
• Textures: Extreme high
• Filter: Anisotropic
• Everything maxed out