Vid card overclocking... frying before tearing?

My question is that will a video card fry before it shows tears on the screen? I'm wondering because I'm overclocking my parents STB Velocity 440(TNT) Video Card(I'm stuck on this computer for now) and don't want to fry it. So will it give warning before frying? Also If I fry the video card, will the agp slot go too?

thanks,
Kent

Man, dont stop until theres smoke coming outta your case, and your screen looks like a bad game of checkers. Then youll have fried it. lol.

With the vid cards I've OC'd, they allways gave warning that you were pushing it too far.
With memory, it's allways shown artifacts (white specks) in games. And when I pushed the core too far, it'd usually hardlock. If you go way too far, you can cause permanent damage, that is why it is best to go a step at a time. Or in this case, consider not doing it at all since it isn't yours, and be prepared to replace it if you screw up.
Let your conscience be your guide.
I doubt you'd harm the motherboard though.

repo man11 said:

With the vid cards I've OC'd, they allways gave warning that you were pushing it too far.
With memory, it's allways shown artifacts (white specks) in games. And when I pushed the core too far, it'd usually hardlock. If you go way too far, you can cause permanent damage, that is why it is best to go a step at a time. Or in this case, consider not doing it at all since it isn't yours, and be prepared to replace it if you screw up.
Let your conscience be your guide.
I doubt you'd harm the motherboard though.

Click to expand...

Yep, the effects of a bad overclock usually end up in hard locks or artifacts before your card will fry. You won't be able to operate the card on a daily basis with artifacts and hard lock therefore you have to clock it to stable settings so it shouldn't die.

I noticed a funny thing with my Visiontek Xtasy GF4 Ti 4400. I remember a long time ago, when I used older drivers, it would hard lock when I o/c'ed it too far. But now I'm using the 40.72 drivers and it doesn't seem to want to lock up. I hit 330 on the core and it did some strange things (skipped a whole bunch of frames), but it did NOT lock up. This is with stock cooling.

I read something about the 40.xx drivers being more tolerant to errors from heat.... hm.

http://download.nvidia.com/Windows/40.41/NVWinRel40_Features_11.pdf -- bottom of page 2

Well I did it. Got it up to 100 core and 120 memory. default is 90 core and 110 memory. I think I can get it higher, if I get some better cooling. If I raise the core or memory 5 mhz higher it locks up right away during 3dmark 2000. Doesn't sound like much of an overclock, but I can tell a noticeable difference in games, so I'm happy.

Kent

Also, didn't fry the vid card

Overclocked one of them before got it to 125 core and 120 memory did you put a fan at the heatsink as mine didn't come with one ,the extra fan let me overclock it a good bit more as those cards got very hot even at stock voltages without a fan.

I have never seen a card that outright died due to overclocking - but I have seen plenty recieve some nasty permant damage and pretty much become as good as dead anyway

Hmm, from my experiences upping the ram to much makes the core work to hard~overheat and then limit overclock. The 3dfx voodoo3 3500 vs the original geforce vs the tnt2 or such from....gasp tomshardware,well from along time ago when it was ok showed temps the cards would get to when idle and load etc. The tnt2 was low 40's C, geforce was middle 50's and the v3 3500 was almost 80C ! . Either the case cooling wasnt good,probably not, or the v3 3500 ran really hot. I new of sombody that had one, he always burnt himself when he touched it so it could be pretty close to reality. Sort of odd how those 3dfx cards could run so stinkin hot and still run. On your video card first and formost make sure the core is cooled well as the core heat impacts the ram also.

Well my ATI 8500 went belly up, but it did give me a few warnings before doing so.. every so often for about a month my screen would blow up into beautiful small squares with flashing lights.. would just make you sit and stare ohhh ahhh..
then one day upon boot up it did the same thing to me, but instead of being fixed by a simple reboot, it was permanent..