small problem with HL2

not sure if this belongs here or in the nvidia section, but since it deals with HL2, i put it here.

I installed the game, and was doing fine. Then, my system started to stutter. All you have to do is look at my sig and see I should be running it just fine. I couldn't figure out what it was. Then, I had an epiphany, "maybe that overclock and pipeline unlock i did is messing things up".

I turned off Rivatuner, and turned the game on. No more jaggies, artifacts, or slowdown!

This is the ONLY program I have these problems with. Everything else (including 3dmark's 01, 03, and 05) work perfectly at the full unlocked 16x6 and OC'ed (see sig).

Any ideas as to why I had to 'underclock' (back to near stock) to play Halflife 2?

does it work well with riva when you overclock, but don't unlock the pipes? could just be a riva software bug, might be worth posting in their forum: http://forums.guru3d.com//forumdisplay.php?forumid=18

Dont forget, half life 2 actually USES the pixel shaders on your card, it could be stable in the benchmark apps, but when it comes under actual stress, they could give errors, I've seen this with some soft-modded cards

just ran hl2 again... i was averaging 80fps at 1024x768x32 4xAA and 8xAF, back at standard settings (no pipeline unlock)