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Switch your graphics into overdrive
Ever wondered why it takes an excruciatingly long time for your computer to display large images and render full-motion video on your monitor? Or why the 3D games you play bear a strong resemblance to a slideshow more than an actual game?
The answer’s simple: if you have a computer system that’s a year or two old, chances are that you don’t have a good graphics card installed.
Older PCs have integrated graphics that aren’t suitable for anything except typical business applications and the simplest of games. Add a new graphics board in that case.
However, for those of us not willing to spend oodles of cash in purchasing the latest and greatest graphics card, there’s a much easier way to go about: by tweaking your old graphics card for optimal performance.
Currently, the video card market is dominated by two companies: Nvidia and ATI.
While ATI is universally known to produce some of the best, moderately-priced cards, archrival Nvidia is regarded by most as being the trend setting industry leader, producing the most distinguished and configurable graphics cards around to date.
This guide will take you through the entire process of configuring your Nvidia-based graphics card for top-notch performance using some of the finest utilities that are around.
Getting started
First of all, ensure that you have the latest drivers installed for your graphics card (To ascertain this, visit the Nvidia website and get to the download section to check for “Detonator” drivers).
Microsoft’s DirectX 9 application programming interface (API) needs to be on your machine too. Last but not the least, check your motherboard manufacturer’s website for the latest drivers for your particular chipset.
There are several utilities around that can do the job for you, without you even having to delve into the complex world of the Windows registry to change any settings. While you can certainly make some adjustments using the detonator drivers, these third-party applications are way more effectual for they literally include hundreds of undocumented settings. The best free ones include: RivaTuner, GeForce Tweak Utility and NVMax, the pick of the three being RivaTuner. While the other two are also competent, they lack the low-level overclocking aspect found in their counterpart. Moreover, RivaTuner is compliant with certain ATI cards too.
Once you’ve tweaked your graphics card using any of these nifty programs, you can check for any performance gains and compare your results with other users of the same hardware using an extremely useful benchmarking software known as 3DMark. But don’t even think of downloading it if you have a dialup connection: this one’s a mammoth 40MB in size. Instead, look around for a CD containing 3DMark 2001 SE.
Perhaps the most notable feature of 3DMark is that it lets you compare totally different graphics cards from different manufacturers to see where they stack up when placed head to head. That way, you’ll know which one you need to buy or what to expect from your current one.
The table below lists the scores of some of the most popular graphics cards that have been tested using this program. Not all models are listed.
One important tip: If a new card is what you’re really after (considering the trend below), be sure not to settle for anything less than a Radeon 9000 128MB, which is quite a decent performer. In any case, don’t end up buying an antediluvian GeForce or a variant of the GeForce4 MX species, since both simply lack the raw speed needed to propel the complex games of today.
All tests were performed on a Pentium 4 1.5GHz-based system with 512MB RAM using default settings: 1024x768 resolution; 32-bit colours; Compressed textures; VSync off; FSAA off
RivaTuner is quite a small program that will really help you squeeze every bit of power from your Nvidia graphics chip: whether it’s prehistoric or contemporary. Installation is a piece of cake and goes without any hiccups. Once you start the program, it will display the Nvidia-based graphics card installed on your system, including the detonator driver version and all associated files.
Your first priority needs to be the overclocking bit. By increasing your graphics card’s core and memory clock speeds, you can achieve much better performance and frame rates for all your games. On the downside, over-clocking puts considerable stress on your graphics card as it results in increased heat dissipation. That means if you don’t cool the chip down enough (methods of doing so are out of the scope of this article), it’ll become unstable and prone to crashes, or in a worst-case scenario, permanently damaged. But it is usually a safe process, provided you don’t get carried away.
Get to the low-level system settings and tick the “enable low-level hardware overclocking” setting. The example used in this case is an early Riva TNT2 M64 with 32MB of SDRAM, one of the slowest cards and an excellent candidate for overclocking. Most modern graphics boards are equipped with faster DDR (or Double Data Rate) memory, which makes a sizeable difference in performance when compared to its much slower counterpart.
The default core and memory clock speeds vary for each graphics card. The Riva TNT2 M64 has both set to a measly 125MHz. By simply moving the sliders to the right, you can adjust both the clock speeds of your card for better performance. Increase values by 10MHz or less until you reach your highest stable level. This can be determined in 3DMark: whenever video memory is clocked too high your graphics chip will start displaying white snow-like particles and will eventually crash during the tests. You’ll then need to lower the speed to a suitable value.
With both the TNT2 M64’s clocks set to 190MHz, a sizeable gain was observed when it registered an average score of 1165 (from a previous best of 900) on a Pentium 4 1.5GHz based system running 3DMark2001SE with default settings. Despite the fact that the M64 is a stripped down version of the TNT2 Ultra, the performance gain brought it almost at par to the latter, which scored nearly 1500 in the tests.
The best part about RivaTuner is that it allows you to test all settings and even lets you save them for startup, so that you don’t have to run it again to enable them. That way, whenever you boot up, RivaTuner runs in the background to enable all settings and automatically closes after the appropriate adjustments have been made without any user intervention.
Besides this, RivaTuner has a plethora of other low-level settings to work with, including refresh rate settings, a custom monitor driver creation wizard, powerful desktop and overlay colour scheme adjustment, effective hardware monitoring and several DirectX and OpenGL settings just to name a few.
While you can certainly experiment with RivaTuner on your own, another capable program that makes adjustments much easier is NVMax. NVMax boasts a clean, no-nonsense user interface that’s very easy to use.
Utilities
To download the aforementioned free software, point your browser to the following links:
— RivaTuner (approximately 1MB)
— NVMax (0.2MB)
— GeForce Tweak Utility (3.2MB)
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The writer
