Overclocking Your Nvidia Graphics Card

[fatsheep]

Overclocking Your Nvidia Graphics Card

Overclocking your Nvidia graphics card doesn't have to be difficult. Nvidia's proprietary drivers actually include a nice little overclocking tool by default called "coolbits". In this guide, I show you how to enable coolbits, use it to overclock, and have your overclocking settings applied when your computer starts up for convienance.

Before we begin, note that you should already have the Nvidia proprietary drivers installed. Also remember that the nvidia-settings tool that I will refer to later in the guide is usually available in a shortcut located under the Applications > System Tools menu. If it isn't, just run the command nvidia-settings in the terminal to access it.

Enabling Coolbits

Coolbits will provide an easy to use overclocking utility inside nvidia-settings (typically you can access this through Applications > System Tools > NVIDIA Settings). Here's how to install it:

We are going to edit your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file so the first thing I would do would be to back it up with a command like this (which would create a backup called "xorg.conf.bak" in the /etc/X11 directory):

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg_backup.conf

If we have any problems after editing the file, we can just revert to our backup with this command:

sudo cp /etc/X11/xorg_backup.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Now for the actual editing:

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

This will open up your xorg.conf file in gedit. Search for a section of text that begins with Section "Device"

Mine looks like this:

Section "Device"
Identifier "NVIDIA Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600 GT]"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

Your's may look different depending on what graphics card you have. We need to add the following text to enable coolbits:

Option "Coolbits" "1"

For reference, here's what my section looks like after I have enabled coolbits:

Section "Device"
Identifier "NVIDIA Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600 GT]"
Driver "nvidia"
Option "Coolbits" "1"
EndSection

Now save the file and open up nvidia-settings. There should now be a clock frequency tab.



Overclocking With Coolbits

Using coolbits to overclock is straightforward. Just configure your frequencies, hit apply and you're done. The "Auto Detect" button can be very helpful for finding a good overclock. The frequencies it gives you are usually a bit high so you might want to decrease them a bit especially if you are noticing any artifacting.

One problem is that your frequency settings are restored to the hardware defaults after you restart the computer. Reconfiguring the settings everytime I bootup is a pain so I found a command that will do this automatically for us:

nvidia-settings -a GPUOverclockingState=1 -a GPU2DClockFreqs=<2dGPU>,<2dMEM> -a GPU3DClockFreqs=<3dGPU>,<3dMEM>

You need to replace the bold type with your actual settings. So I would replace <2dGPU> with my 2d core frequency (in megahertz). I would replace <3dMEM> with my 3d memory frequency (in megahertz). On a side note, I'd recommend leaving the 2d settings at their default values (unless you want to play pong at 5000 fps :-p). 3d settings are what you want to increase for gaming performance and such. Just for reference here is my script:

nvidia-settings -a GPUOverclockingState=1 -a GPU2DClockFreqs=300,1000 -a GPU3DClockFreqs=550,1100.

Replace my settings with your settings in whatever text editor you prefer. Now we are going to make this command run every time we start up the computer. Go to System>Preferences>Sessions. Select the Startup Programs tab.

Now simply select the Add button (top right) and paste your command into the text box. Then hit OK. From now on your overclocking settings will be conveniently applied when you login.

[fatsheep]

Did anyone find this helpful? Does anyone here use an alternative method to overclock their Nvidia GPU?

[hikaricore]

You might want to mention to any PCI Nvidia users that
Overclocking your gpu/memory too much higher than the
speed of your FSB. Will cause artifacts and may
possibly lock up your entire system. APG/PCIE users don't
have to worry about this quite as much, but I thought it was
worth pointing out.

[fatsheep]

You might want to mention to any PCI Nvidia users that
Overclocking your gpu/memory too much higher than the
speed of your FSB. Will cause artifacts and may
possibly lock up your entire system. APG/PCIE users don't
have to worry about this quite as much, but I thought it was
worth pointing out.

That's interesting. Do PCI graphics cards share the frequency of the FSB?

[hikaricore]

That's interesting. Do PCI graphics cards share the frequency of the FSB?

If I'm not mistaken yes, I believe that PCI cards are limit capped by the FSB.

So you can technically make the card go much much faster, the system
bus just can't handle anything more than it's designed for. So you get
video corruption and eventually a crash. (the effect of shoving paper money
into a coin slot comes to mind, sure it works but it doesn't do much damn good)

Example my FSB is 400mhz. If I try and OC my card's memory any higher than 400 (defaults 350ish) the system locks. If I try and OC the GPU (defaults 285) above 375 or so, I get graphical corruption, GPU above 400 locks the system as well.

I tweaked around a little with it and about the best I can get while staying stable is:

350gpu/400mem

Unless I'm misunderstanding the workings of the whole mess.

I have a crap motherboard and OCing the FSB is out of the question without
some serious hacking, the bios in these HP computers is absolute trash.

I remember having more frequency control on a gateway lol.

[techno-mole]

i found this guide after alot of messing around trying to find a way to easily over clock my 7600gs, and ive managed to get coolbits active and i now have access to the gpu and memory for my crd, but the auto detect function doesnt work, that is to say that it is greyed out and you cant click on it, so do you have to do something else to enable the auto detect function ?
im using fiesty, with an nvidia 7600gs agp card (latest drivers installed with envy)
cheers.

[JoshuaJamZ]

i found this guide after alot of messing around trying to find a way to easily over clock my 7600gs, and ive managed to get coolbits active and i now have access to the gpu and memory for my crd, but the auto detect function doesnt work, that is to say that it is greyed out and you cant click on it, so do you have to do something else to enable the auto detect function ?
im using fiesty, with an nvidia 7600gs agp card (latest drivers installed with envy)
cheers.

Same problem here with the auto-detect button being greyed out. Any idea's?

[smithman89]

Ok, for me, the auto detect only works for the 3d Clock frequencies. But i have a question, if you go into the nvidia-settings, and look at the video card, even though mine is a GeForce 6600 AGP 256mb, it says pci card under the bus type. I am confused, also, anyone know a good speed to OC to? My defaults according to the settings are gpu=300mhz, ram=500mhz.

[jacc1234]

Thanks for the guide, i have the coolbits option now but it wont save any of my frequency changes and I also dont have autodetect. I am running feisty and using the 9755 amd64 nvidia-glx-new drivers.

Thanks,
Jacc123

[fatsheep]

@ smithman89: You have to experiment with overclocking. I'd work first on your core frequency and then on your memory frequency. Raise the core frequency and run benchmarks, then raise it again and run more benchmarks and watch out for graphical glitches like artifacting. If you see any glitches then lower the core frequencies. You might want to monitor your temperature as well but unfortunately I don't know of any good temperature monitors under Linux (I used rivatuner on Windows). Look online for some video overclocking articles, they should help you out. Good luck, and don't fry anything!

Thanks for the guide, i have the coolbits option now but it wont save any of my frequency changes and I also dont have autodetect. I am running feisty and using the 9755 amd64 nvidia-glx-new drivers.

Thanks,
Jacc123

It's greyed out for me as well now, it never used to be... That's strange.

i found this guide after alot of messing around trying to find a way to easily over clock my 7600gs, and ive managed to get coolbits active and i now have access to the gpu and memory for my crd, but the auto detect function doesnt work, that is to say that it is greyed out and you cant click on it, so do you have to do something else to enable the auto detect function ?
im using fiesty, with an nvidia 7600gs agp card (latest drivers installed with envy)
cheers.

I didn't anything else to enable auto detect before but it no longer works. I have the same problem as you do.