could ATItool kill my PC?

[GepperRankins]

if you don't know what it is. it's for overclocking graphics cards. it works by overclocking a few Mhz at a time then running some D3D thing for about 30 seconds to see if your card can handle the overclock.

http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/

last night i overclocked my GPU from 398Mhz to 452Mhz then aborted it (staying at 452 instead of going higher) cos i got worried i would kill my card. when it's overclocked there's a small ammount of artifacting in videos but there is a noticable and flawless improvement in 3D performance.

could this be damaging my card?


PS. incase you're wondering, the problems i had the other day were tracked down to teamspeak. i don't know how it effects my graphics but it does. i was rid of the glitches until i tried playing with teamspeak on and they started again. close teamspeak and they're gone

[Snee]

I don't think it can kill your pc, but if you are very unlucky it could mess up your graphics card, possibly.

Isn't that tool supposed to stop ticking upwards before the card is in danger, tho'?

[GepperRankins]

dunno. i don't have a temp sensor on my graphics card after all, it seems and there's the option to manually set the overclock limits. i know it's supposed to stop when it detects errors. i'm just wondering if it's possible that my card could be damaging itself and not making it apparent

[abu_has_the_power]

that's too high of an oc w/o monitoring the temp. try ocing 398 to 410 or 415 to give it a try. run a few vid card stress tests (aquamark, 3dmark, etc) and see if u see any artifacts

[GepperRankins]

it's got a built in stress test that doesn't find any errors. like i said before. i get a little bit of artifacting in videos but 3D is pretty much perfect

[abu_has_the_power]

don't rely on just 1 stress test. use a few different ones.

and it's not wise to oc that much w/o monitoring ur vid card temp. not wise

[GepperRankins]

it works by overclocking a few Mhz then running a "heat-up phase" for 30 seconds to see if it creates any errors.

i just want to know if, even though it seems to work fine, is an increase of 15% able to damage my card?

i've been playing battlefield 2 as well (very graphics card heavy game) and it's been working fine. a few frames faster than usual too

[clocker]

i just want to know if, even though it seems to work fine, is an increase of 15% able to damage my card?

The short answer is "Of course it can".

It's an electronic device and could crap out at any time, for no reason.

"Will it?"

No way to tell.
Basically, it's up to you to balance the value of the perceived performance increase against the possibility of frying it.

[GepperRankins]

i just want to know if, even though it seems to work fine, is an increase of 15% able to damage my card?

The short answer is "Of course it can".

It's an electronic device and could crap out at any time, for no reason.

"Will it?"

No way to tell.
Basically, it's up to you to balance the value of the perceived performance increase against the possibility of frying it.

but i don't really have much experience so i don't know where the limits are

[Guyver]

iv been overclocking my 9600 for a year and no problems here...never any heat problems, and gr8 gfx boost , so i wouldnt worry too much about it