How to Overclock a graphics card?

Being an enthusiast extracting every ounce of performance out of my hardware has always been my passion. Today, most of us are familiar with GPU overclocking but still there are very few “brave” enough to try it. Let me tell you that the risk involved is negligible and with new features like thermal throttling the risks are further minimized. One should remember that risk is necessary for success.

Overclocking aims at running the hardware at frequencies higher than the stock ones which improves the performance of the device.

In this article I’ll concentrate on software based GPU overclocking, reviewing most of the popular applications available listing their pros and cons.

From Overclocking to Core Unlocking!

It has been a long time since Processor overclocking became a selling point for manufacturers. Enthusiasts wanted more out of their hardware and motherboards allowed them to play with the clock settings. Nowadays, most of the processors overclock well and a new thing is emerging known as "Disabled Cores".

Overclock Intel GMA HD

The new GMA HD's (now called Intel HD Graphics) embedded in the new Clarkdale (i3/i5) CPUs have a potential of being unlocked upto 1200MHz. The different variants of i3 and i5 CPUs contain the GMA chip running at different frequencies.