Tweaking Optimizing Windows.pdf - GEGeek

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Lets start Now the first thing you are going to want to do is download and install the most recent drivers off Nvidias website www.nvidia.com/Products.nsf/htmlmedia/detonator3.html These drivers are backwards compatible and work with just about any Nvidia card. You also want to make sure that you have the very latest DirectX installed on your system - at the time of writing the latest version was DirectX 8a and I have personally seen a 5/10% increase when using DirectX 9. www.microsoft.com/directx/homeuser/downloads/default.asp (I have ommitted 3dfx from this article now because Nvidia cards have took over the reign and are a superb chipset. You can overclock them using Powerstrip software though). Add coolbits entry to your registry and overclock copy & paste the text below in Notepad to create a REG file, and save it for example as GeForce.REG, making sure when you goto save in notepad you change the save as type to all files and then run it. Remember to restart Windows after each change. -----Begin cut & paste here----- REGEDIT4 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak] "CoolBits"=dword:00000003 ------End cut & paste here------ When we run the above files below to edit the registry, they are going to change the values of certain keys that will allow us to use the factory OverClocking Utilities that come from nvidia. Funny thing is that overclocking and tweaking have gotten so popular that both companies include the utilities to overclock in their driver set. They are just hidden "Easter Eggs" though. Once you learn the secret to the eggs, all is unlocked. Now once we have rebooted our box, we will want to put our new tools to work. First off, right click the desktop and select "Properties" from the menu. Then select the "Settings" tab. At that point you will see a button labeled "Advanced..." appear. With a nvidia card we have a couple of extra steps along the way. After the "Advanced" button, you will now select the icon tab with the name of your card on it. You should then be faced with a spinning nvidia logo. Now click on the "Additional Properties" button and then the "Hardware Options" tab. Whew! We are finally here. With either type of card you will now be faced with a slider type menu. The nvidia will have two different sliders. If you have an nvidia card you will notice an extra tab called 'Hardware Options' has appeared if the registry entries above have been entered into the registry. If you have not got this tab then you have an Nvidia driver that has the coolbit switched off and is not a problem - just download and install Powerstrip (link further below) and use the same method as explained next but in Powerstrip. Now at this point all overClocking your Vid Card requires is moving the sliders to a higher number. This is where the fun really comes in, as some folks can move their sliders farther than others and this builds a whole community based on the competition of seeing who can do it faster. Now is the fun part, using the bar drag the Memory Clock bar to the right in 5MHz increments. Progressive overclocking has to do with the process of slowly clocking your system faster and faster until it reaches its peak stable speed. This is frequently done with video card overclocks, because it is very easy to over do it and fry the card. The process with video cards is very easy - you simply overclock in 5 MHz increments until you reach an unstable speed, and then downclock the card in 1 MHz increments until you reach a stable speed. Then of course comes the obligatory testing to determine whether or not the card is stable even during system strain - and if it passes, you're gold. Once you have dragged the bar over so it is 5MHz higher, click Apply, then ok. If everything looks fine (eg no weird lines, colors, appearances on screen) Click Ok to confirm changes. Congratulations! You have overclocked a GF2... If you only have stock cooling (eg no new cooling gear) don't push the Memory Clock any higher then 350MHz or CPU Engine Clock any higher then 230MHz. If you have extra cooling you can try to push your card a little higher. If your card is running fine (no crashes) at 350MHz Memory Clock try increase to MHz by 20 to 370MHz. Now trying pushing the Engine Clock to 250MHz. After you have applied those settings, and everything is fine (eg no weird lines, colors, appearances on screen) feel free to keep those overclocked settings. Although I'd suggest that you don't have your GF2 overclocked all the time, especially on hot days. Give it a break now and then... OTHER PROGRAMS FOR GFX CARD OVERCLOCKING Asus tweaking utility was suprising to see that manufactures are actually including programs to overclock their products, I thought I'd never see this. I find this program easier and more reassuring to use because the maker of the GF2 made the program. This program uses the same principal as all you need to do is drag the bars left or right, although with this program you can change in 1MHz increments... DXdiag One of the cool things that some people don't know about is dxdiag. From the start menu, choose the 'run' option and type in dxdiag. You can troubleshoot almost everything with this applet. Also, most importantly, you can adjust the refresh rate at which DX runs. So you can play those DX games at 80Hz+. Powerstrip Powerstrip is a very good program and basically lets you overclock your gfx card. Its basically the same way as the coolbits tweak above. The advantage of Powerstrip is that it will let you overclock all Nvidia cards whilst some drivers from Nvidia do not enable the overclocking option with the coolbits tweak. http://www.entechtaiwan.com/ps.htm BENCHMARKING FOR GFX CARDS ETC
Benchmarks allow you to measure your performance increases. By changing my GPU engline clock from 200mhz to 220 mhz and my memory clock from 333mhz to 364mhz I achieved an extra 3 frames per second on Quake 3 timedemo which was in a high resolution. This is only a slight overclock and it is indeed faster. The faster you clock the GPU and memory clock the faster your card will perform. 3dmark 2001 3dmark allows you to not only score the performance of your card and entire system, but you can also upload your scores to a worldwide database so that you can show your scores off. Really fun stuff for tweakers. Benchmarking your system can also be done with simply applying games that you might already own. www.madonion.com/download/ Nvnews NVnews site has a great guide that explains how to accomplish some of this benchmarking with specific games. www.nvnews.net/articles/benchmarking.shtml Quake 3 test Quake 3 is probably the most widely used OpenGL benchmark in the world. www.3dfiles.com Ziff Davis benchmarking utilities Other good benchmarking programs such as Winstone, Winbench, 3d Winbench etc, etc - www.zdnet.com/etestinglabs/filters/benchmarks/ SYSTEM STABILITY TESTING If you're an overclocking vet, you've probably heard of this process called "burning in", or perhaps you've even burned in a CPU yourself. But does it do anything? Some may disagree with me here, but I have yet to see a benefit from burning in a CPU. So what is burning in? Well, my understanding of the process is: - Find the highest rock solid speed for the CPU. - Set the voltage slightly higher than needed. - Run the system as you normally would (at this solid speed) for a given period of time (2 days to a week). - Try to set the CPU at a higher speed. CPU 'Burn-in' is an ideal utility for burn-in tests; it's available here: http://users.bigpond.net.au/cpuburn/ Some people claim to gain several MHz using this method. There are generally two types of testing that I perform on a newly overclocked system. One is an intensive integer/FPU test which keeps processor utilization up between 95 & 100% for upwards of a half an hour. If the CPU passes this test, the overclock on the CPU itself is stable. However, even if the system passes that test, I still run a gaming test. The gaming test determines how well the rest of the system responded to the overclock (this is particularly important when dealing with non-standard bus speeds and out-of-spec RAM. Another test that I recommend, if you own the software, is the SiSoft Sandra benchmarks, or alternatively, WinBench 2000. Both pieces of software do subsystem specific testing - something that can be very important, particularly if you are trying to determine which pieces of hardware within your system are causing a failed overclock. The intensive integer/FPU test is aptly named Stability Test and can be downloaded at www.tweakfiles.com. To use this test, you need to configure it before you overclock. This test will not only keep CPU utilization up at 100%, it will also make sure that the system isn't making any mistakes. This test only takes about a half an hour to complete and is definitely worth the time. If your computer doesn't pass this test, first try to either add more cooling or up the chip voltage a little bit and see if it works - otherwise drop down to the troubleshooting section for a few tips. The second test consists of either using Unreal in Flyby mode with everything turned on (OpenGL), or using 3Dmark 2000 in loop mode (D3D). You really should only use 3Dmark 2000 if your system's OpenGL drivers are less than satisfactory. If you don't have a copy of Unreal, but your computer has a robust OpenGL driver, another alternative would be to use the Q3 demo with xero's 'monkeycrusher' demo. If your system passes both the integer and gaming tests, you have got yourself a stable system. Congrats. RELATED SOFTWARE I would not advise you run any cpu cooling software on Windows NT. 2000 or XP as it is not needed - you can however run Motherboard Monitor and Hardware Monitor. There are some CPU cooling programs (CpuIdle, Rain, Waterfall) that claim to lower CPU temperature by up to 30°. These programs can tell when the processor is not busy and put it in sleep mode during the idle time. While using the programs, the processor draws a lot less power and runs much cooler, however they are not very useful in CPU intensive environment, like playing games or defragmenting your HD. Another drawback is the fact that temperature fluctuates much more, based on CPU use. If you'd like more info on the performance of the "cool" programs, try The TX Board at www.angelfire.com/va/txboard/index.html Motherboard Monitor Hardware Monitor - www.euronet.nl/users/darkside/mbmonitor/ - www.hmonitor.com/ TROUBLESHOOTING To do this kind of troubleshooting, your computer has to be booted into Windows. If it isn't, take the steps outlined above to increase the stability of your system. Once you are in Windows, you will need to either install a copy of SiSoft Sandra or Winbench 2000. Then take each of the subsystem tests and run them separately from each other. Make note of which subsystem tests cause the system to crash, and focus on those parts of the system. That may mean adding a hard drive fan, some RAM cooling, etc. Once you have focused on all of the parts of the system that cause a crash (this may include the processor itself as well), go back and go through the system stability tests once again. If you can't get the system to pass the tests now, you may need to go back and lower the speed of the processor.
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Mr.X.'s TWEAKING AND OPTIMIZING WIN
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C:\inetpub\ftproot (FTP server) C:\
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