How to enhance your graphics card performance

For this tutorial we are using a GeForce 6200 HSI-AGP video card.

1) Overclocking

Overclocking is the process of making a component to run at a higher speed than it was design to work.

When overclocking make small frequency steps, something like 5MHz to 10MHz increment and then make serios testing (for example some 3DMark test), but keep an eye on the temperature.

When overclocking your video card (or any other PC component) keep in mind that it is dangerous! Why? When you overclock you card the temperature rises and it can end up in smoke. Make sure that you have an after-market cooling system when considering overclocking.

1.1) Overclocking via CoolBits

CoolBits is a registry entry that enables an nVidia powered video card to be overclocked via Forceware drivers. To create such a registry entry you will need to create a blank Notepad document. In this document write this

"REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\NVTweak]

"CoolBits"="dword:00000003" "

Without the quotes. After completing that, save the file with any name. Change the extension from [name].txt into [name].reg. Double click on the newly created registry file, confirm its integration into registry and you are ready to go. If the operation goes normal you should see something like that:

If you want to use you frequencies at Windows startup check Apply these settings at startup radio button.

1.2) Overclocking via Riva Tuner

Riva Tuner is a more advance enhancing application. For the overclocking level is relatively simple to use.

When installing Riva Tuner for the first time let it create its database. After that you should see the following screen. At Driver Settings click customize then click System Settings.

The following screen should appear. You have to check the Enable driver-level hardware overclocking radio button. After that it is very simple to use. If you want to use you frequencies at Windows startup check Apply overclocking at Windows startup radio button.

Even you are using CoolBits or Riva Tuner you will need to Pre-test the selected frequencies using the Test Changes or Test buttons. If you system hangs at these test you are overestimate you video card overclocking capabilities.

2) Unlocking pixel pipelines

First you will need to know what a pixel pipeline is. Well, the term, pixel pipeline, encompasses one of a number of parallel processing pipelines within a graphic processing unit (GPU). Each pipeline processes pixel, texture, and frequently geometric data. Various GPUs has different numbers of pixel pipelines, and larger number of these pipelines increased the pixel/texel per clock performance of the accelerator. This performance was measured in pixel and texture fill rate. Real-time 3D rendering performance scales well additional parallelism because of the nature of 3D graphics functions.

To unlock pixel pipeline we will use Riva Tuner

First, we will need to know if you GPU have additional unlockable pipelines. You can search information on Internet. For example the GeForce 6200 HIS-AGP has 4 unlockable pipelines while the GeForce 6200 PCI-Express has no unlockable pipes. This is because the GeForce 6200 HIS-AGP has a NV43 GPU while the GeForce 6200 PCI-Express has a NV44 GPU.
On the Target adapter field you can see some information about your video card. In our example the video card only has 4pp (4 pixel pipelines). Click Customize and then Low-level settings

The Low-level system tweaks screen should appear. Select NVStrap driver tab. As you can see all the settings are grayed out. To make them available click the Install button. If the Install button is grayed out it means that your card has no configurable pixel pipelines.

After clicking the Install button all the settings are available. At Active pixel/vertex units configuration select custom then click Customize.

You will see something like that:

Check the Pixel Units that are disabled and instantly you can see that the card now has 8pp (8 pixel pipelines). The reason why it states disable is because we need to restart our computer.

After that, when you start Riva Tuner you can see that the rest of 4pp (4 pixel pipelines) are working.

After enabling pipelines you should test your video card, that pipelines have not passed quality testing and can mess up your 3D application.

If you are lucky and the pipelines are operating normally you can combine this unlocking of pixel pipelines with overclocking to maximize your video card performance. For example our card is an entry-level card but with a little tweaking we made the card a mid-range one, like GeForce 6600.

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