Q: I'm using a VisionTek ATi Radeon X1300 and it gets a pretty nasty frame rate in Team Fortress 2. I thought about using ATITool to overclock it, but I don't know how much would be safe. I use the cooling system that came with my Dimension 3000 and I don't know how much I should overclock the card so it doesn't mess up. Any advice? Thanks in advance.
A: 1st of all, overclocking won't do you much good... X1300 is a legacy VGA. Nevertheless... When it comes to overclocking VGA's, it's much like with the rest of the hardware oc'ing... go forward step by step until it crashes (in a game, or 3D synthetic, like 3D mark), when it does, go a step back and run the tests extensively to check if the card can keep up the pace you have set her. I usually start off with GPU overclocking, when the limit is reached, i go a few steps back and push the memory to the edge, When you have found out both the max GPU and Memory clocks, you can play around with the combination of them to see which one is the most stable. And do not trust the ATiTool 3D render, it's misleading... use some heavy games... i used COD4 when oc'ing my last VGA. Also, take a look in the direction of Ray Adams ATi Tray tools... it's way better than ATiTool. Cheers.