Category: How To Guides

Overclocking Tools

Overclocking Tools

When getting into overclocking your rig – whether you just want more frames per second out of your old 6600 GT in Call of Duty 4, or to be able to brag about a score above 20k in 3DMark06 – you’ll need the right tools for the job.

Here’s an introduction to some of the most used overclocking and monitoring tools!

RivaTuner

Windows 98 / ME / 2000 / 2003 / XP / Vista / Windows 7
This application lets you overclock your NVIDIA graphics card. It was originally just a registry tweaking application for NVIDIAs old Riva TNT graphics card, but has since evolved into a much more useful tool. The most common use of RivaTuner is to set higher clock speeds on the core, shaders and memory of your graphics card(s), as well as letting you control fan thresholds and other settings. The registry tweaking is still an option however, shall you feel tempted.

ATITool

Windows XP / 2003 / 2000 (incl. 64-bit)
You guessed it – ATITool was made to overclock your ATI graphics card. However, today this application also works with NVIDIA graphics cards. If you have problems with RivaTuner, try this little bugger instead.

Prime95

Windows (incl. Windows 3.1) | Linux | FreeBSD | OS/2
This number crunching application lets you push your CPU to its limit of stability. The latest version supports multi-core processors using multiple threads. Tip: If you want to test only your CPU for stability, choose the “Small TTFs” torture test, and select “Round off checking” under the “Advanced” menu. This test uses the least amount of system memory, reducing the likelihood of your RAM being the culprit in case of failure, (but it will still be a factor).

External link: Guide to using Prime95 effectively.

SpeedFan

Windows 9x / NT / 2000 / 2003 / XP (incl. 64-bit) / Vista / Windows 7
This handy tool lets you monitor temperatures, voltages and fan speeds, and can even monitor hard disks with S.M.A.R.T. enabled. As a bonus feature it can adjust the FSB speed on some motherboards, but primarily I use SpeedFan to monitor the temperatures and voltages when overclocking. Tip: Disable SpeedStep (Intel) or Cool’n’Quiet (AMD) features in the BIOS to get accurate readings after OC’ing.

Core Temp

Windows 2000 / XP / 2003 / Vista / Windows 7
A simple, yet useful utility that lets you monitor the temperatures of your processor cores. A nice feature of Core Temp is that all CPU core temperatures can be displayed in your system tray at all times.

CPU-Z

Windows
One of the most widely used tools for overclockers. CPU-Z gathers information about your CPU, motherboard and memory timings (including SPD values).

GPU-Z

Windows 2000 / XP / Vista / Windows 7
As the name suggests, this tool is much like CPU-Z, only for graphics cards. GPU-Z gives you detailed information about your accelerator card, from make and model to clock speed and driver version. If you click the “Sensors” tab, you can handily monitor the GPU and PCB temperatures, fan speed (in per cent and RPM), and current core and memory clock speeds.

How To: Make Web Pages Load Quicker In Firefox

There’s a lot of different tricks and tools that are supposed to improve website loading times in Firefox, but whether they really make a difference or not is often hard to tell.

There are exceptions however, so follow the directions below to make your pages display faster in Firefox as they are loading:

  1. In the address bar (where you type in website addresses), type “about:config” and hit Enter to access the hidden settings menu in Firefox.
  2. In the “Filter:” field, type “network.prefetch”.
  3. Right click the line that says “network.prefecth-next” and click “Toggle”.

How to toggle prefetching in Firefox

How To: Start Media Player In The Now Playing Tab

Right click on the shortcut for Windows Media Player and click on ‘Properties’. In the ‘Target’ field, after the ” ends, type ‘/Task NowPlaying’ (without the single quotes).

Example: If the shortcut looks like [“C:Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe” /Prefetch:1] change it to [“C:Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe” /Task NowPlaying].

How to set the default start page of Windows Media Player to the Now Playing Tab

How To: Mark Partition As Active

How to mark a partition as active using the Windows interface:

1. Open Computer Management (Local)

2. In the console tree, click Disk Management.

Where?
Computer Management (Local) > Storage > Disk Management

3. Right-click the primary partition you want to mark as active, and then click Mark Partition as Active.

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How To: Mark Partition As Inactive

If you managed to go into Disk Management in Windows XP and somehow click “Mark Partition as Active” accidentally, this could render your computer unbootable. If you are so lucky that you haven’t rebooted yet, here is one possible solution to the problem: mark the partition as inactive using the DISKPART tool:

  1.  Open up a command prompt and type DISKPART.
  2. Type LIST DISK
  3. Type SELECT DISK n (where n is the number of the old Win98 drive)
  4. Type LIST PARTITION
  5. Type SELECT PARTITION n (where n is the number of the active partition you wish to make inactive)
  6. Type INACTIVE
  7. Type EXIT to exit DISKPART
  8. Type EXIT again to exit the command prompt
  9. Reboot

Mark Partition as Inactive using the Microsoft DISKPART tool

If you have problems booting your computer or the above approach didn’t work for you, you could also try what Microsoft suggests on their help page entitled The computer does not start after you change the active partition by using the Disk Management tool – external link, opens in new window. For your convenience, the content of that page is reproduced below:

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