overclocking does not necessarily reduce the life a card..its heat that typically reduces the life of the card...if you can overclock the card and keep the temps in the same ball park you will have very little life loss...You would be upgrading/replacing the card by the time that comes to be an issue....that being said you can download programs like msi afterburner to overclock your card. use google there are plenty of good tools to use to oc your card.