New to gaming, what can be done to increase the performance

[imperfectcircle25]

Ive read about overclocking and bios flashing. Whats the best way to go for squeezing a bit more performance from this card?? I have ATItool and have been fooling with it a little bit, this card doesnt seem to OC very well though. Would flashing the Bios be a better option?

 

[uber_g]

probley not

maybe an after market VGA heatsink will help but i doubt a bios flash will do any good

 

[imperfectcircle25]

So why does everyone do it??

 

[EllisD420]

Everyone doesnt flash their video card bios. They do it only IF they know for sure that their card will accept it. If you flash your video card with a bios that isnt specifically for your card, you could damage it....and without the original bios to re-apply...the card would be hooped. I would say that the easiest way is to use ATItool to overclock. I know that you said you tried, but i would fool around a bit more with that before you go flashing your video bios. I havent been able to find too much info on video card voltages and mem timings, but im pretty sure that you could modify both with your current card and Atitool. If it dosnt overclock well, then i doubt that flashing anything would help anyways.

 

[ivoryjohn]

The all in wonders have always been a step behind the regular cards (for gaming).

I suspect that AIW's will all be less overclockable because they are harder to cool (the tuner chips on many AIW's get hot).

There have been some cards which benefitted from a bios flash, most recently the X1800XT had a flash that beefed it up (I think it just made an overclock speed its natural speed).

Graphics hardware has advanced a lot. It is very hard to squeeze performance out of older cards. Each generation seems to royally cream the previous generation.

Usually you have to concentrate on tweaking the software to lower resolutions and graphic content to run smoothly on the hardware you have, especially with ultra graphic games like Oblivion.

 

[cisco]

You might try a PCI fan to cool the card. AIW I would think would run a little hotter than a normal card and are really not designed with the overclocker in mind.