Here I’ll start listing some resources and bits to try and help you get the most out of your system without cooking it. (or your wallet) This is an open discussion page, and your comments/suggestions are more than welcome. My experiences may be different than others’, but hopefully my mistakes and mistrials will help others avoid them.

I’ll try and keep things organized, and there are sub-pages to this one regarding specific hardware or manufacturers. I know some of the topics may seem too basic, but some may just not know how/where to find it…

First off, knowing what FPS you are getting game is one of the best guides as to performance. Although there are ways to make the games display FPS for you, usually it involves the console and typing in a command each time you play. I’m lazy, and prefer the computer do it for me in any game, and a great app for this is called FRAPS, which you can grab [ HERE ]. It’s pretty basic, but will render your FPS in the corner of the window no matter what game you play. The one thing I recommend doing is checking on “run when windows starts” in the preference panel. That way you never have to remember to turn it on.

On that same note, for users of newer nVidia based cards, you can grab RivaTuner [ HERE ], which yes - is an overclocking utility - but I don’t use it for that. I use the RivaTuner Statistics Server to report the FPS, GPU temp, CPU temp and fan speeds in-game, allowing me to see when things are getting too hot and make adjustments, etc. Obviously this does way more than FRAPS simple FPS meter, although with FRAPS, you can also capture video clips. You have to do some specific steps to get the Stats Server running all the time. I’ll try and cover that in a specific page.

RivaTuner will also allow you to over-ride the default fan settings for your video card, allowing you greater control of just how hot it gets. For instance: my 8800GTS had a default operating range of 60C - 90C. The card would have to get near 88C to turn the fan to 100%, which just turned this office into a sauna. With the tweaks in RivaTuner, I now operate at 56-58C idle, 73-74C full load. Still very hot compared to other video cards, but way cooler than what stock settings were. Running cooler also == longer product life.