How to Over-Clock your Graphic Card

WHAT IS OVER-CLOCKING??

Over-clocking as the name suggests is the process of increasing the clock frequency of your Graphic Card above the rated base frequency that your card originally came with. By this method you can squeeze out the extra performance out of your existing graphic card making it run faster and able to use visual intensive applications and games without going for a new purchase straight away.
You can increase the clock speed of card upto 25% of the original and this varied from card to card.

But be aware that overclocking your graphics card is a cost effective way to achieve or to get maximum performance out of your card, but the bad thing is that it is a complicated process and does void your graphics card warranty.

IMPORTANT:

Keep these point in mind before proceeding further:

• Overclocking does increase a noticeable performance in games but it’s a risky process that voids manufacturer’s warranty, so do it when you have no warranty left or you badly need some extra performance increase in the latest games.

• Also make sure that you have adequate Power Supply for your rig and for your Graphic Card as less power may lead to short-circuiting and damaging your hardware.
• Cooling is very important as well so have a good cooling system installed with a good cabinet for proper room and air-flow.

HOW TO DO IT??

To overclock your graphics card, so that you can squeeze out maximum performance from your card you need a software. The software that we will use today for overclocking is EVGA Precision X.
This is used only for Nvidia cards and will not support AMD/ATI manufactured cards!
Also make sure to install the latest drivers for your graphics card.

Overclocking of Graphics card involves increasing the frequencies of two main components that is the GPU Core and Video Memory.

Overclocking the GPU Core

Start by increasing the frequency in steps of 10MHz by moving up the GPU Core frequency slider. After that, test these newly increased frequencies by playing a  game that is very resource demanding. Play the game for 10 -15 minutes and if you do not notice any freezing of the game then you can again increase the frequency and repeat the same step, but if any signs of freezing of the game or of the system occurs, then reduce the frequency that you have increased and test it again. You will reach a point where the increase frequency will be stable. After this move to next step that involves overclocking video memory.

Overclocking the Video Memory

Again start by increasing the frequency of memory in steps of 10 – 20 MHz by moving up the memory frequency slider. Play a demanding game for 10 – 15 minutes and observe carefully. If you see any yellow artifacts or spots on the screen then it’s time to move down the frequency a bit and test it again. By continuing this process you will reach a point where the increased frequency will be stable and you can stay with this setting.

Hope that you find this article helpful, I'll post another article for AMD/ATI card users soon though it also follows the same process but with the AMD Catalyst Vision software that comes along with the cards itself.
Feel free to post your queries and suggestions for further improvements.