Overclocking GPU

Question

I am running a AMD Radeon HD 3650 Graphics Card. My Graphics Card Software (Catalyst) came with overclocking software to overclock my GPU. I have a few questions though:

How bad for my GPU is overclocking?

What does the following mean?

High Performs GPU Clock Setting:

300----------------750mhz

High Performance Memory Clock Setting:

400----------------450mhz

What do those two clocks represent and do?

I have looked yet cannot find a max temp for my GPU, what is the max temp that is acceptable?

When running Photoshop (especially 3D) am I going to notice speed improvements by overclocking?

Answer 1

Your graphics card has two main parts to it, the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and the Memory that the GPU connects to to store data such as graphics textures.

You can push each of these units to higher speeds separately, hence you have two sliders.

The highest you can push these two sliders does not solely depend on how hot the components will get but on the actual quality of the physical parts on the graphics card. Some will run faster than other at the same temperatures. You could buy two graphics cards on the same day from the same manufacturer but there is no guarantee that they will overclock to the same speeds.

The newer versions of Photoshop can use the GPU to boost speeds, and overclocking may help this to some extent, but I personally doubt that you will get a large enough boost to justify the risk of damage to your graphics card should you try to overclock it too hard.

I would get a newer graphics card (and one that I knew had been designed by engineers to run at higher speeds) rather than seeing if I got lucky with a card that can be overclocked.