Is my Nvidia 8400GS overclocked? If not, how do I do so?

The speeds that are given seem to be consistant with what EVGA lists on their website - I'm guessing the memory speed being 'half' since the ram's DDR/GDDR of some sort. If there's any overclocking in play, its a factory overclock, and that's the speed it was shipped from the factory. Non factory overclocks are controlled by software in most modern video cards anyway, so there's little chance of it being overclocked otherwise.

You should be able to check this (and do overclocking) by installing EVGA precision (or MSI afterburner, same application, different skins, and the latter works on non MSI video cards too). I'd note, while overclocking may be a slight improvement, its unlikely to be a major improvement - you're unlikely to get drastically better frame rates.

Journeyman Geek

Posted 2013-01-22T10:22:33.497

Reputation: 119 122

I prefer NVIDIA System Tools over Afterburner. It's quite dated and discontinued, but still works and it just adds an extra page to the NVIDIA Control Panel. No fancy skins, just overclocking.

– gronostaj – 2016-04-12T11:17:30.883

Thanks for the answer Journey. I was wondering if you also knew a way to keep the card cool? I'm afraid to fry the card. I know this might be an idiotic question, but does placing a home fan close to the card a good idea? Edit: increasing 5-10fps would really help I think. I feel i'm on the verge of running the game smoothly. I get 30-50 most of the time but it drops to 15-20 in heavy maps. – Rufio – 2013-01-22T10:45:05.810

1The 8XXX series in my experience dosen't react too well to heat - they may have a flaw in their contruction that often results in them failing prematurely. I've had both the ones I have owned over the years fail interestingly (One suddenly stopped working. The other had some graphical corruption before it dropped dead). Opening the side of the case and putting a box fan should work, though I recommend very careful tuning of the system even with that. I'd probably try the onboard processor on the core i7 first before trying OCing that old thing. – Journeyman Geek – 2013-01-22T10:51:25.757

Try the onboard processor on the core i7? Can you explain me what does this do? (I'm not really familiar with computer hardware much). Thank you. – Rufio – 2013-01-22T10:55:40.253

If you have one of the newer core i7 processors, they may have an onboard video adaptor. These arn't great, but on a sandy bridge or ivy bridge processor they're probably good enough for very basic gaming. Its worth a try. – Journeyman Geek – 2013-01-22T10:58:39.683

Wow I was not aware of this. Thank you for letting me know! It's an Intel Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.40GHz on a Asus motherboard. Is there any easy way to verify if it has an onboard video adaptor? – Rufio – 2013-01-22T11:03:42.963

Oh, it probably does. check if your motherboard has video ports at the back, and if you don't want to remove your current discrete card to check (the default is to use one or the other), you may need to enable using both of them together in the bios

– Journeyman Geek – 2013-01-22T11:07:20.560

It does have a HDMI port on the back, so I try connecting my monitor there and should use the onboard video card? I can't express how deeply thankful I'm for all your help. – Rufio – 2013-01-22T11:13:51.823

yup. Just remember to check in bios if it dosen't work and change that setting, or remove the gforce before you test. – Journeyman Geek – 2013-01-22T14:24:02.553

Also, I've never touched my card before. That's the main reason I'm wondering if I got it overclocked from the place I bought it. – Rufio – 2013-01-22T10:28:29.877

Are you sure the problem is the performance of the graphics card? – vonbrand – 2013-01-22T10:47:41.473

I have 8gb of memory and an i7 processor. I'm pretty sure it's this obsolete card. – Rufio – 2013-01-22T10:50:28.787

Is my Nvidia 8400GS overclocked? If not, how do I do so?

Answers