Too much overclocking?

[DEATHMASTER]

Well I have an evga 6800 256mb, its stock at 325 mhz core and 600 mhz memory.
I went to the settings and clicked on detect optimal frequencys and it went to 444 and 839! Now even I thought that was a little too high, considering the fact that CS:S started to run at 40 fps right off the bat. I lowered it to 425 and 815; things started running great. Today I was playing shadowgrounds demo and things started artifacting after and hour. I exited the game and what happens? Everthing I see on the desktop is artifacting! I'm thinking that this is because the frequencies are still too high. I have it set to 405 and 750 atm...since thats the max that riva tuner recommends before that "!" appears. Should I keep these settings?

 

[Link]

If its artifacting, it means its to hot. Going for a high clock to start with is generally a bad idea. The best way to overclock it, is to increase it a small amount (around 20mhz) and play for a couple of hours. If you don't get any artifacts, go up again. Repeat this process untill you get the artifacts showing again, and go back a step.

Also, if you are serious about overclocking, you can get after market coolers for GFX cards, although they do invalidate your warranty.

 

[Ren.182]

Take it back to stock speeds and let it cool down. If it's still artifacting at stock speeds chances are that you may have damaged the card.

 

[DEATHMASTER]

well i just played CS:S for hours and things seem cool at 345 and 620, but thanks for the heart attack you almost gave me Ren you posted right when I was done playing lol.