looking to underclock a semi-old video card...

sitting here with a somewhat old box, but it's running win7ult just fine. recently a friend took pity on my dealing with the integrated GPU and sent me an old card they didn't need; an Nvidia GeForce GT520.

it works quite nicely, but... certain games cause it to get dangerously hot. like. it's rated to 102c and had managed to hit 98c. I'd been compensating in a stupid way, by taking the side off the case and pointing a fan in the computer's general direction to stimulate airflow (it's not pointing directly into the case, but rather blowing past the case from across the room). that results in the card hovering around 80c~84c under most circumstances with those games... but I am well aware this is not a good solution, particularly with winter coming and all the "heaters kicking up dust" that comes with it.

one of the culprit games is still an early test version, and lacks settings to adjust beyond a hastily applied resolution selection, and that doesn't work quite so well as the interface doesn't scale yet. since it's early enough to not have a lot to do in it, I can just not play it untill the developers have progress to update with.

the other... well, I'm running it with bare minimum "make things look nice" settings; the shader setting set to "standard" (read: on), the environment lighting on, the game's weak antialiasing on, and the shadow quality at it's max, so that the world isn't just uniformly lit. (the shadows and evironment lighting have to work together to do that. nobody says the programmers were at the top of their game.) I might get some heat reduction turning the shaders off, but... I finally can use them at all so I'd rather try to avoid switching back down into full "insufficient computer" mode.

friend of mine who works in sales/service suggested underclocking the GPU a little to try to cause less heat... but I've been having limited success finding info.

I found a registry file to unlock things like clock settings pages in display properties for nvidia cards, but it seems that it's an outdated thing that doesn't work in win7, or with this card and the more recent drivers it's using, or what have you.

I've seen mention of a program called "powerstrip" that supposedly could help, but being that it's shareware and I don't have money to register it, I'd probably wind up with a headache trying to make advantage of it.

and then there's MSI Afterburner, but I keep seeing commentary about people having issues after installing it, some of which even forcing major system rollbacks to resolve. so I'm more than slightly hesistant to go with that option.


and thus, I've come looking for suggestions. does anyone have any good ideas on the subject of underclocking a geforce GT520 in win7?

 

Welcome to Major Geeks

Actually taking the side off and directing a fan into the case is a good quick-fix for overheating issues.

Not had any experience with down-clocking a card (or overclocking when it comes to Nvidia cards, for that matter). Does the card have a fan? If so, is it clean and working properly? Have you considered improving the airflow in your case? Seems a shame to limit what a card can do because of a heat issue.

If it were me, I'd dissasemble the cooling system the card has (fan and heatsink, or just a heatsink) and replace the thermal grease between the heatsink and the GPU. It could be the heatsink is not making proper contact with the GPU. If the card does not have a fan (some don't) consider mounting one to it . . . I've done that on a number of occasions.

I have used the MSI program, and while it didn't cause me any issues I didn't really care for it. I don't overclock all that much, so I suggest you check out sites like Overclock.net and see what programs are popular.

 

this card's setup is kinda minimalistic. sort of a wide heatsink with a small fan nested in it; not really sure it's the sort that can be tinkered with easily damaging things, either, as it's pretty flat...
if it's dusty to any real extent I'd probably blame it on the whole "open case" thing. the card is facing downward, about 4inches from the bottom of the case, and it's the only slot that would accept such a card.
as for airflow... there's not a lot I can do short of taking a nail and making swiss cheese out of the sidepanel, which already has some vents cut into it by default. only one spot I could think to mount a fan into the case, and that's above the card on the back panel; the positioning gives me the feeling it would likely then interfere with the CPU and PSU fans. mid-tower case doesn't really give me the kind of space I'd like, but I can't afford to do something about it...

I'd actually seen a youtube thing about messing with the clock speeds with this card, but the piece of nvidia-supplied software it suggested does not apparently actually support the card, going by nvidia's own site. made me shy away from that option, too.



thanks for your welcome, btw.