Frying by Overclocking VGA

[Nubius]

what are the chances of frying your VGA card because most OC'ing articles about OC'ing VGA cards say that there really is no danger. If you slowly make the increments and use the TEST NEW SETTINGS buttons you'll be fine because at worst you'll see white spots appear in the screen or your system will reboot and then default settings will be brought back. So would anyone be able to estimate the likelyhood of burning one out. Anyone ever done it? I might try it with the eVGA GeForce 6800 128mb card I get because I just read another forum post saying the eVGA brand has the same heatsinks on all the cards which I saw the pictures of and says he oc'd his 6800 gt 256mb to ultra settings, I don't want quite that but I little boost couldn't hurt. Should I be weary of frying that cause I don't want to be out that much cash =)

 

[koldapu]

just be careful and you should be ok

 

[Demalii]

well there's always that danger.. I've heard that you wouldn't really hurt a video card just by pushing it.. it's the same theory that when you overclock a cpu, it's not pushing it harder that shortens the life, it's giving it more voltage that'll shorten it's life span. So if you push your card too much, you probably won't get a picture at all and it'll reset, or you'll get artifacts in your gameplay, or your desktop will be messed up..

 

[72montecarlo]

All the newer graphics cards especially the 6800 in question has software built into the card that prevents you from burning it out. if the cpu reaches what the card believes to be unsafe temperatues the card will underclock it self some or back to original settings.