The State of Linux NVIDIA Overclocking
This article by no means was to compare different NVIDIA cards with their overclocking abilities or to show the performance levels of each card, as you can see from the lack of benchmarks. It was written, however, to demonstrate how possible it is to overclock your NVIDIA card under Linux, and that you're not limited to the use of BIOS editors and physical modifications. There are options available, and quite a few of them. However, we experienced troubles using three out of the four cards we tested today using NVClock, the cards being either GeForce FX or 6XXX. Nevertheless, we were using the NVClock CVS 0.8pre. Hopefully by the time 0.8 is actually released, we will see a higher success rate with these latest NVIDIA video cards. Trying to verify our 6XXX results, we decided to test one of our BFG 6800GT OC (AGP) cards in a different testbed and we were doomed with the same problem our other 6600GTs had faced. With this being said, more competition needs to be entered into the Linux arena so we are able to see Linux gaming come to a forefront. More possibilities won't discourage possible users due to a lack of graphics support, overclocking features/support, and more utilities come out from not only the NVIDIA side but also ATI, XGI, and other VPU vendors. NVClock 0.7 is very easy to use, especially if you run the GTK client, which is located in ~/src/gtk/nvclock_gtk. We see no problems using NVClock 0.7 or CVS on any older GeForce cards, as they don't use a 2D/3D switch found on these newer cards. We were very pleased with the abilities of NVClock on the Riva TNT2. Not only did this switch plague us with problems, but other NVClock errors that we had mentioned previously. It will be interesting to see what Thunderbird will be able to crank out with NVClock 0.8, and we wish him the best of luck. Look for more information here at Phoronix once NVClock 0.8 comes and we throw a few more NVIDIA cards its way.
If you enjoyed this article consider joining Phoronix Premium to view this site ad-free, multi-page articles on a single page, and other benefits. PayPal or Stripe tips are also graciously accepted. Thanks for your support.