How to overclock Nvidia cards in Ubuntu/Kubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 - 09/01/2009 by Andrew


NOTE: How to overclock Nvidia cards in OpenSUSE

This is a first for www.HeadshotGamer.com, though after searching the web for this information I thought it would be best to write up a quick 'HowTo' guide so that anyone else searching the interwibble for answers can quickly get their Nvidia cards overclocked.

Warning

1. Overclocking is at your own risk, I'm not responsible for your actions, only overclock things you're willing to lose to damage, overclocking will void your warranty, overclocking will melt the icecaps and overclocking will probably only give you a few more frames per second. As always, YMMV.

2. DON'T follow old instructions on how to overclock your Nvidia card under Linux. There's quite a number of outdated information out there that no longer works with Ubuntu's trim xorg.conf file.

3. Keep an eye on your GPU temperatures and do some lengthy 'in game' testing (don't just rely on running glxgears) to ensure everything is stable.

Ensure you're running the proprietary Nvidia drivers

You need to ensure that you have your Nvidia drivers loaded and not just the 'nv' drivers. Run:

$ nvidia-settings

If you see an error message then you need to load the proprietary Nvidia drivers. You can do that from 'Hardware Drivers' in the Administration section of the menu. You can also manually install Nvidia drivers though this is outside the scope of this article.

Time to overclock!

Now that you're running the fast (though closed source) drivers, it's time to modify your xorg.conf file. It's located here - “/etc/X11/xorg.conf”. Edit this as root with your favourite editor.

You will be adding a single line to the section “Screen”:

Option "Coolbits" "1"

Your version may differ slightly to my version, though for clarity I'll write mine in full.

Before:

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 24
EndSection

After:

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
DefaultDepth 24
Option "Coolbits" "1"
EndSection

That's it! Save the file and restart. Hopefully you don't have any problems and X starts up fine. Run nvidia-settings again and check that you now have “Clock Frequencies” available. You can now enable overclocking and modify both your 2D and 3D frequencies using nvidia-settings.

Overclocking without manually using nvidia-settings

As soon as you reboot you'll lose any changes that you've made so to overclock easily or to permanently overclock your Nvidia card you need a bit more help. Download nvclock from the repos:

$ sudo apt-get install nvclock

Using nvclock you can setup a simple script to either overclock your graphics card by running a script (or by using an applet on the menu).

To create this script you need a file with the following:

#!/bin/bash
## This will overclock the GPU to 300 and Memory to 400 – Change accordingly!
nvclock -b coolbits -n 300.000 -m 400.000

NOTE: 300.000 is in reference to the GPU speed (both 2D and 3D) and 400.000 is in reference to the memory speed (both 2D and 3D). Modify accordingly to suit your card!!

Save this file and make it executable by typing:

$ chmod +x overclock.sh

You can now run this from the terminal (or link to it with an application launcher):

$ ./overclock.sh
Requested memory clock: 400.000 MHz
Requested core clock: 300.000 MHz


Adjusted Coolbits 2D/3D clocks on a nVidia Geforce 8400GS
Memory clock: 400.000 MHz
GPU clock: 300.000 MHz

Auto Overclock at Startup

With Kubuntu, just drop this overclock.sh script in your “/home/username/.kde/Autostart” directory. For the gnome users, you can simply run “gnome-session-properties” from the terminal and either link to the script or manually type in the overclock command.

I hope that this has made overclocking 8.10 or 9.04 easy and you're able to get a few extra frames for just a few minutes work. Any issues, questions or comments, please add them below!











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Andrew http://www.headshotgamer.com/
11/01/2009 7:13:59 PM

True! I guess it's up to the user to decide. Thanks for your input!

G&T
11/01/2009 6:25:18 AM

echo $PASSWORD | sudo -S $COMMAND or alternatively add the script path to /etc/sudoers. example: username ALL = (ALL) NOPASSWD: /home/username/.scripts/test.sh

Andrew http://www.headshotgamer.com/
10/01/2009 9:42:11 AM

The only problem with that is that you have to use "sudo", so it's not great for setting up bash scripts or using as a command in an application launcher since you'll need to to enter the root users password (or worse yet, include it in the script!).

G&T
10/01/2009 5:17:48 AM

You can also use this command: sudo nvidia-settings -a GPUOverclockingState=1 -a GPU2DClockFreqs=GPUCORE-MHZ,GPUMEM-MHZ -a GPU3DClockFreqs=GPUCORE-MHZ,GPUMEM-MHZ ie. GPU2DClockFreqs=700,666 GPU3DClockFreqs=700,666


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