Voltmodding an old GPU for fun and profit

Being a "bencher", I like to push my computer hardware to the limits and beyond. Nice new six core Intel core i7 Extreme 980x cpu runs at 3.3ghz stock? That's all well and good, but I'd rather run it somewhat over five gigahertz, and compete with plenty of other people in how high I can get the cpu to run. Other benchmarks involve calculating Pi to one million or 32 million digits, and other math things.

In the video card end of things, the benchmarks involve rendering specific scenes either as fast as possible, or with the largest number of frames per second possible. The higher you can overclock, the more frames you can render and the higher your score will be. Overclocking to the extreme limit requires very good cooling, and rather more voltage then the manufacturers want you putting through the cards, that means it's time to bust out the soldering iron and have some fun! Hit Read More for more!