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Any card can be overclocked, but some will be able to be overclocked better than others.

You have to be very carefull when you overclock because it is possible to destroy your card. When you overclock, you are generating more heat for your card, and if it gets too hot, your card will get fried.

Check out Riva Tuner. This is a great program that you can use to overclock, and change fan speeds. You can do much more with it, but that is what I have done with mine.

Rivatuner works with most cards, but not all cards.

Using rivatuner, there is a safety feature called TEST that you must use before it will apply the overclock. There is very little chance you will ruin a GPU by overclocking it because you will see artifacts and know to lower the clock speeds.

My card was running hot (70c) at stock (fan 25%), so I set the fan speed to 60% on boot and it lowered the idle temp to 44c.

Try it and see if it works for you.

1. Can the old FX-5200 be overclocked ? - I have no clue as I never tried to overclock that card. Just try it and find out. I'm thinking that it can but the results will be severely limited and mostly unnoticeable.

2. How can i know that I am overclocking my card in a right way ? How can i avoid mistakes? - Read the directions that come with Rivatuner or whichever overclocking software you choose. Most people will just increase the core clock and memory clock speeds by small increments until they notice artifacts...I just read the guide and experimented. You can also search the internet to see what overclocks others have gotten on the card.

I also use HW monitor to monitor my temps. Watch that the temps don't climb too high as that will make the card unstable. Sometimes you can increase the fan speed. In somes cards that makes a big difference, in others with small fans, it doesn't matter a whole lot. Some cards only have a heatsink (fx 5200) and no fan. I have seen people install fans to keep them cooler, but as I mentioned before, I doubt you will see a noticeable difference with that AGP card.

I suspect that the 8800GS card would overclock quite well.

Read this Article

First of all, please stop posting in all bold. as for overclocking, i have that card and although it can be overclocked, not very much. as for how to do it, google it, there are tons of guides out there

If you are lucky you might be able to get your 5200 up to 5600 speeds

Dan

Back in the day I overclocked my GeForce 2 to about 70mhz. The FX-5200 probably can be overclocked, but is it really worth the effort?

It seems that its better NOT to overclock it !

Is riva tuner the only way to OC a Vid card or can I do it without some software program that has no relation to the card??

You can get a registry fix so you can overclock in the nVidia control panel, but it is not as good as rivatuner.

It basically opens up another option in the control panel that allows overclocking. Something nVidia put in, but then didn't let you see so morons won't put it as high as possible, then call in and wonder why their house burned down.