Overclocking my GeForce GTX 650

[MordredMS 鬱賢]

Hello everybody! I'm opening this topic because I need a piece of advice on the subject of overclocking.

My graphics card is an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650; it comes with its own handy little program which allows me to tweak various settings, including GPU clock, fan speed, Memory clock, and Frame Rate Target.

When I need to play a particularly demanding game on which I see some framerate drop or pop-up or anything like that (which is not that often), I switch the settings on the GPU Tweak utility to a profile I've saved: GPU clock up to 1111 Mhz (1071 Mhz being the card's default setting, and 1171 being the max), fan programmed so that it spins at a slightly higher speed than what the card would automatically do (for example, 40% full speed at 60°C, 50% at 65°C and so on), and Memory clock up to 5350 Mhz (5000 being the card's default, and 6000 being the max).
Oh, my case is a Cooler Master Glite 431; it's pretty trusty in terms of cooling and air flow.



Since I'm very new to overclocking, and since this PC I built isn't even one year old and I'd like it to live long and prosper, there's a couple of questions I'd like to ask:

1) How much should I overclock the GPU? That is, how much is TOO much?

2) What is the safe temperature? Normally it stabilizes around 62-67°C, having never gone over 70° C. At what temperature should I worry?

3) Is there any risk in overclocking even if I manage to keep the temperature safely low? Is there anything else I should monitor and keep under control besides temperature?

4) What does the memory clock do? Should I raise its clock, and how much?

5) Would playing around with the Framerate Target and Display Refresh Rate be of help?


Sorry for the long post, and thank you in advance for any help you can give. :-)