Being an extreme computing fan, I’ve been involved with overclocking for a long time. GPUs overclock very differently than CPUs do, because for the most part, they do not have a user editable BIOS. (There are tools out there for making custom BIOSes but they have a high tendency to brick graphics cards, so I don’t use them) Most people overclock their GPUs using software to change the clocks after the OS has booted. I would have to say that the most well known application for doing this would be Rivatuner, but that application has not been developed since 2009, and it doesn’t support any newer GPUs. After searching for a while, I found the application MSI Afterburner, which just so happens to be powered by Rivatuner. The only difference is that it supports even the newest GPUs. After installing it, I was surprised at the amount of features it had. It allowed for me to actually change the voltage of the GPU core, something that I did not know was even possible with software. It also showed statistics like the GPU load in per cent, and the memory usage, again things that I had never seen an application report before. It is because of these reasons that I starting using it. I was able to achieve a 60MHz higher core clock, and a 400MHz higher RAM clock on my NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 than I did with ZOTAC FireStorm. You do not need to own an MSI graphics card in order to use Afterburner.

Afterburner allows you to create your own OC profiles, fan speed curves, and it has a great in-game monitoring application, almost identical to the one found in Rivatuner. It also has integration with Kombustor, a great stress-test tool.