What is overclocking and video card linking?
What is video card linking and over clocking?
What does "video card linking" mean in terms of building a computer, and what does over clocking mean?
November 19, 2010
2 Comments • Newest first
"Linking" is a method of using more than one video card to improve the graphics processing power by running two or more GPUs (Grapics Processing Units, the central chip on a video card that does the processing) in "parallel". nVidia calls its version of this "Scalable Link Interface", or "SLI", ATI calls its version "Crossfire".
To use it you need a motherboard with more than one video card slot, and more than one video card. Current implementations usually limit the number of cards to two, and there is a small cable that runs between the cards to synchronize the processing.
The "clock signal" is what acts as a "metronome" keeping everthing in a computer system synchronized. It determines how often things happen, and thus the "speed" a device operates.
"Overclocking" means increasing the clock signal speed on a device. Overclocking your motherboard's main CPU will make the computer "run" faster, and overclocking the GPU chip on the video card will make it process graphics faster.
This does not come without a cost however- the faster electronics devices operate, the more heat they generate, to a point where they can actually destroy themselves. Thus "overclocked" devices need more cooling, bigger heat sinks, larger fans, liquid cooling setups. The same is true for both CPUs and video card GPUs. The increased heat may also shorten the life-span of the device.
Overclocking generally only results in marginal increases of speed, but many people like to "tinker" with their systems and try to wring every last bit of performance out of them, a little like "supertuning" a car.
Overclocking is when a computer component is running at a higher clock rate (measured in hertz or Hz for short) than when it was first manufactured. This is for hardware like CPUs and GPUs, where overclocking such components are to increase computer performance (so for example, overclocking a 1.8 Hz CPU to 3.2 Hz).
As for the other one, I assume you are referring to something like SLI, which is linking two nVIDIA GPUs together (as Crossfire is to ATI), also done to increase performance.