# Rivatuner or ATI tool? MaximumPC GPU OCing guide



## Hawk1 (Feb 7, 2008)

Just got my new issue of MaximumPC and they have a section on overclocking your video card. Now, I'm not one who has overclocked my VGA before (other than CCC), so I was looking forward to this. They used Rivatuner because "this free third-party program offers far greater user control" over the utilities AMD and Nvidia provide, and "the capacity to create overclocking profiles for various computing scenarios are just a few of the ways Rivatuner stands out from other utilities." They then go on to show you how to use it to OC/control fan speed for AMD or Nvidia cards. 

Why no ATItool or ATI traytools? I've never used any of these (including Rivatuner), although I have downloaded looked at ATItool, and I see you can create various profiles for OCing. Just curious as to why you would think MaxPC would not use these. Do they not support all/enough Nvidia cards, or is it they just had to pick one and decided ATItool would sound too biased toward ATI/AMD? Whatever.

Anyway, if I were to try OCing my video card, would Rivatuner be easier than ATItool? About the same features?

Thanks.


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## W1zzard (Feb 7, 2008)

rivatuner is the best choice right now for overclocking. 

atitool currently has many issues with latest cards, use atitool to test if your overclock is stable and rivatuner to oc


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## vega22 (Feb 7, 2008)

W1zzard said:


> rivatuner is the best choice right now for overclocking.
> 
> atitool currently has many issues with latest cards, use atitool to test if your overclock is stable and rivatuner to oc



+1


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## craigwhiteside (Feb 7, 2008)

wiz is so honest


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## AddSub (Feb 8, 2008)

Hawk1, ATT (ATI Tray Tools), has some severe issues when it comes oc'ing, across a wide range of cards, old and new. Everything from oc'ing not working to performance drops when it does work. For example, ATT will sometime cause a card, an oc'd card at that, to perform worse than at stock. The ATT creator himself hasn't been really spending as much time on the project, he even admitted on Guru3D forums to having some big issues in his personal life he needed to deal with.  Also, the various API/driver tweaks in ATT have tendency of either not working, resetting, getting stuck, or simply doing opposite of what they were set to do. Again, this probably has to do with lack of updates for ATT in order to keep up with whatever ATI was doing to the drivers.

ATITool has the best, in my opinion,  artifact and GPU stability tester I have ever encountered. Heck, I even use it to test my general system stability, along with some other tools. But, ATITool lacks API/driver tweaks/settings that come with RivaTuner, ATT, and even Catalysts themselves.  

RivaTuner is great for nVidia's GPUs, although it works just fine (more or less) on ATI GPUs. It seems developers focused on nVidia’s GPUs, and therefore their ATI support is… lacking. I've run into numerous bugs and issues over the years when using RivaTunner with ATI cards.

I guess the best option would be to stick with whatever ATI’s Catalyst and nVidia’s ForceWare offer you, but both of those options are bloated and simply inadequate. So, I recommend to using all of em, for various purposes. ATT for it’s OSD features, ATITool for stability testing and overclocking, and RivaTunner for any specific tweaks that are absent/unavailable in others, although as far as ATI cards are concerned, I can’t think of many/any.


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