150+fps in Quake III just isn't fast enough is it? (Actually we think it is, so we're being sarcastic.) In fact it's just a pinch slower than your current GeForce2 Ultra, which you have just replaced with that $500 GeForce3. Not good enough for you folks who have even gone as far as to push your car's electronic speed limiter past 155 mph. No sir. OK so what can you do? Actually you can do what is commonly known as pushing the envelope and subsequently take your chances with the card and overclock it.

Well if you fancy a crack at overclocking a GeForce3, here's the short story on just how to do it and a few benchmarks showing you what all your trouble in doing so is actually worth. Current GeForce256/GTS owners, who have dabbled with the "CoolBits" DWORD in their Windows registry before, will feel right at home with the new Detonator 4 drivers. All you need to do is add this key:

Insert and edit the 'Coolbits' DWORD from 01 to 03. NVIDIA's own overclocking utility is then there for the taking. So if you've shelled out $500 and feel lucky, then you know what to do. We saved our overclocking tests until after we were done with the card's initial testing. Obviously the NVIDIA reference board has been designed with some headroom in mind because we got ours up to 235/510 (the default is 200/460).

Either way, we don't recommend you do this. It voids the manufacturer's warranty on the card, it's against the law (not really) and you'll get sent to bed early without any hot cocoa too (that's downright propaganda). But for those of you with William Wallace's "BraveHeart" that don't mind tampering with your $500 investment, it sure is fun...