whats more dangerous flashing your card or overclocking it?

[apollooff320]

say that I want to flash my 9800pro to and 9800XT. Would it be smarter to overclock it or to just flash it? Which one is more dangerous?

[intimidator]

I would say flashing it. You could totally hose it with a bad flash. You could smoke it by OC'ing too but chances are less likely.

I don't know why people OC anymore? Cards & CPU's today are so fast there really is no point. Why risk your hardware to do something that you will never be able to tell the difference anyway??

People do it just to do it. There is no noticeable real world gain. Your 3dmark will go up a few points. Big deal.

just my .02

[RamonGTP]

I'd have to guess that flashing would be the riskier of the two.

[MadPistol]

A bad Flash = Certain doom for the card.

Too much OC = blue screen of death or it crashes machine. No damage taken to anything.

WAY too much OC = Video card up in smoke. Perhaps fries AGP slot, as well as mother board.

I would have to say that of the 2, you can replace a video card. However, you OC it too much without proper precaution and you screw over more than just you video card. However a little OC on a video card that can handle it never did any harm. That's my take on things. :t

[bob05]

If you want to flash a 9800 Pro to a 9800XT, first O/C it to 9800XT speeds to see if it can handle it (also to see if the performance is good enough to not have to flash). :t

[Bigjakkstaffa]

Probably flashing, however if the flash does go belly up, as long as you backup the original BIOS to floppy, you may be able to 'blind' flash the old good BIOS back onto the card, or if you have a PCI card lying about, boot from that and carry out the re-flash

--Jakk:t