One way to increase the video memory overclocking potential is by checking the cooling system used by the memory chips. If you improve the memory chips’ cooling system, you will probably achieve a higher memory overclocking. You can find three situations here:

• The memory chips are cooled down by the same cooler used by the GPU;
• The memory chips use an independent passive heatsink;
• The memory chips don’t use any cooling device at all.

If your memory chips already use passive heatsinks on them, great. You already have a good cooling solution for your memory chips. See an example in Figure 8.

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Figure 8: This video card came with passive heatsinks on its memory chips.

If the memory chips from your video card don’t come with any cooling device, you can buy memory heatsinks and install them (Zalman ZMHRS1 and Thermaltake CL-C0025 are good examples of this kind of product). The installation process is very simple.

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Figure 9: The memory chips from this video card don’t come with any cooling device at all.

If on your video card the cooler used by the GPU is also used to cool down the memory chips, you can improve the video card cooling by installing a better GPU cooler, like the ones from Arctic Cooling. These high-end coolers will help you increase both the GPU and the video memory overclocking potential. Read our first look article on Arctic Cooling Accelero X1 to see the step-by-step installation of this cooler on our GeForce 6800 GS.

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Figure 10: On this video card the GPU cooler cools down the memory chips.