How do I set GPU core and memory clock programmatically on Windows?

Question

Is there some API/library for this? I have an ATI Radeon 9000 Series graphics card and I need to lower its core/memory clock on Windows startup (I thought of making a small service for this but I never did this before).

I know it's possible (because RivaTuner does it somehow) but I just haven't figured out how.

Can point me to some resources/books/examples?

Thanks.

I'd try to grab what RivaTuner does, maybe in a debugger. – Prof. Falken May 04 '12 at 12:32 — Prof. Falken, May 04 '12 at 12:32

score 6 · Answer 1 · answered May 02 '12 at 18:22

I'm also looking for a way to do this. Any ideas using the Nvidia or ATI SDK maybe?

Judging from results of google search, nvidia provides API for overclocking their GPUs, and there are some ATI tools available as well (though ATI tools look "unofficial"). However, there's no cross-platform API, and settings are probably extremely GPU-specific.

I'd strongly recommend to avoid overclocking GPU, becuase it'll be easy to fry or permanently damage it. To be fair, last cards I had were relatively resitant to overheating - one GF8400GS worked for a month with broken cooler without noticeable permanent damage. Of course, rendering scenes that used pixel shaders (while cooler was still broken) has been consistently causing surrealistic artifacts (in 3d apps) and corruption of desktop icons (on windows desktop), and system freezes - until cooler has been replaced.

So I'd recommend to avoid modifying any GPU settings (power/clock/whatever). If you're unhappy about power consumption, using different GPU might be a better idea. Radion 9000 is quite old, so it is possible that there are some newer budget cards that have more features and drain less power.

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 02 '12 at 18:30

3

MSI Afterburner can be controlled from the command line. I imagine that you could set a profile with the reduced memory/core clocks and then apply it on startup through the command line.

answered May 02 '12 at 18:30

Paula Bean

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Good try, but "Programmatically" to me excludes using third party overclocking software - I want to be able to do it myself not rely on other software (apart from CCC or Nvidia control panel). – David May 07 '12 at 11:08
I agree with you, but it sounds like this particular use case is a one-off type thing, not a feature intended for some sort of application. – Paula Bean May 15 '12 at 15:23
This is actually a great solution, thanks! – iedoc Apr 01 '21 at 12:24

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 26 '11 at 22:23

I don't think either AMD/ATI or nVidia publishes how to do things like this. It's clearly possible, but from what I've seen you'd probably have to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they'd tell you how to do it.

That said, there is quite a bit of info publicly available -- Linux drivers can be very informative. I'm not sure whether (and if so, how much) they'll tell you about this aspect though.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 07 '12 at 10:53

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I found a library that could be use full for you. It based on Python and so it is pretty much neat on the programming side.

https://github.com/mjmvisser/adl3

answered May 07 '12 at 10:53

pravin

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Excellent, hope it works. Out if curiosity, what did you search in google? – David May 07 '12 at 11:06

How do I set GPU core and memory clock programmatically on Windows?

4 Answers4