I know it is a crappy card, but I am not going to do any more upgrades to my computer, because agp cards are a waste of money now, Ill just do a full computer build in a couple years.

Anyway, I wanted to see if I could get a little more power out of my card, so I used coolbits 2.0 to try to overclock it some. Every time I try to do it, the system becomes unstable it seems. I use find optimal and then test it, which it passes, but remains unstable under stress such as playing video games.

Is Coolbits the culprit, should I change something in BIOS, or what else might be the problem?

-If AGP Fast Write is enabled in the BIOS, disable it. Fast Write sometimes makes video cards less stable, especially when they are overclocked.

-Try ATITool. I've generally found ATITool to be the best overclocking utility, even for nVidia graphics cards.

-You may just have a dud when it comes to overclocking. Some cards won't run any higher than their factory-set speeds.

The lean, mean, movie playing P3 machine
P3-S 1400 @ 1.66GHz, 158MHz FSB
2GB PC2700 DDR
7950GT AGP
Optoma 1280x720 projector
JBL 5.1 amp and speakers
Now storing 114 HD movies

AGP cards aren't necessarily a waste of money, but getting a GF6200 certainly was. If you do any kind of gaming, it's not gonna hold you over for 2 more years no matter how much you overclock it. I don't know what you paid for it (or why), but there are plenty of cards available that are MUCH better without breaking the bank.

Alright I will try it. While doing some research on the card, I found that its normally got a 350mhz core with 400 mhz memory. Well it is set on 500 mhz memory for when I turn on the overclocking utility so that MAY be the problem with the instablity issues :)

Ill use that ATITool and turn off fastwrite and let you know how it goes. What does that fastwrite do anyway?

Biostar P4m800CE
Pentium 4 Prescott @ 3GHz
1GB PC3200 RAM
Geforce 6200 AGP
2 80Gb Harddrives
XP Home SP2

"I found that its normally got a 350mhz core with 400 mhz memory"

Most of the 6200s I've seen run the core at 350MHz & memory at 200MHz (DDR400)....the reference design is 300MHz/250MHz. While there are 128-bit cards out there, most are 64-bit.

Well I bought it quite a while ago and I had a fairly limited budget and limited knowledge at the time, so I can claim ignorance for buying it, I know now I could have bought a much better agp for the $60 I spent on this card, but what is done is done.

I don't do much gaming, and I haven't bought a new game in a long time, so this card does me fine, which is the reason I do not need to upgrade any more.

I read on the site it is recommended to overclock to 450 mhz memory and 400 mhz core, so Ill try that.

Also I have read that it is possible to unlock the 8 pixel pipeline on a 6200, any directions on how to do that or any good sites?

Biostar P4m800CE
Pentium 4 Prescott @ 3GHz
1GB PC3200 RAM
Geforce 6200 AGP
2 80Gb Harddrives
XP Home SP2

Nope, its 350 core 400 memory, just looked on the box, and it is 64 bit.

Biostar P4m800-m4
Pentium 4 Prescott @ 3GHz
1GB PC3200 RAM
Geforce 6200 AGP
2 80Gb Harddrives
XP Home SP2

The memory runs at 200MHz, not 400MHz...400MHz is the effective speed due to DDR. And if you don't do much gaming, what's the point of overclocking the card?

Ok I see, that makes sense jam. I do game, just not a lot, and when I do it would be nice to get a little bit more out of my card in terms of graphics settings.

Anyway I tried that ATITool and it didn't even register that my card was there I guess, so I tried using coolbits again and set the memory to 450 and clock to 400 and launched a game. I think it was artifacting, it had some strange yellow squares and stuff and froze up on me once.

Jam do you think I should overclock the card's memory based on its effective speed of 400mhz or actual speed of 200mhz?

Biostar P4m800-m4
Pentium 4 Prescott @ 3GHz
1GB PC3200 RAM
Geforce 6200 AGP
2 80Gb Harddrives
XP Home SP2

I use ATiTool. It lists the actual memory speed, not the effective speed. When you fire up Coolbits, what is the default memory speed reported as...200MHz or 400MHz?

The big drawbacks to your card is it uses 64-bit DDR memory & only has 4 PixelPipelines. Even if you successfully overclock it, you're probably only gonna gain a couple of FPS.