Many of the motherboards and GPU (graphics cards) allow themselves to be overclocked. By overclocking, you can force your CPU or GPU to run at a higher clock frequency than they are rated for. For example, you can overclock an Intel 3.8 GHz CPU and run it at 4.2 GHz. Overclocking gives you more power, but since your processor is running at higher than rated frequency, it gets overheated and can make your system unstable. If you want to see how much overclocking is safe for your GPU, then you can use the FurMark Stress test program. It is a benchmark test for your GPU that puts your GPU under heavy stress by rendering circular furs on your screen.
You can get the FurMark benchmark tool from the Ozone3D website. It comes as a setup installer. After the installation, when it is launched, you can choose the custom screen size dimensions from the list for the fur rendering or you can choose a preset screen resolution by just clicking on the preset buttons. You can also choose to run the burn-in test fullscreen.
For much more control over the burn-in test, you can click on the Settings button. Here you can choose various options like dynamic background, dynamic camera, GPU temperature alarm, post-fx and more.
As you click on the Burn-in test button, the fur rendering test starts up. But before you start the test, you should close all the applications and save your open work – if any. During the test, your computer may become unresponsive and hang up. The GPU temperature is shown in the test screen. If your GPU is overclocked, then it can result on overheating of the GPU resulting in computer getting hanged or it being shut down. After the test your GPU test score is sent to the FurMark website where you can see and compare your score with other people’s rigs.
In addition to the burn-in test, the FurMark also comes with the popular GPU-Z, GPU Shark and CPUBurner tools which can be used to find out technical details about your GPU as well as putting your overclocked CPU under some test.
Conclusion: The FurMark benchmark tool can put your overclocked GPU under stress while rendering furs on your screen. This tool can be used to see if your GPU is ready to deliver the performance that is required to run modern graphics power hungry computer games.
You can download FurMark from http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/.