GTX 1660 TI Overclocking

[Andreiul]

So, recently I upgraded my old GTX 750 OC to a Gigabyte Windforce 1660 TI OC. I got in love overclocking my gpu and squasing all the performance out of it. (It feels really nice especially when you game on a low spec PC) So I decided to take the 1660 to it's limits.

Although what I have noticed is a very big variation in the performance provided by my overclocks. (some bigger clocks would decrease performance in some cases)

I've used a bunch of benchmarks to see the results I get and it got a bit confusing because values would sometimes actually decrease with the overclock.

For this, I've used the base settings as an refference and 4 OC profiles in a increasing order.

 

Profiles :

• Base :

+0 Core Voltage

100% Power Limit

Temp. Limit : 83* C

+0 Core/Memory Clock

• OC 1

+100 Core Voltage (max)

123% Power Limit (max)

Temp. Limit : 89* C (max)

+120 Core Clock (setting recommended by MSI OC Scanner)

+500 Memory Clock

• OC 2

+1000 Memory Clock

• OC 3

+1500 Memory Clock (I am amazed how this didn't destabilized things)

• OC 4 (Seeing that everything went ok so far I decided to ramp up the Core Clock to check stability and amazingly I had no problem)

+130 Core Clock

 

Benchmarks:

  Kombustor :

 

     (GL) msi-01 1080p

- 2054 (34fps) base

- 2208 (37fps) 1

- 2201 (37fps) 2

- 2212 (37fps) 3

- 2207 (36fps) 4 *DECREASE*

     (VK) Furmark-MSI 1080p

- 4165 (69fps) base

- 4595 (76fps) 1

- 4822 (80fps) 2

- 5188 (86fps) 3

- 5150 (85fps) 4  *DECREASE*

     (GL) Furmark-Donut-5200MB 1080p

- 1370 (23fps) base

- 1486 (25fps) 1

- 1561 (26fps) 2

- 1665 (28fps) 3

- 1666 (28fps) 4

 

Assassin's Creed Odyssey Benchmark

1080p/V-sync off/ FPS Limit off/ Graphic quality Very High/Adaptive quality off/AA High

- 63(avg) - 23(min) - 100(max) base

- 63 - 23 - 99 1

- 66 - 27 -100 2

- 63 - 25 - 90 3

- 65 -29 - 101 4

 

So after this results my questions are:

* Can a bigger overclock decrease performance rather then increase it in some cases?

* Any recommandations on a better OC configuration?

* I've also run a stress test and I've noticed my Voltages decreasing and the Core clocks simulatenously slowly but I guess that's just the GPU protecting itself from overheating. Correct me if I'm wrong.

* Temperatures were around 60-70* C for Kombustor Benchmarks and 55-70* C for Assassin's Creed Odyssey, so I don't think thermal throttling occurs.

* The GPU is connected to a Pcie 16x 2.0 unfortunattely, along with an i7-4790 that clocks at 3.78 and 16Gb Dual-Channel DDR3 Ram. Apart from the Pcie are there any major bottlenecks?

 

Thanks for the time you spent reading this and if you're still here you are a really good person!                               

   

     Peace!

 

 

 

[Jurrunio]

17 minutes ago, Andreiul said:

* Can a bigger overclock decrease performance rather then increase it in some cases?

* I've also run a stress test and I've noticed my Voltages decreasing and the Core clocks simulatenously slowly but I guess that's just the GPU protecting itself from overheating. Correct me if I'm wrong.

* Temperatures were around 60-70* C for Kombustor Benchmarks and 55-70* C for Assassin's Creed Odyssey, so I don't think thermal throttling occurs.

* The GPU is connected to a Pcie 16x 2.0 unfortunattely, along with an i7-4790 that clocks at 3.78 and 16Gb Dual-Channel DDR3 Ram. Apart from the Pcie are there any major bottlenecks?

yes, that's an unstable overclock. This is far more prominent on Ryzen 3rd gen for example, which the chip ditch some work cycles in an attempt to not crash. Turing GPUs dont do this nearly to the extent of Zen 2 though

 

It's not overheating, but ever since Maxwell GPUs they scale with temperature significantly, in which higher temps reduce stability. It's reacting to the rising temperature by choosing a lower voltage point in the voltage to frequency graph, which usually means a lower frequency as a result.

 

PCIe 2.0 doesnt bottleneck a 1660ti, it's nowhere near fast enough to do that.