Is it worth overclocking a Strix GTX1080

[JSUSoutherner]

So, I have never overclocked a GPU, however, I've seen a lot of stuff saying that the Strix card I have in my build is a great one for it and it has a performance ceiling pretty far above what it comes out of the box with.

 

Anyway, I was wondering if overclocking would provide a noticeable improvement  in performance or whether it would just be something you would only realize if you were watching a CAM overlay.  Also, if I were to overclock my GPU, how do I even go about that? 

 

Here is what CAM and GPU Tweak say about what I currently have going:

 

And here is my score from running Unigine Heaven:

 

 

I know a lot of you guys know a whole lot more about this than I do, so what would you guys recommend?

 

Thanks

[Guest]

If you are not gaming at 4k, I doubt you will notice the change after the first few days. If your card can, I would undervolt it to reduce heat and power consumption.

[MegaDave91]

Is the card struggling in some areas or do you simply want to see a higher framerate despite it being well over the monitor refresh rate? 

 

By the way, what's the resolution of you monitor?  I see it's 1440.

[JSUSoutherner]

3 minutes ago, MegaDave91 said:

Is the card struggling in some areas or do you simply want to see a higher framerate despite it being well over the monitor refresh rate? 

 

By the way, what's the resolution of you monitor?  I see it's 1440.

I wouldn't say it's struggling or anything, no, but a little extra juice for BF1 would be nice.

 

Why? Cause I'm greedy, mostly.

 

My monitor is also 165Hz. So no, my GPU isn't outpacing my monitor's framerate.  At least not on Battlefield.

 

I'm just not sure of what kind of increase could be had from an overclock.

 

If it's nothing significant I probably won't bother with it.

[Guest]

You could see a range of 10% to 20% increase if you bump it up a lot, maybe more if you have the power and cooling.

[JSUSoutherner]

Just now, tjcater said:

You could see a range of 10% to 20% increase if you bump it up a lot, maybe more if you have the power and cooling.

How much is a lot?

[Guest]

Idk, maybe a 200to 400mhz bump

[JSUSoutherner]

1 minute ago, tjcater said:

Idk, maybe a 200to 400mhz bump

Is it even capable of that? What's generally the ceiling on these cards?

[Guest]

Depends on the mosfets, cooling, pcb, etc

[JSUSoutherner]

1 minute ago, tjcater said:

Depends on the mosfets, cooling, pcb, etc

May have to hit up Youtube then. Is there a method to use to safely find the card's limits?

 

 Extra horsepower would be nice but I'm not willing to sacrifice stability or reliability.  This thing is too expensive to go and be breaking it or something.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, JSUSoutherner said:

May have to hit up Youtube then. Is there a method to use to safely find the card's limits?

 

 Extra horsepower would be nice but I'm not willing to sacrifice stability or reliability.  This thing is too expensive to go and be breaking it or something.

This older post has some relavent info: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/624680-asus-gtx-1080-strix-overclock/

 

[JSUSoutherner]

2 minutes ago, tjcater said:

This older post has some relavent info: https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/624680-asus-gtx-1080-strix-overclock/

 

Thanks!  Looks like Afterburner may be the way to go then.

 

What should I be aware of while I'm playing with it so I don't ruin my card?

 

Moving the power and temp limit up like that post says should be fine right?

[Guest]

No clue, I haven't used afterburner since my old HD 6850.

[bomerr]

Overclocking the 1080 is really easy. Open up afterburner (beta?) and max out the power limiter and voltage limit. That'll already increase your clock rate significantly because of GPU Boost 3.0. After that increase your core till it crashes and increase memory till you get artifacts. 

[SlaughterSmurf]

You'll probably get a bit more performance, but it's free and GPU Boost 3 makes it amazingly easy. No reason to not OC to be honest. 

[JSUSoutherner]

Alright, so I got Afterburner and after playing with it for a few hours this is what I came up with...

 

I was able to get the 1080 stable at 2113MHz with the memory at 5705MHz.  I also went back and bumped my 7700k up to 5GHz.

 

My Afterburner settings: 

 

 

 

Unigine Heaven Before and After:

 

Firestrike Before and After:

 

I also ran TimeSpy and got just under a 7000 after overclocking.  I forgot to get a screenshot though.

 

How'd I do?