Is overclocking worth it?

[LilPach]

So I have a 1660ti and stream using the nvenc encoder I know some would say performance is performance but I mostly play fortnite. Would overclocking my gpu be worth it or would it pretty much not do much. 

[Semper]

You will see some performance increases, however, generally speaking (meaning there are situations where you will see notable gains), the days of 20%+ performance increases for overclocks are behind us.

It's more just a fun challenge for people that like to tinker.

[Jurrunio]

Overclocking does not improve NVENC performance, you cannot overclock that portion of the GPU. It could increase fps a bit, but not to the point where it will be even comparable to a 2060.

[GoodEnough]

Just now, LilPach said:

So I have a 1660ti and stream using the nvenc encoder I know some would say performance is performance but I mostly play fortnite. Would overclocking my gpu be worth it or would it pretty much not do much. 

overclocking "generally" doesnt give anymore than a 10% performance boost.

 

and a good stable "ish" overclock often requires you to force your gpu to run at a higher voltage, which not only produces a lot more heat, but also produces a lot more electricity.

 

some aftermarket cards handle overclocking a lot better than others but its generally up to the end user if they decide to overclock their gpu or not

[Letgomyleghoe.]

1 minute ago, GoodEnough said:

but also produces a lot more electricity.

 

Didn't know that overclocking gpus made them produce electricity.

Also you can't even change the voltage applied to the gpu without some mod most of the time.  Gpus have a power slider that allows to adjust how much current the gpu draws voltage is not changed whatsoever. 

[GoodEnough]

Just now, Gundar said:

Also you can't even change the voltage applied to the gpu without some mod most of the time.

not if you use msi afterburner??

[aisle9]

5 minutes ago, Gundar said:

Also you can't even change the voltage applied to the gpu without some mod most of the time. 

MSI Afterburner be like, "I'll see your comment and raise you a me."

[Vishera]

Just now, GoodEnough said:

not if you use msi afterburner??

I overclocked my GTX 1660 with Afterburner - the voltage slider doesn't increase the voltage.

Using the power limit slider is better.

 

As for overclocking the 1660 Ti,I don't know where the bottleneck is within the card but here is what i founs out from overclocking my GTX 1660:

Raise the boost frequency offset slider so the card will boost to at least 2055MHz (Since both the 1660 and 1660 Ti use the same GPU it should be no problem)

I run my card at 2070MHz~2085MHz and it peaks at 2100MHz.

I found out that my GPU is heavily bottlenecked by the memory - so i overclocked it from 4000MHz to 5000MHz,a 1GHz overclock.

It's important to note that the 1660 has GDDR5 memory compared to the GDDR6 memory of the 1660 Ti.

 

The performance i get is between the 1660 Ti and the RTX 2060

[GoodEnough]

Just now, Vishera said:

the voltage slider doesn't increase the voltage.

go into the settings and check the force voltage box

[foldingNoob]

overclocking is a labour of love. I did it with my first gaming pc. I dont have time for it now. The performance increase isnt worth it on my system. Lol in the past computers were so slow you had to overclock them!

[Vishera]

Just now, GoodEnough said:

go into the settings and check the force voltage box

This isn't Vega nor Maxwell - that slider just doesn't do that on Turing.

[Vishera]

Just now, foldingNoob said:

overclocking is a labour of love. I did it with my first gaming pc. I dont have time for it now. The performance increase isnt worth it on my system. Lol in the past computers were so slow you had to overclock them!

I go crazy with my overclocks,and considering that i use overkill cooling solutions i get huge improvements in performance.

[GoodEnough]

Just now, Vishera said:

This isn't Vega nor Maxwell

well i dont have either of those either..

[Vishera]

Just now, GoodEnough said:

well i dont have either of those either..

Polaris is very similar to Vega in that regard.

[foldingNoob]

Just now, Vishera said:

I go crazy with my overclocks,and considering that i use overkill cooling solutions i get huge improvements in performance.

Do you play fallout 4? I have the same CPU as you but i cant increase memory speed without fallout 4 crashing. I got clock speed improvement on my GPU 5700XT but fallout 4 does not make use of it. I dont really play any other games. So for me its just not worth it. Lol the games I play must be old now.

[oldSock]

The myth is that overclocking gives your more performance. Yes it may look very nice on benchmarks but all and all it is about where it stops. Real world situations demanded that manufacturers has a margin of safe/stable operations for their goods to allow them operate under loads. By overclocking you can introduce instability and other problems. 

 

Thus i personally concluded the factory knows best, they probability have very smart engineers that worked hard on the product. So i will trust them and simply keep things as default as possible. I might be completely wrong but that is my take.

[Vishera]

Just now, foldingNoob said:

Do you play fallout 4? I have the same CPU as you but i cant increase memory speed without fallout 4 crashing. I got clock speed improvement on my GPU 5700XT but fallout 4 does not make use of it. I dont really play any other games. So for me its just not worth it. Lol the games I play must be old now.

In your case you just hit the limits of your VRAM,overclocking the GPU itself won't help much if it's bottlenecked by the memory.

[Vishera]

Just now, oldSock said:

The myth

Overclocking is no myth

Just now, oldSock said:

Yes it may look very nice on benchmarks but all and all it is about where it stops.

Do a 1GHz overclock,test the performance and if it doesn't give a significant boost in performance then i will turn into a banana.

[GoodEnough]

Just now, Vishera said:

Do a 1GHz overclock,test the performance and if it doesn't give a significant boost in performance then i am a banana.

sure my cpu gets to over 100c in under 60 seconds during a benchmark, but hey, at least my ryzen 5 2600 is like 0.3% faster than a ryzen 5 2600x

[Chiyawa]

Well, a very short answer is: That depends.

 

Overclocking is worth if you are trying to squeeze or push your GPU a little harder to improve fps in certain game without needing to spend money on a new graphic card.

 

Overclocking is not worth because it puts strain to your components, consume higher power and produce more heat.

 

Generally speaking, overclocking your GPU RAM gives a little boosts on GPU performance, so you can start overclock your GPU RAM by adding about 25MHz for each successful test until the GPU became unstable or produce artefact. It may take a long time to find which GPU RAM frequency works best for your GPU. You can then overclock your GPU after that.

[Chiyawa]

8 minutes ago, GoodEnough said:

sure my cpu gets to over 100c in under 60 seconds during a benchmark, but hey, at least my ryzen 5 2600 is like 0.3% faster than a ryzen 5 2600x

If that's the case, I would suggest you to get a better heat sink for your CPU. A cheap tower like Cooler Master Hyper 212 is good at handling that heat.

[Vishera]

Just now, GoodEnough said:

sure my cpu gets to over 100c in under 60 seconds during a benchmark, but hey, at least my ryzen 5 2600 is like 0.3% faster than a ryzen 5 2600x

I have a Hyper 212 EVO,max temp after 1 hour of Prime95 is 70C in ambient temperature of 35C (tested in the summer)

And my 2600 is the same as a 2600X so comparing them doesn't make any sense (they are literally the same silicon)

[GoodEnough]

Just now, Vishera said:

And my 2600 is the same as a 2600X so comparing them doesn't make any sense

ahem, i did it with the ryzen 5 2600's stock cooler

[GoodEnough]

Just now, Chiyawa said:

If that's the case, I would suggest you to get a better heat sink for your CPU. A cheap tower like Cooler Master Hyper 212 is good at handling that heat.

nah im too cheap for something like that, thats why i have a psu thats 750w thats neither even white rated or bronze rated

[Letgomyleghoe.]

1 hour ago, GoodEnough said:

not if you use msi afterburner??

Doing that does absolutely nothing in gpuz the voltage stays the same no matter where you put the voltage slider.