GPU Boost/OC, GPU aging?

[StarMoonCZ]

Hello,

I have recently upgraded every component of my computer except my old Palit GTX 1060 3GB which is currently bottleneck of my rig but I dont curently have budget to buy a new one. Is there any safe way to overclock/boost it? Is it even worth the time to do so? I have I-5 12400F, 2x8GB 2400 MHz, Asus TUF B660 Plus and Asus GT301. The gpu mostly runs very poorly when I play FiveM(Mod of GTA V) but it didnt use to run that bad approx. year and a half ago. Now I run it in 1440p but thats because of my current monitor being 1440p. Is it possible it runs worse because of the gpu aging? Thanks for any help or input in advance.

[RONOTHAN##]

9 minutes ago, StarMoonCZ said:

Is there any safe way to overclock/boost it?

Download MSI Afterburner, crank the power slider as far right as it will go, then move the core clock and memory sliders checking for stability as you go. You should be able to get somewhere between +100 and +200 on the core without too much of a fight, and IIRC it's +400 on the memory that's usually pretty stable, but I haven't used a 1060 in a while so can't say for sure how well the memory overclocks. You want to find the exact numbers that are right for your card, but those should be roughly where you'll start. 

 

11 minutes ago, StarMoonCZ said:

Is it possible it runs worse because of the gpu aging?

It's a 5 year old card, the thermal paste might be a bit dried out. It would be worth giving the card a repaste to see if that gets temps down a bit, which in turn would let the card boost higher and thus perform better. 

[Dukesilver27-]

Keep in mind OCing won't give you as much, probably between 5-10% more FPS depending on the game.

Also, if you just OC your card without unvervolting it, the heat output would be so much more, so please also undervolt it.

[RONOTHAN##]

6 hours ago, Dukesilver27- said:

Also, if you just OC your card without unvervolting it, the heat output would be so much more, so please also undervolt it

That's entirely false. It'll go up by the percent you increase the power limit, for the most part that's at most 10%. Yeah it's more heat, but it's not really that much more heat. Also with 10 series, clock stretching is relatively severe, so for the most part undervolting hurts performance much more than you gain with more clock speed. You can try undervolting it, sure, but odds are it would hurt more than it would help. 

[Dukesilver27-]

3 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

That's entirely false. It'll go up by the percent you increase the power limit, for the most part that's at most 10%. Yeah it's more heat, but it's not really that much more heat. Also with 10 series, clock stretching is relatively severe, so for the most part undervolting hurts performance much more than you gain with more clock speed. You can try undervolting it, sure, but odds are it would hurt more than it would help. 

I have no clue about the 10 series cards part, so I can't speak for it.

 

However, when I OC'ed my RX 6800 XT without UV, the max temp when testing with furmark went from 65C to 82C on the same fan curve, the OC wasn't even that much, like only 125mhz on clock speed (2400mhz to 2525mhz) and 150mhz (2000mhz to 2150mhz) on VRAM, and 115% power limit.

So, I don't think it is proportional to the OC, 82C is more than a 15% increased heat output form 65C.

Once I undervolted it, however, the temps went back to 65C ish, at most 68C, frankly I wouldn't OC if I could not undervolt it, it's just not worth it.

 

Maybe the increased heat output from OC for low powered cards won't be as significant as high powered cards, but even so, an old card's cooling should be a bit less efficient, so the much more heat output is not that far fetched. 

[RONOTHAN##]

10 minutes ago, Dukesilver27- said:

However, when I OC'ed my RX 6800 XT without UV, the max temp when testing with furmark went from 65C to 82C on the same fan curve, the OC wasn't even that much, like only 125mhz on clock speed (2400mhz to 2525mhz) and 150mhz (2000mhz to 2150mhz) on VRAM, and 115% power limit.

So, I don't think it is proportional to the OC, 82C is more than a 15% increased heat output form 65C.

Once I undervolted it, however, the temps went back to 65C ish, at most 68C, frankly I wouldn't OC if I could not undervolt it, it's just not worth it.

First, I do want to say AMD cards and Nvidia cards behave pretty differently with how you want to overclock them, while some general principles carry over, the tactics you use for one are relatively inapplicable to the other. Plus, I'm pretty sure your testing methodology has some flaws in it or there's just something really wacky up with your setup (I have used similar setups with completely different results), so I'll try to go through points one by one. 

1. Furmark is completely unrealistic for temp and stability testing since most GPUs, one of two things can happen when using it, the GPU draws insane amounts of power for no reason or it underclocks and undervolts itself to keep it from violating the power limit (Nvidia cards in particular, but AMD cards will do it too, just not to the same extent). Use something else for temp testing, Furmark as I see it is only useful for doing case torture tests where you want the absolute most possible heat dumped into the case as humanly possible.
2. Actually measure the power usage of the card before and after, that is the amount of heat the card is outputting. It sounds like something was just up with the second time you ran it (again, Furmark will pull ridiculous amounts of power, I've seen it pull 550W on my unlocked 6900 XT at just 720p). Right now, after being undervolted, it's likely pulling about the same amount of power it was at stock with it's increased clock speeds (I.E. not going above ~300W even though the power limit is allowing for 345W). 
3. 345W should still be easily coolable by that cooler, are you sure you weren't looking at the core temp for the first reading, then the hot spot for the second? My Red Devil (admittedly a better cooler, but not that much better) still keeps the card in the ~60s when pulling over 400W when fully overclocked, and just cranking the power slider only raises temps something like 3-5C in something like Time Spy Extreme (compared to the mid 50s when first running it). Either something is up with your measurements or something is really up with your cooling setup causing other issues. 

For a 1060, yeah increasing the power limit will increase the power consumption and the heat output, but not by all that much. It'll go from the high 70s to the low 80s, very safe temps for Nvidia cards. 

[StarMoonCZ]

16 hours ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Download MSI Afterburner, crank the power slider as far right as it will go, then move the core clock and memory sliders checking for stability as you go. You should be able to get somewhere between +100 and +200 on the core without too much of a fight, and IIRC it's +400 on the memory that's usually pretty stable, but I haven't used a 1060 in a while so can't say for sure how well the memory overclocks. You want to find the exact numbers that are right for your card, but those should be roughly where you'll start. 

 

It's a 5 year old card, the thermal paste might be a bit dried out. It would be worth giving the card a repaste to see if that gets temps down a bit, which in turn would let the card boost higher and thus perform better. 

Do you know any good video or tutorial? I have never overclocked anything and im a little scared cuz I dont want to fuck up something.

[RONOTHAN##]

56 minutes ago, StarMoonCZ said:

Do you know any good video or tutorial? I have never overclocked anything and im a little scared cuz I dont want to fuck up something.

Doing it via MSI Afterburner there is literally nothing that can break. The most that can happen is you set a super unstable overclock and get a blue screen. You can't break any of your hardware doing this. 

 

There are older tutorials out there for overclocking 10 series cards, but they'll all pretty much just say exactly what I wrote. You crank the power slider, increase the core frequency slider until you end up with instability, then you do the same thing with the memory slider, possibly setting a more aggressive fan curve at the same time. 

 

That said, I'd probably do a repaste on the card first, that should help performance and give a bit more overclocking headroom as well

[StarMoonCZ]

6 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Doing it via MSI Afterburner there is literally nothing that can break. The most that can happen is you set a super unstable overclock and get a blue screen. You can't break any of your hardware doing this. 

 

There are older tutorials out there for overclocking 10 series cards, but they'll all pretty much just say exactly what I wrote. You crank the power slider, increase the core frequency slider until you end up with instability, then you do the same thing with the memory slider, possibly setting a more aggressive fan curve at the same time. 

 

That said, I'd probably do a repaste on the card first, that should help performance and give a bit more overclocking headroom as well

Thanks for the help and reassurance. I will try the overclock and will check out how to repaste the gpu.