Overclocking.

[Harry Livesley]

YES before you say i know there are a million and one topics related to this. But i wanted a more personal one. Im thinking of buying an asus strix gtx 780, but am absolutely appalled by the base clock of around 850mhz and the boost of 950mhz, compared to say an evga classified, whos base clock is higher than this cards boost clock. Naturally i want to overlock it when i get it, can someone link me to a good guide, or would you recommend getting the classified instead (i have NEVER overclocked before, or even opened the bios of a pc.) bearing in mind the classified has 3gb of vram compared to this cards 6.

[Volbet]

Here is the guide that I usually make

1. Download MSi Afterburner, EVGA Precision X or Asus GPU Tweak, and install it the program
2. Use the program to raise the core clock speed 10-15MHz
3. Test for stability using either Unigin Heaven or a graphics heavy game (BF4, BF3, Metro: Last Light, Crysis 3 etc)
4. Let the stability test run for 30-60 min. You can cut it shorter
5. If the card is stable, repeat from step 2.
6. If the card is unstable (Black screen, driver crashes, artifacts etc), raise the core voltage with 5mV. (Might not be possible)
7. Repeat untill the card hits 90°C

You can also overclock the memory, but it has little to no impact on game performance

1. Raise the memory clock with 20-30MHz
2. Stability test the same way as with core clock.
3. If stable, repeat 
4. If unstable, scale back to the latest stable memory clock

As for the cards. I usually recommend going with the cheapest option that has the features you want I.E. the right VRAM amount and custome cooler. 

The clock speed shouldn't be the deciding factor, since you can usually overclock to the same amount.

However, this is not guaranteed. The clock speed is not guraranteed to go above the factory setting, so don't get dissapointed if it won't do be a good overclocker. 

 

Editied with links and better formating.

[Harry Livesley]

Here is the guide that I usually make

1. Download MSi Afterburner, EVGA Precision X or Asus GPU Tweak, and install it the program
2. Use the program to raise the core clock speed 10-15MHz
3. Test for stability using either Unigin Heaven or a graphics heavy game (BF4, BF3, Metro: Last Light, Crysis 3 etc)
4. Let the stability test run for 30-60 min. You can cut it shorter
5. If the card is stable repeat from step 2.
6. If the card is unstable (Black screen, driver crashes, artifacts etc), raise the core voltage with 5mV. (Might not be possible)
7. Repeat untill the card hits 90°C

You can also overclock the memory, but it has little to no impact on game performance

1. Raise the memory clock with 20-30MHz
2. Stability test the same way as with core clock.
3. If stable, repeat 
4. If unstable, scale back to the latest stable memory clock

As for the cards. I usually recommend going with the cheapest option that has the features you want I.E. the right VRAM amount and custome cooler. 

The clock speed shouldn't be the deciding factor, since you can usually overclock to the same amount.

However, this is not guaranteed. The clock speed is not guraranteed to go above the factory setting, so don't get dissapointed if it won't do be a good overclocker. 

 

Editied with links and better formating.

So its gonna take a day or two, okay, i can live with that. So i just keep raising the clock untill it crashes or runs at 90degrees? if i do it to 90 degrees will it run at that temp whenever i play? and is it worth it? this cards max (dunno if this is base or boost) clock was around 1090mhz after overclocking (based on a fairly trustworthy review), is that worth it? (sorry im a noob when it comes to this kind of stuff )

[Volbet]

So its gonna take a day or two, okay, i can live with that. So i just keep raising the clock untill it crashes or runs at 90degrees? if i do it to 90 degrees will it run at that temp whenever i play? and is it worth it? this cards max (dunno if this is base or boost) clock was around 1090mhz after overclocking (based on a fairly trustworthy review), is that worth it? (sorry im a noob when it comes to this kind of stuff )

Don't be sorry. We all had to start somewhere and questions are always welcomed (atleast by me). 

 

It probably won't take a couple of days. The steps that i decribed are more of a general guide. You can start with raising the core clock to something close to what other people are getting with the card. 

 

No one can tell you what your cards max overclock will be. It all depends on the silicone lottery. 

The silicone lottery referes to the fact that no two chips are exactly identical. This means that no GPU chips will overclock the same, even if they come from the same board partner. 

 

The card will not run permanently run at 90°C. It will depend on which game you play. Some games are more demanding than others. If 90°C ends up being the max temperature, it will run at that temperature when  running very demanding games. 

 

Lastly, overclocking is rarely worth it. But it's a good way to get experience with computer hardware.

[Cl2G]

That card will boost itself to 1150 or 1163 on its own via gpu boost 2.0

[nj4ck]

Don't worry, GPU-overclocking is the easiest thing in the world, especially because you can't really break anything. Just follow Volbet's guide and you'll be fine. Programs like Afterburner won't let you raise the voltages to dangerous levels, so the worst thing that can happen is crashing. I usually just bump the GPU clock to 1100 MHz and see if it can run stable for 5 minutes in Unigine Valley, then keep pushing from there. No overclock that proved itself to be stable for a full cycle of Valley has ever failed me in a game. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that you should keep  "Apply overclock on system startup" disabled in Afterburner, until you have found a stable overclock. That way if you do push it too far, it won't automatically apply the faulty overclock every time you restart, making your computer instantly crash again.

Finding the perfect overclock on a GPU takes me only about 1-2 hours, when I do it like that.

[Harry Livesley]

I use evga precision, also, another quick question, what does vram actually mean? is it worth spending more for double the vram? i know it helps with multi monitors, but does it do anything else?

[Zims]

You need vram if you run higher resolutions 1440p and up and multi monitor ones.

If you vill play on a single 1080p monitor than 3gb is enough. Maybe I`m wrong.