First Time Overclocking Jitters

[InspectorNinja]

This upcoming tax time I plan to purchase a second GPU to stick into my rig but for now I want to see how much I can push this one before hand. I haven't dared touch anything in the bios of my card (Using the Asus GTX 780 DirectCUII 3GB card that uses the ASUS GPU Tweak software to adjust on the fly) but Im feeling like I might as well. Before I do though I would like to know what could happen if its unstable, like will I brick the card or anything if I set things to high?

[R_Golden]

I second this, I'm interested in overclocking my 970 but a bit scared

[S1AYA7]

as far as I know from overclocking my 6670 and 260X overclocking wont brick the card it will just crash your system if it's unstable. My recommendation is to increase the speed a little bit at a time and when it becomes unstable revert to your last stable overclock.

[soaringchicken]

Take it slow and run a program like unigine every time you oc. If you start seeing artifacts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_artifact) or your temperatures get high, it means its time to step back to when it wasn't happening. When you find a good overclock, run a stress test overnight to gain full stability

[InspectorNinja]

Take it slow and run a program like unigine every time you oc. If you start seeing artifacts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_artifact) or your temperatures get high, it means its time to step back to when it wasn't happening. When you find a good overclock, run a stress test overnight to gain full stability

Would Unigine's valley be a good stress to run overnight or is there anything you'd recommend?

[soaringchicken]

Would Unigine's valley be a good stress to run overnight or is there anything you'd recommend?

Yeah unigine valley is what I use

[fringie]

Putting too much voltage in via BIOS hacking can shorten the life span substantially so don't go crazy with the voltage.

 

Otherwise if the overclock is unstable it'll just react like any other failed overclock; you won't brick your card unless you mess up when you're fiddling around with the BIOS and even then it's sometimes (idk how often) recoverable.

 

Myb, I thought you wanted to know about oc'ing when BIOS hacked.

 

If the overclock isn't stable then your game & driver will crash and just try again. Nothing bad will really happen. Just look out for the obvious crashes, artifacts and buzzing noise.

[R_Golden]

Just did my first overclock on my 970. I got 1400mhz on the clock (max for the Asus software) and 7710mhz on the memory (never got artifacts but my gut told me not to push it further) and my temperature is 72 c at load with 45 percent fan speed

[AndyKoopa]

Should be fine, you may get the blue screen or crash but that shouldnt harm your card.