First time overclocker help. (GTX 970 Windforce, MSI Afterburner)

[Soulsie]

Hey you beautiful people! I was wondering if ya'll could give some custom help with overclocking for a first time overclocker. 

 

I have a GTX Windforce 970, and a cabinet with medium to good airflow.

I use msi afterburner, and i was wondering what would be the optimal overclock for it, aswel as safe temps for it

 

my specs are as following: 

 

GTX 970

 

AMD FX-6100 Six cores (upgrading soon)

 

8 gigs of ram

 

Thanks 

 

- Soulsie

[itachipirate]

Don't overclock the graphics card. It's already being bottlenecked, overclocking the GPU will give you literally actually nothing

[Castdeath97]

[blu4]

Upgrade your CPU. It's holding back the GPU.

[Soulsie]

As i said in the post, im upgarding soon, like in a few days to an AMD 8 core somthing somthing.

Lets try to ingore the CPU for now

[blueballs]

Upgrade your CPU. It's holding back the GPU.

true

Don't overclock the graphics card. It's already being bottlenecked, overclocking the GPU will give you literally actually nothing

I've got 575mhz out of the memory clock and a good 185mhz of gpu clock. Don't spread shit please.

[Soulsie]

Back to topic pls?

[DimasRMDO]

At least this helps you to get some ideas.

[itachipirate]

I've got 575mhz out of the memory clock and a good 185mhz of gpu clock. Don't spread shit please.

Don't think shit please. You literally will get no extra performance because you're CPU-bound, your least performing component as far as games go is your processor, if your graphics card goes from being able to output 80fps to being able to output 90fps it won't make any difference in anything if your CPU can STILL only output 40fps (Theoretical numbers) Seriously think before you post

[lani100]

No need to OC your gpu, your cpu is holding it back also overclocking a gpu won't gain you that much performance.

And yeah overclocking is just trial and error just do it and watch if it's stable.

[blueballs]

Back to topic pls?

We never got off topic.

You can get a good 15% increase of performance depending on your chip.

with your specific card no one can what's your optimal overclock 85C or under is safe

[Robin88]

To actually answer you question instead of completely ignoring your post and spouting shite about bottleneck this and bottleneck that.

One thing to note is that there is no set limit as what is a safe overclock for any given hardware, one GTX 970 might go to over 1400MHz, whereas another from the same manufacturer might not go 10MHz over stock, so you will need to find the limit of yours on your own, as for temperature, you should keep it below 90C, but there is a temperature target within AfterBurner that you can set so that it will never exceed that tempterature, it will only go as high as GPU Boost will let it, so if you're struggling to get a meaningful overclock, then set this limit a bit higher and try again, it defaults to 80C if I recall correctly.

What you want to do first off is to download Unigine Heaven to test your overclock stability with.

Then open AfterBurner and save your current setup as Preset 1, the options to save a preset are along the bottom of the window.

Next, set the power target to +10% and leave the voltage at stock. Don't touch the voltage until you are absolutely certain that you can't increase clock speed any more without it.

Now increase the Core Clock by 25Mhz and click on apply, now open Unigine Heaven and test it at max settings for at least 30 minutes, you will need to watch the screen carefully for any artifacts, such as flashing colours, static, flashing or missing textures.

Once you're happy that there's no issues, then go back to AfterBurner and increase the Core Clock by another 25MHz and test again.

Again, click on Apply and then test in Heaven, if there are no problems then go back into AB and up it again by 25 MHz, and test again.

Keep on doing this until you get artifacting or Heaven or your Drivers crash, once that happens back the overclock down by 10MHz and test again, if you still get artifacts then back it down by 10MHz and test again.

If you no longer get artifacts or crashing, then you can do one of 2 things, you can keep it where it is and save it as a Preset, or you can try increasing the voltage and keep going with the overclock. If you decide to keep it at the clock speed you get to without voltage increases, then open up a game and test the overclock there for at least 1 hour, if you get artifacting there, then back it down by 10MHz and test in that game again, keep testing with a variety of different games and keep check for artifacts and instability until you're certain that it's 100% stable.

If you decide to increase the voltage and keep going with the overclock then you will probably have to enable voltage control in the settings menu for AB, I will say this though about voltage increases, DO NOT GO CRAZY WITH IT! Increase the voltage by no more than 150mV, and DO NOT go any higher to be on the safe side. and if increasing the voltage does not help with overclocking then do not keep increasing it in the hopes of getting a better overclock or better stability.

Once you've found the limit of your GPU and got it stable, then you can save that as Preset 2 and then check the little radio button to enable the overclock at system start if you wish.

Apart from that, there's not much else I can tell you, it's all dependent of the quality of the chip you got, and every chip is different so what one person gets with their 970, you may get worse than them or better, but don't be surprised if it doesn't go your way.

Edit:

Those tags are great btw, every new topic should be tagged with "goose" from now on because why not

[Scia]

The best thing you can do is increase the frequency in increments of 25-50, until it crashes (use Heaven or play some demanding games for 20ish mins after every step up) once you got it stable, back off a little bit. Then do the same for memory in 50ish steps. There's also the possibilit of increasing the power limit and maybe even tweak voltages.

 

 

My 970 Strix runs at 1400mhz core (boosts to 1475mhz in games according to GPU-Z), 8000mhz Memory, 120% powerlimit, 1.200V (though GPU-Z and GPU-Tweak report the card going to it's max 1.212V no matter whether I turn up the V). So you can get quite some performance bumps out of it.

 

While Witcher would run at a constant 60ish FPS at medium-high, with the OC I can turn up half the settings to Ultra and have the other half at high and get no less than 56FPS. Worth it

[Soulsie]

We never got off topic.

You can get a good 15% increase of performance depending on your chip.

with your specific card no one can what's your optimal overclock 85C or under is safe

I didn't mean you got off topic, i meant it got off topic in general 

 

 

To actually answer you question instead of completely ignoring your post and spouting shite about bottleneck this and bottleneck that.

One thing to note is that there is no set limit as what is a safe overclock for any given hardware, one GTX 970 might go to over 1400MHz, whereas another from the same manufacturer might not go 10MHz over stock, so you will need to find the limit of yours on your own, as for temperature, you should keep it below 90C, but there is a temperature target within AfterBurner that you can set so that it will never exceed that tempterature, it will only go as high as GPU Boost will let it, so if you're struggling to get a meaningful overclock, then set this limit a bit higher and try again, it defaults to 80C if I recall correctly.

What you want to do first off is to download Unigine Heaven to test your overclock stability with.

Then open AfterBurner and save your current setup as Preset 1, the options to save a preset are along the bottom of the window.

Next, set the power target to +10% and leave the voltage at stock. Don't touch the voltage until you are absolutely certain that you can't increase clock speed any more without it.

Now increase the Core Clock by 25Mhz and click on apply, now open Unigine Heaven and test it at max settings for at least 30 minutes, you will need to watch the screen carefully for any artifacts, such as flashing colours, static, flashing or missing textures.

Once you're happy that there's no issues, then go back to AfterBurner and increase the Core Clock by another 25MHz and test again.

Again, click on Apply and then test in Heaven, if there are no problems then go back into AB and up it again by 25 MHz, and test again.

Keep on doing this until you get artifacting or Heaven or your Drivers crash, once that happens back the overclock down by 10MHz and test again, if you still get artifacts then back it down by 10MHz and test again.

If you no longer get artifacts or crashing, then you can do one of 2 things, you can keep it where it is and save it as a Preset, or you can try increasing the voltage and keep going with the overclock. If you decide to keep it at the clock speed you get to without voltage increases, then open up a game and test the overclock there for at least 1 hour, if you get artifacting there, then back it down by 10MHz and test in that game again, keep testing with a variety of different games and keep check for artifacts and instability until you're certain that it's 100% stable.

If you decide to increase the voltage and keep going with the overclock then you will probably have to enable voltage control in the settings menu for AB, I will say this though about voltage increases, DO NOT GO CRAZY WITH IT! Increase the voltage by no more than 150mV, and DO NOT go any higher to be on the safe side. and if increasing the voltage does not help with overclocking then do not keep increasing it in the hopes of getting a better overclock or better stability.

Once you've found the limit of your GPU and got it stable, then you can save that as Preset 2 and then check the little radio button to enable the overclock at system start if you wish.

Apart from that, there's not much else I can tell you, it's all dependent of the quality of the chip you got, and every chip is different so what one person gets with their 970, you may get worse than them or better, but don't be surprised if it doesn't go your way.

Edit:

Those tags are great btw, every new topic should be tagged with "goose" from now on because why not

 

The best thing you can do is increase the frequency in increments of 25-50, until it crashes (use Heaven or play some demanding games for 20ish mins after every step up) once you got it stable, back off a little bit. Then do the same for memory in 50ish steps. There's also the possibilit of increasing the power limit and maybe even tweak voltages.

 

 

My 970 Strix runs at 1400mhz core (boosts to 1475mhz in games according to GPU-Z), 8000mhz Memory, 120% powerlimit, 1.200V (though GPU-Z and GPU-Tweak report the card going to it's max 1.212V no matter whether I turn up the V). So you can get quite some performance bumps out of it.

 

While Witcher would run at a constant 60ish FPS at medium-high, with the OC I can turn up half the settings to Ultra and have the other half at high and get no less than 56FPS. Worth it

 

Thank you so much, both of you. This was all the infomation i needed thanks   

[Robin88]

Thank you so much, both of you. This was all the infomation i needed thanks   

You're welcome, good luck with the overclocking and here's hoping you get a good OC out of your 970.

[Soulsie]

You're welcome, good luck with the overclocking and here's hoping you get a good OC out of your 970.

Hey Robin, you probs don't care but heres my results 

 

I got to a stable 1500Mhz at an average temp on 50c, giving me about 15 - 20 more fps. Wich is nice  B)

 

I can't thank you enough for your help. 

[Robin88]

Hey Robin, you probs don't care but heres my results 

 

I got to a stable 1500Mhz at an average temp on 50c, giving me about 15 - 20 more fps. Wich is nice  B)

 

I can't thank you enough for your help. 

Holy cow that's amazing, congrats on winning the silicon lottery.

I wonder how many people crying about your CPU bottlenecking your GPU are sat with egg on their faces now.

You will still get a performance increase with a CPU upgrade though, in fact I would wager at another 10+FPS increase on top of what you already get if you get a FX8320.

Can you run Unigine Heaven benchmark at max and let us know what score you get, it should be really impressive with such a high overclock

I'm glad I could help, and I'm super pleased for you.

[Soulsie]

Holy cow that's amazing, congrats on winning the silicon lottery.

I wonder how many people crying about your CPU bottlenecking your GPU are sat with egg on their faces now.

You will still get a performance increase with a CPU upgrade though, in fact I would wager at another 10+FPS increase on top of what you already get if you get a FX8320.

Can you run Unigine Heaven benchmark at max and let us know what score you get, it should be really impressive with such a high overclock

I'm glad I could help, and I'm super pleased for you.

it was 1335, not sure how good (or bad that is though)

 

I'm actually going down to the PC shop today for new CPU, The guy that runs it usually gives pretty good advice on what to buy. I'll let you know wich one i buy 

[Robin88]

it was 1335, not sure how good (or bad that is though)

If that was run at 1920x1080, Extreme Tesselation, 8x AA and Ultra quality, that puts you in at around No. 20 in the top benchmarking scores for Unigine Heaven on a single GPU according to TechPowerUp, coming in just behind a Xeon W3520 based system running a stock R9 290X, that is really really impressive.

If it was run at anything less then it isn't quite as impressive, but it's still hammers the crap out of many systems you're likely to come across.

[Soulsie]

If that was run at 1920x1080, Extreme Tesselation, 8x AA and Ultra quality, that puts you in at around No. 20 in the top benchmarking scores for Unigine Heaven on a single GPU according to TechPowerUp, coming in just behind a Xeon W3520 based system running a stock R9 290X, that is really really impressive.

If it was run at anything less then it isn't quite as impressive, but it's still hammers the crap out of many systems you're likely to come across.

It was running at high, no antialiasing, no motion blur, couldnt see the tesselation option, but it probably wasnt extreme. Not super impressive, i know, but hey, still looked good to the naked eye

[Soulsie]

Holy cow that's amazing, congrats on winning the silicon lottery.

I wonder how many people crying about your CPU bottlenecking your GPU are sat with egg on their faces now.

You will still get a performance increase with a CPU upgrade though, in fact I would wager at another 10+FPS increase on top of what you already get if you get a FX8320.

Can you run Unigine Heaven benchmark at max and let us know what score you get, it should be really impressive with such a high overclock

I'm glad I could help, and I'm super pleased for you.

GODDAMNIT, the FX8320 i had my eyes on was like JUST put in a pc the moment i walked into the store.. It was the last one in stock..