Tips for a beginner overclocker?

[henkka_scorpio]

So I'm just getting into overclocking myself and I was wondering if you guys can give me some advice for overclocking. I have a MSI GTX970, and I'm atm trying to find the sweet spot for overclocking it in Afterburner. I'm adding +50 mhz at a time first and then +25. So how hot should my gpu get? At the moment of writing this im running msi kombustor and its not going over 70 deg. How hot can it go before I should stop there? I've heard that its fine as long as it doesnt go over 85 deg or so, is this true? any other advice?

[XamN]

Anyhthing under 80c is ok for the 970.

 

[Nexxus]

Watch your voltage, thats what gets you.

That being said GPU OCing is more locked down then cpu OCing (unless you are really pushing things with crap like a custom bios) so odds are the worst you will manage to cause is some temp artifacting

[Altecice]

Watch Youtube guides, lots of them.

[henkka_scorpio]

2 minutes ago, Altecice said:

Watch Youtube guides, lots of them.

Lol I have

2 minutes ago, Nexxus said:

Watch your voltage, thats what gets you.

I havent changed the voltages at all, I'm trying to find out how far I can go without changing it.

[Megazero]

You basically want to go really slow for overclocking, even 10 mhz per each try if needed. then after you reach the maximum you can do with sock voltage, try to rise it by 0.01 at a time too

[henkka_scorpio]

BTW how can I see that I need to increase voltage? Is there artifacts or something or how do I notice that I dont have enough voltage for my overcloced GPU?

[Nexxus]

1 minute ago, henkka_scorpio said:

BTW how can I see that I need to increase voltage? Is there artifacts or something or how do I notice that I dont have enough voltage for my overcloced GPU?

you basicly push as hard as you can without voltage increase when you start getting some weird shit like artifacting or crashing try a voltage bump and see if it fixes the issue

[henkka_scorpio]

2 minutes ago, Nexxus said:

you basicly push as hard as you can without voltage increase when you start getting some weird shit like artifacting or crashing try a voltage bump and see if it fixes the issue

OK. thanks

[Altecice]

Personally I push my GPU's hard. I let them max out at 90c (980Ti's). You really dont want to let them get hotter than that at an absolute maximum.

[XamN]

Remember to overclock the core and memory clock sepratly, i got a +120mhz core and +400mhz on my 960.

The voltage doesnt affect the memory clock

[XamN]

2 minutes ago, Altecice said:

Personally I push my GPU's hard. I let them max out at 90c (980Ti's). You really dont want to let them get hotter than that at an absolute maximum.

That tempreature will shorten the gpus lifespan, maybe not much but it will

[Altecice]

3 minutes ago, XamN said:

That tempreature will shorten the gpus lifespan, maybe not much but it will

They never reach 90 but hover around the 85 mark. I know it will shorten the lifespan but in my situation I normally jump from card to card yearly (waiting for non-ref 1080's at the moment). 

[XamN]

2 minutes ago, Altecice said:

They never reach 90 but hover around the 85 mark. I know it will shorten the lifespan but in my situation I normally jump from card to card yearly (waiting for non-ref 1080's at the moment). 

I didnt say its bad to go over 80c, if u upgrade gpu once 2 years or earlier, go for it

 

[Bangflop]

 

[DXMember]

push all sliders to max

go ham

[ybriK]

You really shouldn't be using benchmarking software to test your overclocks, they are worst case scenario (a shit ton of GPU instructions) which no game can ever achieve. Use a game like Crysis 3 or GTA V to test your overclocks, find a GPU heavy game (GTA V is both CPU/GPU heavy) that has a built-in benchmark preferably to compare results and obviously looking for the sweet spot.

[henkka_scorpio]

2 minutes ago, ybriK said:

You really shouldn't be using benchmarking software to test your overclocks, they are worst case scenario (a shit ton of GPU instructions) which no game can ever achieve. Use a game like Crysis 3 or GTA V to test your overclocks, find a GPU heavy game (GTA V is both CPU/GPU heavy) that has a built-in benchmark preferably to compare results and obviously looking for the sweet spot.

Yeah I know they are the worst case scenario and that my GPU will never heat up that much in game, TBH i was just curious how hot it could get in the worst possible scenario, and if it is 70 deg in that then its probably quite a bit lower in game. I will try GTAV benchmark in a minute.

[henkka_scorpio]

Thanks everyone for answering!

Now starting VRAM overclocking