overclocking OC'ing my GTX 960

[TheTalkingKeyboard]

So I've been trying to squeeze all the performance I can out of my 960 (4GB model) for PUBG, as the game often stutters; shown in my screenshot below [1]

Also as seen in the screenshot below, I've managed to get my VRAM clock +756MHz and that appears to be the limit.

Trying to get my VRAM any higher results in... this [2]

 

Sadly, I can't seem to overclock my Core up any higher than about 50MHz.. and I'm not really sure on if (or  how) to overvolt.

I'm fine with my VRAM being as high as it is.. I'm not even sure if that sort of OC is normal. Really want to OC my Core more, though.

 

Suggestions welcome.

 

[1]

[2]

[Crunchy Dragon]

What are you using to overclock? In MSI Afterburner there's a power limit slider that you can adjust to allow for higher power usage, but overvolting would require flashing the vBIOS which risks bricking your card.

 

If you overclock just the core and no memory, are you able to get higher clocks? 50Mhz max core seems too low to be real.

[TheTalkingKeyboard]

Yeah I'm using MSI Afterburner. I've had the power slider up before.. it didn't do much as my card rarely goes above 80% power

I just tried removing all VRAM overclocks and clocking the Core +100 and PUBG crashed within a few seconds.

 

The current +voltage is there from a few days ago, as someone else suggested I do that. Even without the +voltage, this happens.

[Crunchy Dragon]

6 minutes ago, TheTalkingKeyboard said:

Yeah I'm using MSI Afterburner. I've had the power slider up before.. it didn't do much as my card rarely goes above 80% power

I just tried removing all VRAM overclocks and clocking the Core +100 and PUBG crashed within a few seconds.

 

The current +voltage is there from a few days ago, as someone else suggested I do that. Even without the +voltage, this happens.

-snip-

Have you tried updating drivers? I noticed your driver version is reported to be 391.01, I believe the most recent is 391.34.

 

So you're stable at +50Mhz core, but literally anything beyond that will cause problems? Even +51Mhz?

[TheTalkingKeyboard]

I believe it causes problems.. sometimes. I've had it before where my game would crash due to this at random during the match - just any time at all. I'm not quite sure on how stable or not it is, although I've got +100MHz now and it's... okay

 

EDIT: So I've just tried 150MHz (as I've read that's a rather common OC for this card) and I get an instant game crash.

+100 seems fine at the moment, although I'm fairly sure it'll crash later down the line, as it has done a few times before.

[aisle9]

44 minutes ago, TheTalkingKeyboard said:

So I've been trying to squeeze all the performance I can out of my 960 (4GB model) for PUBG, as the game often stutters; shown in my screenshot below [1]

Also as seen in the screenshot below, I've managed to get my VRAM clock +756MHz and that appears to be the limit.

Trying to get my VRAM any higher results in... this [2]

 

Sadly, I can't seem to overclock my Core up any higher than about 50MHz.. and I'm not really sure on if (or  how) to overvolt.

I'm fine with my VRAM being as high as it is.. I'm not even sure if that sort of OC is normal. Really want to OC my Core more, though.

 

Suggestions welcome.

You wouldn't happen to have the EVGA SSC model, would you? Those 960s overclock like dogs, but at least their factory OC is solid.

[TheTalkingKeyboard]

2 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

You wouldn't happen to have the EVGA SSC model, would you? Those 960s overclock like dogs, but at least their factory OC is solid.

Nah, mine's the Zotac AMP!

 

I've just played though some of a PUBG match with +10mV; +100 Core and +756 VRAM and the game ran fine. Crashed as soon as I got back to the homescreen. I'm tellin' ya man, this card just doesn't like core overclocking 

[aisle9]

2 minutes ago, TheTalkingKeyboard said:

Nah, mine's the Zotac AMP!

 

I've just played though some of a PUBG match with +10mV; +100 Core and +756 VRAM and the game ran fine. Crashed as soon as I got back to the homescreen. I'm tellin' ya man, this card just doesn't like core overclocking 

Your card's factory OC is within 15MHz of the SSC's OC. The best overclock I've ever been able to get out of my EVGA 960 was something like 40MHz on the core, 100MHz on the memory, and even that wasn't perfect.

 

The black screen Overwatch game. #neverforget

 

The GTX 960 isn't the best overclocker in the world to begin with. Where it really excels is power efficiency, and that's really its only advantage over its AMD contemporaries. When you buy one with a high factory OC, it's not like Pascal where you can reasonably expect that your high factory OC means a higher ending OC. On a GTX 960, strictly IMO, there is absolutely no point in buying a high-end factory overclocked card. The cheapest card on the shelf will get to where yours ends up, but it'll cost 15% less.

[TheTalkingKeyboard]

1 minute ago, aisle9 said:

Your card's factory OC is within 15MHz of the SSC's OC. The best overclock I've ever been able to get out of my EVGA 960 was something like 40MHz on the core, 100MHz on the memory, and even that wasn't perfect.

 

The black screen Overwatch game. #neverforget

 

The GTX 960 isn't the best overclocker in the world to begin with. Where it really excels is power efficiency, and that's really its only advantage over its AMD contemporaries. When you buy one with a high factory OC, it's not like Pascal where you can reasonably expect that your high factory OC means a higher ending OC. On a GTX 960, strictly IMO, there is absolutely no point in buying a high-end factory overclocked card. The cheapest card on the shelf will get to where yours ends up, but it'll cost 15% less.

So... getting +756MHz on memory is a good thing I'd assume? Is it even worth keeping it? The game does seem to load assets a lot faster; and that's one of the game's issues really.. dropping somewhere with tonnes of people results in lots of loading.

[aisle9]

Just now, TheTalkingKeyboard said:

So... getting +756MHz on memory is a good thing I'd assume? Is it even worth keeping it? The game does seem to load assets a lot faster; and that's one of the game's issues really.. dropping somewhere with tonnes of people results in lots of loading.

I don't think you're going to be stable there for long. In fact, you're already not, based upon your game crashing.

[TheTalkingKeyboard]

Just now, aisle9 said:

I don't think you're going to be stable there for long. In fact, you're already not, based upon your game crashing.

I've been stable here for hours. I'm only unstable when I add Core.

[aisle9]

Just now, TheTalkingKeyboard said:

I've been stable here for hours. I'm only unstable when I add Core.

If it works, it works. 

[TheTalkingKeyboard]

1 minute ago, aisle9 said:

If it works, it works. 

I was just hoping to add maybe a little more core, although it's fine.