Does resolution affect a GPU overclock?

[ZombieDawgg]

So I overclocked my 980 Ti SC+ (EVGA) to +210MHz on the core, and it worked fine at 1080P doing multiple runs of Firestrike, but running Firesetrike extreme crashed the GPU every time.

Purely coincidence or does the resolution being used directly affect overclock stability?

 

[10tacle]

A lower resolution puts less stress on the GPU than a higher resolution. Try dialing back that overclock by half and then work your way up in gradual +10MHz increments until you see a crash again. Dial that back by 5-10MHz and that's your max stable OC (assuming you are not increasing voltage on the card). Also make sure you have a custom fan curve set and are not running into any throttling issues due to high temps on the GPU.

 

[ZombieDawgg]

A lower resolution puts less stress on the GPU than a higher resolution. Try dialing back that overclock by half and then work your way up in gradual +10Mhz increments until you see a crash again. Dial that back by 5-10Mhz and that's your max stable OC (assuming you are not increasing voltage on the card).

Thanks for clearing that up, I'll try that when I can. What does changing the voltage do exactly?

 

[10tacle]

Upping voltage increases the stability due to the higher power requirements of overclocking. Same thing when one overclocks a CPU. the downside is that over time more voltage above what is from the factory design increase cooling requirements and may shorten the life of the chip depending on how much more juice is pumped through over stock. I have my EVGA SLI 970s overclocked above the factory super clock by 160MHz, the highest I could get without increasing voltage. Also, make sure you have a custom fan curve setting in a program like MSI's Afterburner or PrecisionX (I much more prefer Afterburner).

 

[avarice]

In simple terms - Increasing the clock speed causes more work to be done per unit of time. This work uses the power that is being provided to it in the terms of voltage. When the demand for work (clock speed) increases while the amount of power available does not - then at some time you will become unstable - fundamentally unable to do the additional work.

Increasing the power provides more energy for more work to be done - but there is a risk due to the ability of the electronics to handle the additional power.


I - however - never overclock - as all of this creates additional stress on the design of the component (CPU, Memory, MB and GPU alike). The additional stress can (and does) shorten the life of a component. Of course if you are up for buying a new GPU or CPU every few months - fine.

It is possible to overclock a little bit - and not shorten the expected life by much. Also without an overclock - components will fail over time - so it's a bit of a gamble.


Good luck.

 

[10tacle]

One other thing: if you buy a factory overclocked GPU like an EVGA SC or SSC or FTW variant, the chips in them are binned for the highest quality and have better overclocking results above even the factory overclock without even needing to increase voltage. I find running a 160Hz overclock on the GPU core the sweet spot where no increased voltage is needed to remain stable.

Regarding life span, I have had two agressively overclocked CPUs (E8400 Core 2 Duo, and i5 2500K). Both had quite a bit of voltage pumped to maintain a high overclock (4.4GHz on the E8400, 4.8GHz on the 2500K). They both are still operating fine, but are back at stock speeds due to being just backup PCs now. However, over time, I did notice that each chip required gradual slight upticks in voltage to maintain the same O/C speeds...that is classic CPU degradation, and if maintained long enough, would have killed the chips entirely.