GTX 1070 Clock Questions

[AaronMcmillen]

I have a MSI GTX 1070 Gaming X 8 GB card and a I5 6600k. i was looking into overclocking my card but have no experience. When looking at tutorials the people in the videos had much higher clocks when they haven't even overclocked yet. Here is a photo of MSI afterburner with factory settings. Is a clock of 961 MHz normal and 60 degrees celcius seems high for only having chrome open. https://imgur.com/a/3vlf4

 

[Eximo]

Well, GPU Boost 3.0 takes a lot of the guess out of it. When the GPU is idle it will go down to extremely low speeds. Just running chrome, which often has hardware acceleration enabled, will make use of the GPU for graphical elements on the screen. Same with Windows. 60C is a little high, but we would need to know the ambient temperature inside the case and other factors. (Oh looks like they were just recently at 92C, and then no load, the fans probably stopped spinning and it is just radiating not actively being cooled)

For your purposes, a GP104 GPU can typically handle a clock speed of up to 2100Mhz, perhaps less. Many out of the box cards will automatically boost to above 2000Mhz since their base clocks were set high at the factory. Air coolers will usually settle around 1900Mhz under a long duration load though. GTX1070 memory clocks start around 8000Mhz effective. I've seen people achieve quite high overclocks here, but it really depends on the memory chips you ended up with. You will have to experiment there.

A simple test would be to put the card under a benchmark load and see what frequency it reaches by default.

Voltage controls are quite restricted without physical modification or loading in a new BIOS. So typically, set the voltage to max 115%-125% depending on the card, set an offset that gets you in that 2000Mhz ballpark range (bench test max, plus the offset) and see if it works. You can then back off on the voltage to see if it still stable to reduce temperatures somewhat.

Memory is kind of a gamble, just go up until it crashes or artifacts, then back down a few notches.

 

[AaronMcmillen]

I don't want to be annoying or anything but all of that voltage this and offset 2000 MHz talk is gibberish to me, any chance you could explain overclocking to me like I'm a five year old? I've watched many videos on it and I'm still confused

 

[Eximo]

So the screen shot you sent. 965Mhz now, but the max was 1974Mhz. When it was under a full load (and hitting 92C, quite warm, but likely the throttle point of the GPU as set) it was a little lower than that, but still much higher then it is officially rated for.

GPU Boost 3.0 is the name Nvidia gave to the technology that allows the GPU to use the available temperature and voltage head room to exceed its rated specifications. Now to overclock these cards with a variable clock rate you use a program like MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision. These give you adjustable sliders for setting the offsets.

So say the rated GPU clocks are these:
Base 1506Mhz
Boost 1683 MHz

Now we see the card pictured above at 1974Mhz, So it got there because the temperature and voltage needed to get there did not exceed the designed performance envelope of the card.

When we overclock we add on top of the base in increments of 11Mhz. So factory overclocked cards might have a base of 1793Mhz, but still have the same boost ratio (177Mhz), that takes us up to 1970Mhz. Very close indeed to the card in the picture. (And there is some small variance in the base clock, so it might be off one or two in practice)

To overclock further we add on top of that. 1970 is quite high already, so maybe something like 88Mhz or so 2058Mhz. That would be a good starting target.

But that usually requires more voltage. Cards will typically only let you add voltage in percentage. And many are factory limited to 110%, 120%, and the occasional 125%. Basically every guide I have seen just says to max it out to start. The card will self throttle, so there is little risk in overheating, and if it does, then your overclock isn't ideal. You would then reduce the voltage until the card no longer throttles (or crashes, then you lower the overclock)

Memory is similar, you add an offset (keeping in mind that the number doubles) So 4000Mhz is really 8000Mhz effective, which is the marketing numbers they use. So the adding an offset of 200Mhz will result in 400Mhz increase effective. 8400Mhz or thereabouts. When that becomes unstable is unique to each card, so raise it by increments until it crashes or artifacts, then usually take it down two or so increments for improved stability.

Some cards also let you set the temperature limits before throttling. I think the default is something like 82C, but it varies from card to card.

The goal is to strike a balance between clock speeds and temperature. Not much point in getting a high clock rate if it only lasts ten seconds then throttles back. All of this you will get a feel for as you mess with it, but the percentage gain can be measured in single digits.

 

[Eximo]

Here is a decent guide: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_1080_overclocking_guide_with_afterburner_4_3,2.html

For a 1080, but the same principles apply (though they shot pretty high on the memory)

2012Mhz is what my card did out of the box. I was able to reach 2100Mhz stable with memory at 10388. (Water cooled though)

Most cards I see get around 2050Mhz quite easily, memory is very dependent on who made the chips and how good they are. I think GDDR5X is exclusively Micron? Might be wrong about that. GDDR5 8000 is made by Hynix, Micron, and Samsung primarily.