Gtx 680 referance, over clock?

[Icanbeyou]

Hey guys, just set up my new gaming rig, I got the
Gtx 680 ref by msi, afterburner lets me take it to 920mhz tops
I've used another program to get it to 1005mhz at 72/73 c under load,
Is there much need to press on above this? Many thanks

 

[Mt Power]

Im not 100% on this, but i believe all kelper based cards start throttling at 70C. I have a 670 and I noticed some throttling at 69c. you are gonna want to run some tests, and keep an eye on the temp, and throttling.

 

[Icanbeyou]

K I'm newish at this, what's throttling?

 

[Mt Power]

when the gpu reaches a certain temperature, it "throttles" the frequency. it essentially puts the gpu at a lower clock, to keep the heat down. so you will see the gpu frequency, and voltage jump up and down. you want that to stay as even as possible with the overclock. or you are losing your gains. hope that helps!

 

[Icanbeyou]

So far no changes in clock speed or voltage, I can get the temp to 65
but that means one noisy blower.. What speed do you run your 670 at? If you don't mind me asking, and what sort of games do you run on it?

 

[Mt Power]

i had my gpu at 1120mhz. I have since gone back to default, as it seemed more the enough. Im playing skyrim mostly(heavily modded) getting 60fps just about everywhere. also batman AC, and crysis.

if your not having any troubles, then the oc is good

 

[Icanbeyou]

Kk man thanks for the help, I'm a huge arma series fan, built this just to play it haha, getting over 60 most of the time, only started fiddling to deal with the few drops

 

[Icanbeyou]

Well that's one hell of an answer!! Thanks, I've got it to 1220mhz, it's not online so getting other program's is a ball ache ATM, so far in combustor ( the fury msi pic thing) I'm getting max 419 fps avg 395, temp is holding at 68 now ( upped the fan) the gpu usage went from 97% to 95 then levelled out at 97 again, voltage is still 0.987, would that class as throttling do you think??

 

[Murissokah]

Let me second what our friend Belial said. Nvidia likes to call it the "boost clock", an increased clock state that the card automatically steps into if there is thermal "budget" for that. When it happens, you will see your GPU clock quickly jump between two set frequencies (like from 920MHz to 1050MHz) for a while.

Your card does not seem to be using this, either because there is no thermal "budget" (the card is already at the top temperature at the base frequency), or because it is disabled.

My personal experience is that it is better to have a fixed frequency. The card will usually be able to "boost" only when it is not under heavy load. That means when you most need the extra GPU power, it won't be available. I also don't like the idea of the GPU switching states under load, for stability concerns and the possibility of hiccups.

While I agree with Belial that you may push your card to whatever limit available on afterburner, as long as it does not crash nor produce airtifacts, you will probably soon realise there is little use for that. I own a stock GTX 680 myself and very rare are the occasions I could use more than that.

 

[Icanbeyou]

Just got the latest drivers for afterburner and the gtx 680, I found playing with the memory clock helps to give more fps but its a fine balance to get the best and to get it stable, I thank you all for your help its been greatly appreciated ( biggest help was understanding throttling)

 

[Icanbeyou]

1 last question, I now have a stable clock, when I exceed this it throttles but only to a slightly lower MHz, for example 1162 MHz would drop ( fluctuate ) between that and 1149 MHz, but if I smack it to 1280 MHz it flips between that and 1267, is this the boost clock or the throttling? Thanks again

 

[Icanbeyou]

Ok the program I was using was stressing it 97% I'm now stressing it at 99% and its not switching so I'm guessing it was just down clocking because it wasn't needed