Hey guys, quick question. I've had this card for almost 3 years now (GTX 1080 ti STRIX) and i've been using afterburner to OC it without issues but recently my games started to crash after 40 mins to a few hrs of gameplay so i figured i should reduce my OC and it worked for a while but then these new values also made my games crash and now i can't even OC anymore without my games crashing.
Is this a problem with my PSU or is my GPU failing? Everything seems stable now that I'm not OCing.
GPU's are like any semi-conductor and are subject to degradation when operated at high temperatures and high current densities. Even in normal operation GPU's get pretty hot, so yeah it's safe to say they will degrade
FASTER when overclocked and pushed hotter with higher operating currents.
When it degrades it needs a higher voltage to maintain stability at a given clock speed. If you persist in the overclocking and give it the higher voltage, it just gets it hotter so it degrades even
FASTER. So at some point you have to dial it back because you can't cool it well enough and you probably find it's only stable at a clock speed that's lower even than 'stock'.
That's the life of an overclocker and the reason smart ones only do it for short duration, usually just enough to post the benchmark scores, and never 24/7. They really hate to lose their 'golden sample' silicon!