How to OC MSI GTX 970?

[JRomeroFlores]

I am fairly new to PC gaming and I would like to get just a little more performance out of my Twin Frozr V MSI GTX 970 4g with an i5 4660 @3.2 Ghz so I can run GTA V a little more smoothly. I only want to OC the GPU at the moment. I do have the MSI Afterburner but I am overwhelmed with the settings. So I was wondering if someone could point me in the right direction on some safe settings for better performance. Right now my settings are stock @
Power Limit 100%
Temp Limit 79C
Core Clock +0
Memory Clock +0
Fan speed and Core voltage are both grayed out and I cannot change them.
Thanks for your time and help!

 

[Alexandros Petrou]

Alright.Get this.Firstly, all you need to do is go to the unigine site and download the latest unigine valley benchmark.
Now since you're new to all the oc magic your first and only thought should be to not mess with things u don't know.Exampli gratia, DO NOT BY ANY MEANS try to mess with the voltage slider.Only experienced people with oc should have to deal with that.If its greyed out, its greyed out for a reason and that is to obstruct people from finally frying their gpu.Instead do this.Cram ur fan % to 100% and let the temperatures settle for a while.Then, slide the core clock bar rightwards by 10 increments each time and hit apply.If you don't have a crash in the next 10 mins tops then ur good.Then do the same again.When you reach the first 60+ increase on the core clock.Do the benchmark that I told you to download.Put extreme settings and let it run for 15 mins by itself.Dont stop it before it finishes cuz it is practically a gpu stress test that will prove if ur oc is stable so far.If u pass the test you can check the valuation at the end and compare it to other ones on their site.You van keep doing this till ur drivers eventually crash which is an indicator that u have reached ur limits.Dial it down 10-20 increments to reach ur optimal overclock.
Do the same for the memory clock.Remember, that msi afterburner only recognises the half or ur cards memory so if it is 4000mhz for example it will say 2000mhz but whatever change u make on the slider will be the double so it matches ur irl memory clock.So +200mhz is an actual +400mhz increase.Do the benchmarks of the unigine.
Now one thing I forgot to mention is that u should mess with either memory clock or core clock alone not both together because if u crash u wont know which is responsible.Place the fan speed into auto and ur done.Happy oc'ing!

EDIT: Go to settings to unlock fan control.DO NOT click unclock core voltage and voltage control.

 

[madchemist83]

Do u have good mobo and psu ?
Don't really need to be THAT careful. . U can unlock voltage control and bump it up a bit, software actually limits the safe vcore ... unless u flash ur bios .. but let me not get those ideas in ur head. No need to blast fan at 100% all the time. Make a custom fan curve and set fan to turn to 100 when ur gpu hits 80 C. Have couple plateaus, maybe idle to 50 C 50 percent fan, 50 to 80 C 70 percent fan. Monitor ur temps, run benchmarks. Gpu will throttle down if it starts overheating. If u have poor psu or mobo it can cause spikes in power supplied and cause unstable overclock