How unsafe is it to really push my graphics card past it's theoretical limits?

[Dittlest]

I've got a GTX 580 which in my current rig, is the bottleneck if there is one. All new parts but I ran out of money and went with the 580 as a hand me down for 50 bucks. Great deal for the card but it's still the oldest component i've got.

Anyway, I just started playing GTA V and Assassin's Creed: Unity. I was noticing if I crank up the settings on these games it blows way past the vram my card has. Is the worst that can happen if I try to play GTA on crazy ultra settings just frequent crashes or can I actually burn up the card?

 

[i7Baby]

It'll chew into your ram - which takes vram overflow. It'll go slower then your PC will crash.

Also your 580 will overheat and cut out. Again your PC will crash.

And maybe your PSU won't take the power drawer and burn out.

 

[RaDiKaL_]

GTA V should work better since AC Unity is awfully optimized for PC, it's simply a horrible port from console (shame on you Ubisoft).

As for problems surpassing your GPU's VRAM, there's nothing to worry about, it will only slow down your game but won't hurt your hardware at all. Only risk would be if your GPU is overheating due to a failing fan or worn off thermal paste, if you get used to monitor its temps with GPU-Z or MSI Afterburner or similar then there won't be any problem at all.

 

[InvalidError]

You cannot push the GPU beyond 100% without overclocking and the GPU should be able to handle 100% fine.

The worst that should happen is severely degraded performance once the GPU has to fall back to borrowing system memory due to not having sufficient local memory.

 

[SimonEyez]

You won't hurt the card, just crash the system.

 

[mrmez]

If you use settings that require more ram than you have, performance will start to suffer, and you might get minor artefacts, but I've never heard of damage occurring from it.

Using a setting that requires more ram than you have means the game will have to unload data that it still needs.

Using up to ~2.8 of my 3Gb in GTA V, I did notice some artefacts at the bottom right of the screen. Once I dropped to ~2.6-2.7 everything cleared up.

 

[Dittlest]

Ok. Just wondering. I have an i5 4690k, sabertooth z97, 8 gb of ram and a nice 750w seagate psu so i'm not too worried if the game sucks off those components. and the case has nice airflow so I don't think anything has ever got too hot in there. I was just curious because its SO tempting to crank the crap out of the settings on gta v to see how pretty I can get it. I smell a gtx 970 in my near future so this shouldn't be an issue for too long.

 

[mrmez]

Crank away.

When I get a new game I start out with max (or close to max) settings, and turn one thing down at a time till I get the FPS I need. Most people would do something similar.