I want to overclock my video cards

[Hidden308]

I will give the temps details. I have two Twin Frozr 980s.

Top GPU Temps

- Max: 80c
- Low: 26c

Bottom GPU Temps

- Max: 64c
- Low: 24c

Now I do have MSI Afterburner I was curious what a good overclock would be and what should I expect of temps? (I rather not increase voltage I heard it can be bad on video cards I rather not risk destroying my hardware by increasing voltage)

 

[robax91]

I'm not familiar with MSI Afterburner, but my suggestion is to set the core clock speed 50mhz higher than the advertised maximum boost clock at stock voltage, then give it a test run on Heaven benchmark for about 30 mins to warm up and check for artifacts.

If it worked, try lowering the voltage a very small amount (like 1.15v to 1.10v) and run the test again. Keep doing this until you get a crash and then use the last stable voltage. If you get lucky you'll get a small performance boost and the lower voltage will lower the temps a bit, that top card is already near its throttle mark (most nvidia cards throttle at 83c) because of either the second card blocking its air flow or it sucking up the second card's exhaust. As long as neither of them is throttling, it would be a successful OC.

If you wanted to try 100mhz higher, you could but from my experience, 980s do not OC that far unless you water cool them. Also, you should probably leave the memory clocks alone, these will give you crashes and artifacts almost immediately after you change them and will have very little fps gains unless you are playing at 2k or higher resolutions.

 

[Hidden308]

I'm not familiar with MSI Afterburner, but my suggestion is to set the core clock speed 50mhz higher than the advertised maximum boost clock at stock voltage, then give it a test run on Heaven benchmark for about 30 mins to warm up and check for artifacts.

If it worked, try lowering the voltage a very small amount (like 1.15v to 1.10v) and run the test again. Keep doing this until you get a crash and then use the last stable voltage. If you get lucky you'll get a small performance boost and the lower voltage will lower the temps a bit, that top card is already near its throttle mark (most nvidia cards throttle at 83c) because of either the second card blocking its air flow or it sucking up the second card's exhaust. As long as neither of them is throttling, it would be a successful OC.

If you wanted to try 100mhz higher, you could but from my experience, 980s do not OC that far unless you water cool them. Also, you should probably leave the memory clocks alone, these will give you crashes and artifacts almost immediately after you change them and will have very little fps gains unless you are playing at 2k or higher resolutions.

I don't see MSI Afterburner allow me to decrease voltage it only allows me to increase which as I mention is something I rather avoid. I also googled it though and it is highly unrecommended due to decreasing voltage can lead to even more unstable overclocks. Is there no way to overclock without decreasing voltage or do you have to increase voltage if I want to overclock?

 

[robax91]

You can just leave it at stock voltage. I really only recommend lowering voltage because it cannot hurt the hardware, the only bad thing that can happen is a crash, which you just have to reset the PC and change the voltage back to fix. The benefit of lower voltages is much better temps and more headroom for further overclocking, but if your voltages are locked then just do 25mhz, ten mins of testing, see the temp, let it cool down and put on 25mhz more until you get a temp throttle or see artifacts or get a crash. Leaving it at stock voltage you shouldn't be able to hurt the card in any way doing this.

 

[Hidden308]

Alright this is what I did..

I started at 50+ core clock (I increase power limiter to 110 for stability)

Then I went up to 175 (why not worse it could do is crash) which it did. So I lowered it to 150+ core clock and it seems pretty stable with no issues.

Top GPU Temp Max: 79c
Bottom GPU Temp Max: 62c

I let Heaven run for about a good hour and that's what both it and MSI Afterburner were reading. I messed with my fan control to go high when temps go higher. Top GPU temps went up about 4c. With difference in fan control it seems bottom GPU max temp lowered 2c.

The core clock goes up to 1443. Does this sound good?

 

[robax91]

Yea mine is almost the exact same, I have an EVGA 980 FTW 2.0 and it tops out at 1444 before it starts getting unstable or needs the power ramped up. Should be a good little performance bump up from the 1379 boost at stock.