Is an overclocked GPU that is occassionally flickering harmful or a sign of damage?

wildmitchell

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May 28, 2018
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I occassionally put this overclock of my GTX 970 on to run specific games:

Power Limit: +10%
Core Clock: +196MHz
Memory Clock: +294MHz
Temp. Limit: 80

With the extra frames, it also delivers some weird flickers and lighting bugs which maybe only occurs a couple of times a minute. I've found that I can lower the memory clock to remove this but I'd rather bare with the odd flicker than lose the performance but I've started wondering whether this is bad for the card.

Is this flickering a sign that it might actually damage the longevity of the card and should I lower the clock to avoid anymore damage?

Thanks
 
Solution
The flickering won't cause damage, but it's a pretty clear sign that the overclock is not happy. You'd rather see flickering and lighting bugs than lose 2 or 3 fps?

2sidedpolygon

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Jul 1, 2018
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Okay. In that case, I'd dial things back just a little bit unless you're okay with putting up with it. It shouldn't cause long-term damage.
 

wildmitchell

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May 28, 2018
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Thanks for the replies guys, that's what I wanted to hear.

The thing is, 2-3 frames is about 20-30% of the overclock. The flickers are more rare than the stutters, at least to me anyway. Maybe I'll try dial it back a touch but I just wanted to confirm that I haven't been killing the card just to play AC Unity with some SweetFX lol
 

wildmitchell

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May 28, 2018
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I use MSI Afterburner and the slider only goes up to 110%, what I'm using now, and I leave the voltage untouched (and it's greyed out anyway). I'm sure I could get past these limits but I'm assuming they're there for a reason, after all I don't want to damage the card because I ain't paying for a new one!