Question Is VRAM overclocking safe?

Jan 28, 2020
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Hi everyone,

Is VRAM overclocking safe without overvoltage for pascal series? I have GTX 1050.

Thanks.
 
that depends on 2 other questions:
HOW MUCH
and
WHO MADE THE GPU

most good quality gpu's can take another 10% without any problems.
if you go for extreeeme OC and start to alter power levels, well you can basicly brick the card.

example of hardcore stuff:
 
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zx128k

Reputable
Normally vRAM chips are rated a little higher than the speed they run at to guarantee stability. The main risk is the circuitry that feed power to the vRAM could only be rated to run at stock which means that running more power through the VRMs/MOSFETs etc could cause failure. Sometimes there are design issues with the card and overclocking force failure to occur faster.

Overheating VRMs EVGA
View: https://youtu.be/WAbl0fLY06U

View: https://youtu.be/URyG1OP8p8I


You just have to be careful, research as best you can and small steps. Even on overclocking cards vrm's can fail when pushing the limits.

oA5Mlny.jpg

Many 1050 are 75 watt cards and there is no PCIe power connector. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/geforce-gtx-1050.c2875 Some are limited to 65 watt for example. https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/194665/asus-gtx1050-2048-161110-1 This BIOS does not let you increase the power limit above the PCIe slots maximum and should not really be overclocked. As they are designed to run at stock, the circuits are not designed to run above stock.

If you are lucky you could have a card like https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/193056/asus-gtx1050-2048-161107 which is able to be overclocked and has a 150 watt power limit. Allowing you to increase the TDP up to 150 watts safely.

Research your make and model of card and try and find any issues with overclocking (like with the evga cards above that had overheating vrm's). With a 75 watt limit, the best you will get overclocking wise is a few fps increase in performance. It wont be worth it anyway.
 

86zx

Upstanding
Nov 1, 2019
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you'll probably get in the neighborhood of +200mhz-300mhz on the vram on a gtx 1050
There’s another factor to it as well though as an example I overclocked my gt1030 significantly vram + 300 and core + 250 so it was hitting a little over 2 ghz and it ended up getting worse fps sometimes the gpu just isn’t happy at the limit
 
From what I have tested and from what I seen. Not one card perform at it best when clocked to the max.

There is a sweet spot you need to find when it comes to the overclock.
But it seems like most people belive that since the numbers are higher it has to be better. That is not a fact.

Start by adding +100 Mhz until you see your FPS or points go down (depends on what program you are running to test / stress the card)
Once you see performance decrease dial it back 50 Mhz. Then play around with + - 10 Mhz until you find the sweet spot.
Same goes for the GPU core.


EDIT: Oh and welcome to TomsHardware by the way :)