- Oct 18, 2011
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I just wanted your guys/girls opinion on my overclocking guide, please be honest i don't mind criricism :lol: also i apologise for gramatical errors.
Please be aware this is a rough draft
GPU Overclocking Guide
Important Notes: Make a custom power profile in windows making sure the display never turns off. The reason for this is that when overclocking the card, when testing and the screen goes idle, it can cause instability problems, and cause the screen not to come back after the screen goes off. For 24/7 overclocks I recommend just seeing how far you can push it on stock voltages, due to the heat produced when playing around with voltages of the graphics card or cards. Also make sure when applying the clocks to make sure you have a third party program like gpu z, to make sure the clocks you applied are actually applied.
Step 1: Download MSI Afterburner to begin the overclocking process. First off set custom fan profiles too make sure your gpu doesn’t overheat when overclocking, and then begin to tweak the clocks how you see fit. Remember only tweak one clock at a time, because this will allow you to easily determine which clock is causing your gpu to possibly crash.
Step 2: Download unigine heaven benchmark tool, and then set the resolution to system, the anti-aliasing to 4x and the tessellation to normal. Then set up a timer and run on loop for an hour to see if it crashes. If the GPU crashes, tone the overclock down on the clock you are working on for example: the memory or gpu core clock by steps of 20 in MSI Afterburner, then run the test again. If the test passes on your overclock, try increasing the clock until it crashes again, then tone the clock back in small increments of 5 until the gpu no longer crashes in unigine heaven benchmark.
Step 3: For real hard core gpu testing, I then like to download MSI Kombustor, and set the resolution to that of your monitor, and then tick the full screen option and run the gpu burn in for half an hour watching the temps occasionally to check they don’t get too high, and then mainly for when overclocking the gpu core, look for graphical artefacts, like visual tearing and unsmooth pixel transitions, to make sure that the gpu core clock is stable. With memory overclocking, you will usually find that the entire system will crash if it’s unstable, meaning that you will have to hard reset the computer.
Step 4: If the MSI Kombustor half an hour loop succeeds, change the windows power feature back to high performance were the screen turns off, and then run the MSI Kombustor half an hour loop again, and when trying to reinitialise the monitor after it turns off, if it doesn’t come back on then you may have a problem with your power setting on your card, meaning that when the screen goes idle, it messes with the overclock on your card and causes it too crash go to step 5. If not then you are all done and finished with your overclock
Step 5: one extreme method you could try to possibly fix the monitor freezing on going idle problem, is too reflash your gpu bios to your overclock setting thus fooling the card into thinking it’s the stock voltages, this is not recommended and should be done at users discretion. Here are some guides on how to flash your gpu bios and how to recover it if it goes wrong. One important thing to do before flashing your bios is too run a unigine heaven benchmark score on your overclock, and stock settings to see if the overclock score is higher, and if it isn’t, or is the same or lower, then tone down the overclock until you see a higher score. (The reason for the lower or same score would be something is throttling the GPU back, for example the thermals may be getting too high)
How to flash your bios:
http://www.bjorn3d.com/2010/05/flashing-your-video-cards-gpu-bios/
However to recover a bad bios flash:
http://www.overclock.net/t/593427/how-to-unbrick-your-bricked-graphics-card-fix-a-failed-bios-flash
Step 6: if the flash was successful, run the half an hour MSI Kombustor test again making sure your custom fan profiles are still set in MSI Afterburner and run the test and see if the screen reawakens at the end of the test, if it doesn’t, you may simply just have to turn off, turn display off in windows power settings, and just manually turn it off when not using it.
Please be aware this is a rough draft
GPU Overclocking Guide
Important Notes: Make a custom power profile in windows making sure the display never turns off. The reason for this is that when overclocking the card, when testing and the screen goes idle, it can cause instability problems, and cause the screen not to come back after the screen goes off. For 24/7 overclocks I recommend just seeing how far you can push it on stock voltages, due to the heat produced when playing around with voltages of the graphics card or cards. Also make sure when applying the clocks to make sure you have a third party program like gpu z, to make sure the clocks you applied are actually applied.
Step 1: Download MSI Afterburner to begin the overclocking process. First off set custom fan profiles too make sure your gpu doesn’t overheat when overclocking, and then begin to tweak the clocks how you see fit. Remember only tweak one clock at a time, because this will allow you to easily determine which clock is causing your gpu to possibly crash.
Step 2: Download unigine heaven benchmark tool, and then set the resolution to system, the anti-aliasing to 4x and the tessellation to normal. Then set up a timer and run on loop for an hour to see if it crashes. If the GPU crashes, tone the overclock down on the clock you are working on for example: the memory or gpu core clock by steps of 20 in MSI Afterburner, then run the test again. If the test passes on your overclock, try increasing the clock until it crashes again, then tone the clock back in small increments of 5 until the gpu no longer crashes in unigine heaven benchmark.
Step 3: For real hard core gpu testing, I then like to download MSI Kombustor, and set the resolution to that of your monitor, and then tick the full screen option and run the gpu burn in for half an hour watching the temps occasionally to check they don’t get too high, and then mainly for when overclocking the gpu core, look for graphical artefacts, like visual tearing and unsmooth pixel transitions, to make sure that the gpu core clock is stable. With memory overclocking, you will usually find that the entire system will crash if it’s unstable, meaning that you will have to hard reset the computer.
Step 4: If the MSI Kombustor half an hour loop succeeds, change the windows power feature back to high performance were the screen turns off, and then run the MSI Kombustor half an hour loop again, and when trying to reinitialise the monitor after it turns off, if it doesn’t come back on then you may have a problem with your power setting on your card, meaning that when the screen goes idle, it messes with the overclock on your card and causes it too crash go to step 5. If not then you are all done and finished with your overclock
Step 5: one extreme method you could try to possibly fix the monitor freezing on going idle problem, is too reflash your gpu bios to your overclock setting thus fooling the card into thinking it’s the stock voltages, this is not recommended and should be done at users discretion. Here are some guides on how to flash your gpu bios and how to recover it if it goes wrong. One important thing to do before flashing your bios is too run a unigine heaven benchmark score on your overclock, and stock settings to see if the overclock score is higher, and if it isn’t, or is the same or lower, then tone down the overclock until you see a higher score. (The reason for the lower or same score would be something is throttling the GPU back, for example the thermals may be getting too high)
How to flash your bios:
http://www.bjorn3d.com/2010/05/flashing-your-video-cards-gpu-bios/
However to recover a bad bios flash:
http://www.overclock.net/t/593427/how-to-unbrick-your-bricked-graphics-card-fix-a-failed-bios-flash
Step 6: if the flash was successful, run the half an hour MSI Kombustor test again making sure your custom fan profiles are still set in MSI Afterburner and run the test and see if the screen reawakens at the end of the test, if it doesn’t, you may simply just have to turn off, turn display off in windows power settings, and just manually turn it off when not using it.
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