[SOLVED] Not understanding GPU overclocking PLZ HELP NOOB

[eXodium]

Graphics card is a GTX 1080, program I'm using to OC is MSI Afterburner, and benchmarking software is Heaven.

So with just factory settings I was getting 201.2 FPS and a score of 5069 in the benchmark. I then upped the core voltage and power limit to max and started getting 208.9 FPS with a 5262 score. Then at any extra max core clock speed of anywhere from 50-155mhz I saw a drop in performance instead of a gain. Same with memory clock.

So the question is what the heck is going on here? In my mind, increasing the cap seems like it could only make the performance go up and not down at least for minor tweaks, but it only seems to get worse. Not sure what to do.

 

[Darkbreeze]

What is going on is you have exceeded the ability of your card to stay below thermal specifications because your overclock is beyond realistic expectations for that card OR your settings, especially voltage limits, are too high, and the card is throttling down to remain within thermal specs.

If you want to overclock, you don't just start putting things to the max, ANY max. You do it incrementally until you find the sweet spot, and you DO the stability testing along the way to make sure you are not unstable or otherwise out of spec. Otherwise, you put things back to stock and live with it that way.

If you want to overclock, you follow this, to the letter.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pag...verclocking-guide-with-afterburner-4-3,2.html

 

[eXodium]

What is going on is you have exceeded the ability of your card to stay below thermal specifications because your overclock is beyond realistic expectations for that card OR your settings, especially voltage limits, are too high, and the card is throttling down to remain within thermal specs.

If you want to overclock, you don't just start putting things to the max, ANY max. You do it incrementally until you find the sweet spot, and you DO the stability testing along the way to make sure you are not unstable or otherwise out of spec. Otherwise, you put things back to stock and live with it that way.

If you want to overclock, you follow this, to the letter.

https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pag...verclocking-guide-with-afterburner-4-3,2.html

So from everything I've read it says to max out the power setting to 120 which I did. And the voltage I just scaled back to the setting recommended in the article you posted. The question was more geared toward the core clock and memory clock. even at a +10 on core clock I was seeing a negative effect which didn't make any sense. Not in the computer crashing or anything becoming unstable - just getting less FPS and benchmark score. I tried everything from 10-155 and only saw downgrades from the factory settings. The video card was never unstable or crashed. So not sure why I am not seeing any performance boost from it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Normally, if overclocking (Whether it's a CPU or graphics card) results in worse performance or performance that is better SOME of the time, but drops to worse performance than when it was not overclocked, that is a direct result of thermal throttling.

Some other guides you might want to look at as well.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Overclocking & Best Playable Settings At...

It's no secret that NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080 is the fastest single-GPU card on the planet, but what can it do exactly? That's what we're going to find out, as we take the top-end Pascal card through the paces in overclocking, and then find its 'Best Playable' settings across a handful of...

techgage.com

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?87087-Overclocking-the-Strix-GTX-1080

It would probably help to know exactly WHICH GTX 1080 YOU have.

 

[eXodium]

Normally, if overclocking (Whether it's a CPU or graphics card) results in worse performance or performance that is better SOME of the time, but drops to worse performance than when it was not overclocked, that is a direct result of thermal throttling.

Some other guides you might want to look at as well.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Overclocking & Best Playable Settings At...

It's no secret that NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 1080 is the fastest single-GPU card on the planet, but what can it do exactly? That's what we're going to find out, as we take the top-end Pascal card through the paces in overclocking, and then find its 'Best Playable' settings across a handful of...

techgage.com

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?87087-Overclocking-the-Strix-GTX-1080

It would probably help to know exactly WHICH GTX 1080 YOU have.

It's an evga fe card. So with further testing, once I got above 155 I kept pushing until I started actually locking up the screen and saw real issues. I got to 200/400 in the cc and mc at a stable state. This increased my performance by a ton in the test finally. Which still makes the below 200 cc providing no difference at all a wierd thing for me to process.