Overclocking an ASUS STRIX GTX 1060 OC edition - voltage and OC queries

[viadmir]

Hello

I have a few questions regarding overclocking an ASUS STRIX GTX 1060 OC edition. Please bear with me as I am a newbie at overclocking and I want to get it right. I appreciate any help you guys can give me.

I am using the latest version of MSI Afterburner for overclocking (Downloaded it just yesterday).

So here are my questions:

1) I've tried to bump up the voltage (e.g. +5, 10, gone all the way up to +25) in MSI afterburner (its the setting at the very top which I believe is a percentage). But HW Monitor tells me that no matter what I do, the max voltage is always 1.063V. Am I doing something wrong, or is that the max. possible voltage I can get?

2) To test my stability, I am using Unigine Heaven 4.0 and I do not know how to determine whether its working or not. I do not see any problem with it. What I do see, and this is with testing multiple core clocks and mem. clocks both high and low, is these horizontal lines that come up every time in the exact same picture frame.

These lines are not 'lines' per say. They are sort of like when you fold a paper and it makes a crease so it is kind of like a crease. Maybe I should use some other software for testing stability? I havent been so daring to go way too high on the clocks just yet, and with the voltage problem, I am afraid that it wont work anyways cuz high overclocks require high voltage in some cases.

Thank you in advance for your help! I appreciate it.

 

[RobCrezz]

1) Its not needed to add voltaged to get a good overclock.
2) heaven is a pretty good stability test

Main thing is raise the power limit to max, and do small increments to test. You should be able to get it to around +150mhz gpu, +250mhz memory as a good starting point.

 

[viadmir]

My power limit is maxed out all the way. It seems that I can keep going up and up and up which is scaring me. Last I remember, I tested with +250 Mhz core and +650 Mhz memory and still Heaven was running the same as it usually does with the 'line' across the screen in some frames.

Now, that made me think that I pushed the OC that high, I should add a few volts for good measure and further OC it, which is where I ran into the 1.063V problem.

 

[RobCrezz]

Are you sure you are hitting apply and activating the OC? +250mhz stable is pretty good going.

Dont just add voltage for the sake of it.

The issue you describe is called frame tearing - pretty normal when the frames are out of sync with the monitors refresh rate. When gaming you can either ignore it or enable vsync, but that will lock the max fps to your refresh rate.

 

[viadmir]

Yes, I am hitting apply (the little check-mark that is shaped like a tick mark). I also see that when I do so and run Unigine, the core clock in the top right corner when running the test increases every time as well when I progressively bump up the core clock each time I run the test.

Ah, I see. So that is tearing. Well the voltage adjustment in MSI Afterburner seems to be irrelevant. No matter how high I set it, the voltage doesnt go above 1.063V in HW monitor so I dont think I am actually changing the voltage at all lol even though I'm going crazy with the voltage slider

Does the MSI afterburner voltage dial not work on ASUS STRIX gtx 1060?

 

[photonboy]

*The POWER LIMIT can't actually be increased much. Software says it is, but it doesn't actually allow it.

NVidia has a voltage cap set and you can't go over this. Gamers Nexus talked about this. It's to prevent cards wearing out.

 

[viadmir]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I believe that the nvidia limit is 1.09V, not 1.063V?

 

[photonboy]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I believe that the nvidia limit is 1.09V, not 1.063V?

I've seen an article where they did overclock to 1.09V now that I'm looking. But it's confusing because again raising the voltage in software may not actually do anything so one program may show that you SEEMED to raise it but another program may report the actual voltage.

Now it seems like some GPU's can hit at most roughly 2200MHz (mostly silicon lottery), though even then it will vary on the situation based on temperature and a few other factors. It's also worth noting that aside from potential STABILITY issues pushing it to the limit can also cause temperature issues at times that can cause the boost to fluctuate more rapidly which can actually show as micro-stutter in some cases.

From my experience, it seems best to try to keep the temperature from going above 75degC (how the temperature and clock works is also slightly confusing).

Anyway, I would focus on frequency and temperature. If you've got say 2100MHz+ and 75degC+ after fifteen minutes of Unigine Heaven then I'd probably just quit overclocking.

(FYI, Unigine Heaven and Valley misreport GPU frequency and possibly other things. Use MSI Afterburner or whatever software you are comfortable with.)

 

[ddmeltzer8]

Correct me if I'm wrong here but I believe that the nvidia limit is 1.09V, not 1.063V?

I've got a strix 1060 that goes up to 1,094v without any software.I measured it with hwinfo64.
Now u dont have to wonder about it.