Understanding GPU Overclocking and Stability vs CPU Overclocking and Stability

[Xenowarrior]

So I've been poking around trying to figure out how to do a GPU overclock. I've overclocked my CPU a bit and had a bit of success.

My question is about figuring out whether or not a GPU overclock is stable or not. With Prime95 and OCCT it just tells you. But running GPU benchmarks doesn't really seem to give any definitive answer to whether or not the GPU oc is stable.

Thank you so much for the help.

 

[SPgamer007]

Stressing out GPU for a while tells it at best. Artifacts/crashes simply says it needs more voltage to handle the OC,and voltage shouldn't go very high,so OC should be limited at a point.

 

[Xenowarrior]

So basically just sit and watch it and wait for it to either crash or start doing funky stuff? Can I basically just up the core voltage a little at a time on MSI Afterburner the same way one would do in BIOS?

 

[TJ Hooker]

If you run a gaming benchmark and don't see any visual artifacts or glitches (and obviously don't have any crashes), then you're stable.

For gaming anyway. If you're doing hardware accelerated compute stuff, there may be a higher bar, I'm not sure.

 

[Xenowarrior]

Yeah I'm kinda just ocing for fun and to decide whether or not to upgrade. Just running 3dmark to up my score as much as possible. Will the artifacts show up in 3dmark as well as they do in heaven benchmark?

 

[SPgamer007]

So basically just sit and watch it and wait for it to either crash or start doing funky stuff? Can I basically just up the core voltage a little at a time on MSI Afterburner the same way one would do in BIOS?

As CPU voltage,GPU too has a voltage limit, it depends upon specific GPU, an OC guide will work, look for them to have an idea about the OC of your card.

As stated above, OC should be at limit, upping the voltage over and over again just to get some more core and memory speed is not a good idea,and mostly a mini performance gain is not worth the increase in voltage after you have achieved a decent OC.

 

[TJ Hooker]

Yeah I'm kinda just ocing for fun and to decide whether or not to upgrade. Just running 3dmark to up my score as much as possible. Will the artifacts show up in 3dmark as well as they do in heaven benchmark?

I prefer heaven/valley for stressing/stability testing because they're much more steady load than 3dmark (which runs relatively short tests with breaks in between).

But you never know. It can be like CPU stress testing; you may be stable with one test for half an hour, only to crash in another in 5 minutes.

 

[scuzzycard]

I like to run 2 instances each of heaven and valley after dialing in all my settings. I also cycle through all the games I will actually play. Furmark and RealBench are also tools that I find useful.