Worth Overclocking 1080ti

[gingerf1sh]

Hi all I’ve no doubt this has already been covered so apologies in advance, I have a 1080ti sc and I’m asking is it worth overclocking at all? What kind of performance increase should I expect? (I know every card is unique so I don’t expect an exact figure) I have i7 7700 16gb ram but like most people we all one that extra 1fps more!?

 

[Lutfij]

All GTX108Ti's will overclock the same and give round about the same performance numbers. The only difference from AIB maker to AIB maker is the sort of components they use to deliver the power, cool the entire card and the aesthetics of the card. Cherry picked GPU chips are a thing of the past.

If you do consider overclocking, make sure your airflow is more than adequate. If your watercooling, that you have the necessary raddage to cool the GPU.

 

[zebarjadi.raouf]

Worth Overclocking 1080ti

Free boost for nearly no risk, why not?

What kind of performance increase should I expect?

Around 10%. Depends on the game/software.
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If you need a guide:

0. Install MSI Afterburner
0. Download and run UNIGINE Valley on Extreme HD. (Any similar benchmark works)

1. Max your power limit. (Good PSU recommended)

2. Increase your core clock 50+ at a time while looking at UNIGINE benchmark till artifacts (weird lines and colors) appear or your driver crashes/freezes. Then fine tune it compared to your previous clock.
Example Core clock: ... > +150 > artifact > +145 > artifact > +120 (Keep it 25 or more below max)

3. Do the same for Memory. (50 or more below max)

4. Save your profile.

5. Don't check apply overclocking at startup. You can check it after a few days of testing.

Keep your temps below 80c/176F.

 

[Kasper Jorgensen]

Well, I would say that it's not really worth it. AIB makers do bin their chips, that's why you will see several cards with the same chips from each AIB maker.
They will use their best chips on their most expensive cards. Also newer cards have turbo boost, and many of them will boost past the advertised clock speed. For example my GTX1070 is advertised as 1600 something MHz, but it always run above 2000 MHz without any overclock.

 

[Lord_Tao]

Sorry I am late to the party, but I have some insights into overclocking the 1080ti

Zebarjadi's method is almost correct. The thing he (and most people) are missing is GDDR5 errors and error correction. GDDR5 will correct many errors before you see artifacting and still remain stable, but will result in a loss of performance.

Also GDDR5 has a cyclical nature to overclocking shown in the graph here:

https://imgur.com/mteJi6p

View: http://i.imgur.com/mteJi6p.png
(People speculate that it is due to the memory timings being loosened)

Don't use Unigine. Use MSI Afterburner's Kombustor which needs to be downloaded separately. (Use Unigine and others for final stability tests).

In Kombustor you can see how many artifacts are being generated via a counter on the screen (I assume these are errors being corrected). These are not normally visible on screen, until just before the point where memory overclocks will crash. You can also see the drop in frame rate in real time when artifacts manifest (even if they aren't visible as dots, lines, or other visible anomalies). Kombustor is also a static benchmark so the frame rate is constant due to a constant scene being rendered.

You can also use Kombuster to dial in memory overclocks 1mhz at a time in real time to find the top of the peak to get the most out of your OC. You can do this by activating the on screen display and watch what the frame rate counter is doing with each setting. Just make sure to run Kombuster for long enough until your card hits 80 degrees C before doing any fine tuning on your OC. When you think you hit a sweet spot, save it as a profile, so you can switch between potential candidates swiftly to see which one is best.

I found that for 4k, you will get more FPS from memory rather than clock frequency. I could reset the clock frequency to +0 on the fly and only drop 5 or so frames, where going back to stock settings of +0 and +0 would loose me 20 frames. Therefore I would dial in your memory OC first, then up the core clock. **caveat that water cooled cards can get a lot more core clock out of their OC.

**note that let Kombuster run for 10 seconds after each change so that the FPS stabilizes out.

My story:

So my 1080ti OCed to +50mhz clock, and +500mhz memory. I used Heavily modded Withcer 3 in 4k to find the best stability. However once I used Kombustor, I saw that thousands of artifacts were being generated every minute which were not visible, despite the OC being stable. Turns out, that artifacts started at about +350mhz, would be visible past +500mhz, and outright crash at about +550. Despite loosing +150mhz in my memory OC, I could dial in the peak memory frequency a lot easier and ended up with a better overclock at +60mhz core and +343mhz for the memory. Also the lower memory frequency will use less power.