Originally Posted by Ictinike

It's OK, being confused, we all are at some point; don't feel anything negative. Let me break this down via your comments and if you need anything else let me know, I'll keep trying to check back but if not PM me



Yes exactly what I'm describing.



Well technically the card IS set to what you have it to regardless of the 54Mhz increment. The shaders however, regardless of what you place them at, will only run on the 54Mhz increment they are designed to run. So again lets say you have 1000 for the shader. If you make it 1026, it still will run on the 1000 shader strap. Now once you go beyond 50% to the next strap increment, ie: 1027-1054, it will default to the 1054 strap.



You don't have to set them to the 54Mhz strap but regardless, as stated above, they WILL run at these pre-defined straps. The shaders are designed this way.



This is just like any other overclocking. Your card must not be able to keep up and artifacts. Remember though in Folding you can't *really* use a tool to test the OC, per se, because if you unlink the shaders and bump them but don't bump core, it's unbalanced and you WILL see artifacts. Just because it artifacts in a benchmark or scanning artifact tool does NOT mean it's unstable in F@H. Hope that made sense. Your NOT displaying graphics or using the core/memory in F@H, only shaders so the rules don't really apply here.



For the card to function as a video card, that is work in games, etc; the core to strap ratio is typically 1:2. When you LINK the shaders and bump the core your shaders will also follow to the next available stable strap keeping the 1:2 ratio intact.

This is why if you UNLINK the shaders, and bump just them for folding, your card will most likely artifact or crash when you use it for anything OTHER than F@H. Most of us have profiles in RivaTuner that will allow us to run a shader setting only for F@H but if I leave this strap setup and try to game I nearly instantly BSOD. I have to revert my straps BACK to the stock settings and/or another stable overclock using all THREE components to game with an overclocked card.

Again, just unlinking and bumping shaders to higher straps only affects F@H and if NOT kept within range of the core/memory while using the card for gaming or benchmarking it most likely will crash.

Sorry if this is confusing, it's hard to explain via 'type written words'

Originally Posted by BinaryBird

Why would you wanna move to the next shader strap when you say its unstable? You would get errors from the folding client for which you need to keep a constant check on your folding log. But you can always try.

I was running the shaders at 1782, it worked well for a few hours but after that i had several errors which i noticed after some time. Now i run a strap low and its perfectly stable.

Originally Posted by Ictinike

Sorry Berger.. I didn't mean to come off being a "teacher" so much as being the "sugguestor"

But yes, what your thinking is correct. Just because a strap is not stable in gaming or benchmarking doesn't mean it can't be stable for F@H.

I run my strap for folding 2-3 times higher than I would gaming and honestly at the strap I'm on now for F@H if I even go into a game I crash with BSOD because the core and memory are not in-line with the strap I'm using. I have to typically revert back to stock for my gaming profiles and remember to bump it back up using RivaTuner.

[Edit]

As for the way of straps for F@H I use stock GTX 285 CLOCKS and bump only the shader to either 1620 or 1674.

Just for reference the 285's base shader strap is 1476, so I'm nearly 200mhz above stock.

For gaming, I just revert back to 285 stock settings and this thing handles everything I've thrown at it. I don't really OC this for gaming since again it handles what I want it to.

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Originally Posted by Ictinike

Yea.. it's a game really.. Shoot for what you want, tweak and most times you setting for whats stable not what you want. I can run FTW clocks on this 285 but honestly, the 2-10 fps it gets me are negliable

We wouldn't be trying for "the pursuit of performance" if we didn't BSOD, fry a piece of hardware here or there or others; it's part of the fascination we have with the hardware and theories

Your doing fine and again find what fits and is comfortable and always shoot for higher!

[BTW] Thanks for those last rep mate! They put me over the top for my 250th rep and 3 flames so I greatly appreciate it mate!

Originally Posted by Ictinike

Yea I have that voltage tuner however it doesn't currently support the 55nm cores

I used it a bit on my 65nm 260 c216 with good results but also had several crashes trying to add voltage. I'm so happy now with this 285 and was a step up for $60 from my 260.

I almost got 10k PPD out of this single 285 today alone