sofakng

I'm going to try overclocking my new EVGA GTX 285 using their EVGA Precision tool but I'm not sure how to test for stability.

I've heard that you can use ATI Tray Tools and/or FurMark. However, I'd prefer to stay away from ATI Tray Tools since it installs custom drivers and requires test signing mode on my Vista x64.

Furmark, on the other hand, I've heard heats up video cards to the point of killing them. I'm assuming this only happens to cards with defective fans and such, but it doesn't sound like a good thing either way, heh.

So what's the best way to test for stability?

Also, how should I about the overclocking? (eg. overclock core increasing by 5% each time until limit is found, then do the same for shader clock, then memory clock?)

Thanks for any advice.

Ramzinho

couple of hours on Crysis will let you know.. keep an eye on the temps

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sofakng

Thanks for the information.

I just tried using "Superclock" speeds (SSC):

Core: 675 MHz
Shader: 1548 MHz
Memory: 2538 MHz

...and then tried Crysis. It crashed ("Driver stopped responding...") within a few minutes.

Oh well. I guess I'm stuck at stock speeds which isn't really a horrible thing I guess.

SilverPotato

Run ATITool and Furmark at the same time for about an hour. Windowed of course.

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crimsontears809739

Furmark heats up the shaders in a "un-natural" way that no video game or computer program will ever do. Furmark can kill a video card with a perfectly fine cooling system if you run it for like 24 hours (or more) straight.

Furmark is safe to use if you use it for an hour or two, as long as you are watching temps the whole time. Just don't start up Furmark and fall asleep.

3D Mark's benchmarking tools are good stress tests. Ati tool is great. But Crysis is the best. If Crysis doesn't make it crash, nothing will. I have 2 different overclock settings i use for my card, "playing Crysis" and "Not playing Crysis". For example my video card is at stock is at GPU/Mem 600/900. When i play most games i keep it at 720/1000. For Crysis it is only stable at 700/960.

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I_dalder_I

Run crysis max res max settings and 16xq AA even if its a slide show it will tell you if your stable

crimsontears809739

"Driver stopped responding" sounds like a bad driver problem, and not a overclocking unstability problem. If overclocking makes it unstable it will artifact, bluescreen, or restart. Try different drivers then overclocking again.

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sofakng

I'm using the latest nVidia (non-beta) drivers with a fresh install of Vista x64 SP2.

Anybody else on this same configuration?

Maybe I just got a bum card?

It's too bad because I could've had the SSC (SuperClock) version for like $15 more. Oh well.

Anth0789

Play some games and if it crashes the it means its unstable. You can always run 3dmark also to see if its stable.

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ckybam3

I use rIvatuner for overclockong and furmark for stability test. If I can run it in furmakr for 15 mins I test it on cod4&5 since that's all I play. Furmark is fine for short periods of time