Is Overclocking a gpu worth it? - Page 2 - Overclock.net

grahamcrackuh · 07-08-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by brettjv

Welcome to Overclock.net. And please fill in your system specs, under USER CP near the top of the page. Hit 'add system' and fill in what you got so your sig line looks like the rest of ours. It's worth the time and energy if you wanna ask questions, otherwise you're gonna have to keep repeating yourself re: what gear you have.

Honestly, it's fairly rare for GPU's to actually have enough headroom for overclocking to make a significant change to your gaming experience. The GTX275 is already clocked pretty high, too.

I know this is Overclock.net and everything, but ... until and unless you actually start reaching a point where you're playing a game and finding your fps is just a SMIDGE lower than what you need for the game to feel 'right' to you (usually somewhere between 25 and 40fps, depending on the game) at the settings you have going ... I wouldn't worry about overclocking your card.

Overclocking, MOST of the time ... is mostly for us benchmarking geeks. It's 'practical usefulness' is fairly limited, esp. when it comes to cards that are already clocked close to their max (%-wise) right out of the box.

I know it sounds like blasphemy, but I've been doing this a long time, and it's honestly been very rare where overclocking a card has caused my maximum playable settings to increase ... there's been a couple scenarios/cards where the OC'ing of the gpu allowed me to bump AA up by a notch and still remain playable vs. what the card could pull off stock. But again, it's been rare to see that happen over the years.

Eh, in tf2 earlier I was very surprised that on all the highest with full filtering my gtx 280 would occassionally drop to 40 at spikes, by OCing, I kept it above 50 at all times - its nicer for gaming.

xxicrimsonixx · 07-08-09

Definitely worth overclocking it. You can gain anywhere from 3 to 10 FPS just by overclocking (and depending on the game).

brettjv · 07-08-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by grahamcrackuh

Eh, in tf2 earlier I was very surprised that on all the highest with full filtering my gtx 280 would occassionally drop to 40 at spikes, by OCing, I kept it above 50 at all times - its nicer for gaming.

Not one of the individual overclocks on your card is anywhere near a 25% increase over stock clocks. Therefore, the 25% performance improvement in min fps that you are claiming here is entirely physically impossible, at least not by the sole means of gpu overclocking to the clocks that you have listed in your sig.

I love overclocking just as much as the next guy, but let's not exaggerate what's actually possible to the newbie.

You can't get a 25% improvement in frames w/o at least one of your clocks being 25% higher. And you would most likely need all 3 clocks to be bumped to 25% or at least very close to 25% ... to see such a gain.

chronicbucks · 07-08-09

is a 25% overclock of the core clock, shader clock, and memory clock about what i should go for??

DUNC4N · 07-08-09

I'd say average overclock is around 10-15%, but don't guess, or just jam them sliders up.

Start slow, with gpu clock, bump it up 5-10mhz at a time, then test for stability. OCCT works.

When you get errors, drop it back down, then work on memory.

nist7 · 07-08-09

Quote:

Originally Posted by chronicbucks

is a 25% overclock of the core clock, shader clock, and memory clock about what i should go for??

Basically it's trial and error for the GPU overclocking. ATI has a program that can immediately test stabiliy but I forget what that was called. But increase your overclock at modest increments and fire up a graphics heavy game (crysis would be a good example) and look for any artifacts aka weird crap on the screen that you know are not supposed to be on there (weird colors, white or black where there isn't suposed to be, or other abnormal effects) and when that happens you know you have reached the limit and then taper it down a bit and you will have an effective max OC.

Also you want to test the core shader and memory separately so you can find the max for each and then you can OC all 3 together. If you do it too much the screen can actually freeze up or go blank or BSOD so just be careful.

brettjv · 07-08-09

Most likely based on the numbers I've seen floating about the interwebz, the 275 is going to be able to OC into the 700's on core, the 1500's on shader, and the 1200's (aka 2400MHz when you account for the double-data rate) on the memory. Nowhere near a 25% gain from stock is going to be possible on that card, because it's already clocked relatively high for it's architecture.

Important note: all three of the card's adjustable clocks (core/shader/mem) operate on 'straps', i.e. most values that you try to set in your overclocking tool are not going to be exact, they will be approximations.

The strap 'effect' on shaders is most noticeable, on your card the strap size will (generally) be about 36MHz. In other words, just as an example, the shaders can run at 1476MHz, or 1512MHz. Anything you set in between (roughly) 1465 and 1525 will cause the shaders to be at one of those two speeds. So use the graphs in Precision (or Rivatuner) while OC'ing so you can view actual clock speeds while you're testing.

You should definitely unlink your core/shader clock 'relationship', so that each can be adjusted individually.

And you should have a look around the web for good overclocking guides, don't try to rely on little two second blurbs that people come onto your post here and give you

One last thing ... you really can't hurt your gfx card by overclocking, what happens when you OC too far is just things like freezing, crashing, bsod's, artifacting ... but those don't hurt your card or your computer (although I've had game files get corrupted from oc-related crashes before, which required game re-installs), and your comp will reboot just fine afterwards.

Oh, and make sure you don't set your machine to 'boot up' to an overclock that you've set unless and until you've made certain that the OC is stable. Otherwise you may end up having to boot into safe mode and fix it.

JNielson · 07-08-09

Yes overclocking a gpu is worth it. I have had some good fps gains

Megaman_90 · 07-08-09

As long as its stable and not on fire, you will notice a slight difference and a few more FPS.

HardwaterH4ck3r · 07-08-09

I've seen a good deal of gains overclocking my cards, but I haven't done it again since I put Windows7 on there, because I don't even want a hint of instability.

I think that every ounce of performance that you can squeeze from your rig is worth it, even if you are only doing browsing or productivity, the extra bit of "snappiness" is worth it to me.

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Is Overclocking a gpu worth it?

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