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Average GTX 260 Overclocks?

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Chadwick1504

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Discussion starter · #1 ·
I'm replacing my old 8800 Ultra with a newer GTX 260 (as opposed to a 4870) because I heard from several sources that the 260's overclock like beasts and when OC'd provide performance or par with or greater than a GTX 280. I got this card for $248 CAN ($214 US) so that was the deciding factor. There's two things I know that the experienced overclockers here can help me with.

1) What's the average OC for GTX 260's?
2) How loud is the fan on the GTX 260/280 cooler @ 100%?
3) [From 260 Owners] What are your average OC temps?

I have one 80mm fan blowing over my Ultra right now and I know it'll be useful for OC'ing my new GTX. Thoughts?
 
#2 ·
Im currently at 676 on the core and 1250 on the RAM. I've tried up to 700 on the core but I get in game crashes so I switched back down. Although, I've seen other people with much higher clocks than me. I've got standard air cooling in an Antec 900 case with an extra fan on the clear side panel blowing onto the 260. I get around 64-65c on full load in Crysis and just under 60 in 3DMark06. I have found Far Cry 2 pushes it the most with temps getting up to 68c. The fan is quite loud with 100% being noticebly louder than the other fans in the case. Hope than helps
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NOTE: The GTX 260 is a nice card. The xFx version looks sexy as hell and I've been getting an average FPS of 55 in Far Cry 2 at 1920x1200 with 4xAA
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#3 ·
1. i'm running at 700mhzGPU 1260mhzMEM and i leave the fan on AUTO (Set through Evga precision) unless it's a hot day then ill set it to about 80%.

2. Pretty loud. At 100% it would most likely be the loudest fan in most people's case.

3. When at idle the card actually drops 400mhzGPU and 300mhz automatically for low power mode. i idle at 48c and then at LOAD i'll get 65 - 80c depending on room temp and fan setting.
 
#4 ·
I only hit 53-54C in ATITool, GTA4, and Crysis. And my clocks are 756/1513/1116 (Core/shader/memory) and I'm at 80%fan. After 80% I can here the fan clearly over my loud azz Antec900 case fans. But the GPU fan is running at 3000+rpm at 100% so it is supposed to be loud.

With a stock clocked GTX 260 you should be able to get 700Mhz core no prob.

Is that the 65nm you got? I'm beginning to think that the 55nm overclock better on average that the 65nm.
 
#7 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sacre View Post
Check benchies... 260 doesn't outperform 8800 Ultra by very much. =/

I'm waiting longer to upgade. Probably 300 or 5000 series.
What? I just upgraded from a 8800GT SC 512MB (Granted it had a few less shader cores than the Ultra) to a 55nm GTX 260. The difference was huge, I went from 15,000 in 3DMark06 to right at 19,000 @1280x1024! 8800Ultra's SLI'd would compete but not a single 8800 Ultra. I don't know why people think they can even begin to compare two different types of GPU architecture's, the G200 will outperform a G92 anyday.

I mean think about it,
this is only Nvidia's 2nd generation of unified architecture, people waited for a loooong time for Nvida to rebuild their GPU architecture. After all this time they had to at least of made it faster.

EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by MOCAMBO View Post
Wow you guys got bad ass clocks. MY **** dont go stable over 700mhz
have you tried unlinking the shaders from the core? Also do you have the 65nm? I think that is why I can get such high clocks. Or it it is just the luck of the draw.
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#8 ·
I currently own a vanilla EVGA GTX 260 216sp 65nm driver v181.22 and I can get it to 730/1512/1248 w/o any voltage modding.

If kept under 50% the fan will be barely audible(just like any other case fan). The fan became the most audible thing in my system when set to 70%+ At 100% the fan will be very loud, but you probably don't want to have the fan constantly @ 100% because of wear and tear on it. If you have good case ventilation you can probably keep the fan between 70-85% and the card will stay below 70c during gaming.

I personally don't mind the sound at all because I can adjust all the fan speeds easily and usually wear headphones while gaming.

My card's temps at the overclocked setting stated at the top approach 70c in Furmark, mid 60s in Far Cry 2, and high 50s in TF2(all of these w/ fan @ 80%)
 
#9 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by tbates1244 View Post
What? I just upgraded from a 8800GT SC 512MB (Granted it had a few less shader cores than the Ultra) to a 55nm GTX 260. The difference was huge, I went from 15,000 in 3DMark06 to right at 19,000 @1280x1024! 8800Ultra's SLI'd would compete but not a single 8800 Ultra. I don't know why people think they can even begin to compare two different types of GPU architecture's, the G200 will outperform a G92 anyday.
8800GT isn't an 8800 Ultra. Yes, the 8800GT was (and is) an amazing card for the price, but it's not an 8800 Ultra.

8800 Ultra is slightly behind the GTX 260 until you start seriously cranking the AA - like 32x. Then the GTX 260 gets a solid lead.

And Benchmarks do not mean everything in real practice. Just because you can play your game at 120 FPS doesn't mean it's any better than playing the same game at 80 FPS. Sure, you can say 'I'm future proofing!' - but with something easily replaceable like a video card, that's just paying more for something that will be much cheaper when the future arrives.

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#10 ·
Overclock in sig, pretty average.
 
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#12 ·
most 260's should be able to do around 702/1512/1215

upping the RAM doesn't really help you out all that much, I was told to leave it around 1100 and save that voltage and what not for the Core clock.

Many of the 260's get problems once you take the Shaders past 1566.

I'm able to run both of mine at 744/1544/2400 but once I go to 1566 I fail.. my MSI can hit 1566, but not my evga.

mine are both 65nm & 192SP originals.
 
#13 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by jrharvey View Post
same here. OC in sig. The 55nm does in fact OC better across the board.
With higher noise levels and worse temps sometimes
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I love my 65nms
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#14 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by Sacre View Post
8800GT isn't an 8800 Ultra. Yes, the 8800GT was (and is) an amazing card for the price, but it's not an 8800 Ultra.

8800 Ultra is slightly behind the GTX 260 until you start seriously cranking the AA - like 32x. Then the GTX 260 gets a solid lead.
I understand. But I never implied that an 8800GT was an 8800Ultra I clearly stated that the Ultra had more power. I was just making an example, one I thought was at least close, so I mentioned it. All props to the 8800GT/Ultra (may they never die) there are some of Nvidia's latest and greatest
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I was also making a point that no matter what the benchmarks say, the benchmarks are not real life (like you said), and that you can not compare the way that two different types of GPU architectures can process a game. The new G200's will process games much differently and more efficiently than an 8800Ultra (your benchmarks partly show this).

I don't take pride in saying I'm future-proofed. I just feel better though, knowing that I'm using a completely redesigned GPU architecture (something Nvida has taken a long time to do, this is only there second generation of "unified" architecture.)

You are very correct about the benchmark scores though. They do perform very similar in benchmarks.
 
#15 ·
I'm new to the game of overclocking. Just built a new box from parts I ordered on newegg and so I'm working on overclocking my GTX260. It's an MSI card with two fans and 216 processor cores.

I've been using the method recommended on guru3d.com:
I'm running FurMark stability test 1024x768 in a window with 16xMSAA while adjusting settings with Riva Tuner.

I've been able to get the following:
Temp ~56c with fans @ 40%
Core: 726
Shader: 1550
Memory: 1325

Which is significantly higher than most of what I've seen other people do with the GTX260 and so far no instability whatsoever... So should I keep on going? I'm not sure whether it would be safe to continue raising the values even though I haven't managed to freeze up yet.
 
#16 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by qwertman View Post
I'm new to the game of overclocking. Just built a new box from parts I ordered on newegg and so I'm working on overclocking my GTX260. It's an MSI card with two fans and 216 processor cores.

I've been using the method recommended on guru3d.com:
I'm running FurMark stability test 1024x768 in a window with 16xMSAA while adjusting settings with Riva Tuner.

I've been able to get the following:
Temp ~56c with fans @ 40%
Core: 726
Shader: 1550
Memory: 1325

Which is significantly higher than most of what I've seen other people do with the GTX260 and so far no instability whatsoever... So should I keep on going? I'm not sure whether it would be safe to continue raising the values even though I haven't managed to freeze up yet.
those are great clocks, see if you can take the shader to 1566mhz. I can't do it on mine, although I am running SLI so it's a little different than OC'ing a single card. I can run vantage at 756/1512/1215 and game at 713/1512/1215.
 
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#17 ·
Hmm... I'm on 756/1605/1282 now But it seems that I'm getting a lower FPS on my test now than before I made any changes. Yikes, I did something wrong!

Edit: Ok, it seems that it's not actually running at the set clocks any more, probably why I'm getting lower FPS. Seems to be on power saving mode for some reason? Not sure when it started doing this... hmm.

More: Apparently I was increasing the settings in riva tuner but they weren't being applied. Oops, rebooted and tried again. Got funny black splotches once memory was 1284 so bringing that to 1234. Core and shaders ended up working well at 743/1605. I could get them higher but I'm at 75 degrees and the fans are too noisy for my liking. I've got a firewire card mostly blocking one of the fans so that could be the reason for the noise... I'll try and push the clocks after I take that thing out and if that quiets things down.
 
#18 ·
Quote:

Originally Posted by qwertman View Post
Hmm... I'm on 756/1605/1282 now But it seems that I'm getting a lower FPS on my test now than before I made any changes. Yikes, I did something wrong!

Edit: Ok, it seems that it's not actually running at the set clocks any more, probably why I'm getting lower FPS. Seems to be on power saving mode for some reason? Not sure when it started doing this... hmm.

More: Apparently I was increasing the settings in riva tuner but they weren't being applied. Oops, rebooted and tried again. Got funny black splotches once memory was 1284 so bringing that to 1234. Core and shaders ended up working well at 743/1605. I could get them higher but I'm at 75 degrees and the fans are too noisy for my liking. I've got a firewire card mostly blocking one of the fans so that could be the reason for the noise... I'll try and push the clocks after I take that thing out and if that quiets things down.
I had that problem with the card going at half the speed. My memory clocks were too high so I lowered it and it's fine now.
I'm still trying to find the highest overclock for folding.
Currently:
756/1566/1188
100% Fan Speed, 60C While Folding
 
#19 ·
Guys, I am ocing my GTX 260 216 core (none overlocked).

At core clock at 620, shader clock at 1336, memory clock at 1088 and fan speed at 100%, on full load I get 76 degrees celsius.

Whats up with that? Is this a safe temperature?

Also, will decreasing/increasing the voltage help lower the temp in these situations?
 
#20 ·
And I just tried playing DiRT2.

Usually, I get 45 fps in the benchmark. Now, with my increased settings, I am getting 16.

When I tried resetting to defaults, I am still getting 16. wth?!
 
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