[zlo2]

Hey guys,

I recently built myself a new semi-budget gaming PC, full specs below (feel free to skip):

CPU: Intel i5 750
GPU: MSI GTX460 Hawk
RAM: 4GB 1600 G.Skill
PSU: 600W OCZ StealthXstream 2
HDD: 500GB WD Caviar Black
MoBo: Gigabyte GA-H55-USB3
Case: Antec Three Hundred

Here's the summary of my Overclocking efforts.
- After reading a bunch of guides online, I made my first effort by sliding the Core Clock slider (Afterburner) to the right in the increments of 20MHz until I hit 900MHz and Furmark crashed.
- Lowered it to 880MHz, ran Furmark again - stable. Ran 3DMark - weird artifacts on the screen.
- Lowered it to 860MHz, stable all around and a nice little boost in performance, great success!

Now what? That's nowhere near what other people have been reaching with this card! One guy even managed to get 1000MHz out of it.

I really want to get more performance out of my card. Help?

 

[lilraver018]

bump up memory untill stable.

Then after that you can work with voltage. What voltage are you at with the 860 core clock?

You do know that those who reach 1000core clock on the forum are like 1 of 100. Most are lucky to get up to 900 with voltages. Every video cards overclock potential is different.

 

[brettjv]

Crank voltage up to 1.087, make a more aggressive fan profile, and see if you can get the core any higher. Once that is maxed out, get whatever you can out of the memory. Usually mem tops out somewhere between 2000 and 2200 from what I've seen around here.

 

[panbot3000]

Yeah, what everyone else said

For reference I have an MSI 460 1GB Cyclone and using OCCT mine would start giving errors at 860 unless I boosted the voltage. So if 860 is on stock or even if it isnt it's still a good overclock from my perspective. But yeah try everything and see how far you can get it.

Good luck with it anyway.

 

[zlo2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by lilraver018 bump up memory untill stable. Then after that you can work with voltage. What voltage are you at with the 860 core clock? You do know that those who reach 1000core clock on the forum are like 1 of 100. Most are lucky to get up to 900 with voltages. Every video cards overclock potential is different.

Just wanna clarify, do you mean . . .
Bump up the memory with core clock at 900 until it becomes stable?
or
Bump up the memory with core clock at 860 until its maxed out and stable?

Would increasing the memory clock allow me to increase the core clock further?

Temperature isn't an issue right now, I was running at 56 degrees under Furmark, there a lot of room to expand.
Also, the first time around Furmark failed to detect an unstable overclock.
Are there any good alternatives to it or should I just run it for longer?

I'm at work right now, so I cant try anything but I will as soon as I get home.
Thanks for your help so far.

 

[panbot3000]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zlo2 Just wanna clarify, do you mean . . . Bump up the memory with core clock at 900 until it becomes stable? or Bump up the memory with core clock at 860 until its maxed out and stable? Would increasing the memory clock allow me to increase the core clock further? Temperature isn't an issue right now, I was running at 56 degrees under Furmark, there a lot of room to expand. Also, the first time around Furmark failed to detect an unstable overclock. Are there any good alternatives to it or should I just run it for longer? I'm at work right now, so I cant try anything but I will as soon as I get home. Thanks for your help so far.

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but it's usually a case of push core up as high as you can until its stable and then start pushing the memory up. The memory will give you another boost, not make the core more stable.

Best to try bumping the voltage up to 1.087 as brettjv said unless you already have. Then see if you can push the core up further.

As for alternatives I use OCCT but the common opinion is that it goes too far but will provide a rock solid OC. As with all things though it can differ between systems and it may not provide a rock solid oc for everyone.

 

[zlo2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by panbot3000 Someone will correct me if I'm wrong but it's usually a case of push core up as high as you can until its stable and then start pushing the memory up. The memory will give you another boost, not make the core more stable. Best to try bumping the voltage up to 1.087 as brettjv said unless you already have. Then see if you can push the core up further. As for alternatives I use OCCT but the common opinion is that it goes too far but will provide a rock solid OC. As with all things though it can differ between systems and it may not provide a rock solid oc for everyone.

Thanks a lot, most of the guides of found on the web said something along the lines of
1. Slide everything to the right until your computer crashes
2. Run a stress test for a couple of hours
3. ???
4. Profit

Will report back when I get a chance to try it out.

 

[brettjv]

I usually just use about 15 minutes of Heaven 2.1 (maxed out), a Vantage Extreme run, and about 10 loops of the Crysis benchmark (maxed out) to check stability. That's if I'm motivated. Otherwise, I just game and if it crashes, I lower the OC.

Furmark is pretty useless except for ball-parking. It almost always makes you're think you're stable when you're really not.

And I agree w/Panbot about everything above. Push core first, find out max stable clock, then just get what extra you can out of the memory with the core maxed. Core is much more important, but higher memory also helps.

 

[Lt. Hardlight]

I agree with the above. Raise core to the max stable and then raise the memory to the max stable. Some people like to find the max stable core then return it to stock to be able to find the max stable memory, raise them both to their overclocked values and then test stability before increasing both together in very small increments.

I agree about Furmark. Good for checking temps, but I had a OC stable with it and then crashed in 3DMark Vantage.

 

[zlo2]

After cranking up the voltage by an additional 60 mV from the original (dont know the absolute value), I managed to get the Core Clock to 905 and Memory Clock to 2000 (could have pushed further).

Unigine Heaven showed a slight improvement in scores, 540 -> 555, which is nice. Temperatures are still below 51 (haven't tried OCCT yet).

Should I maybe try increasing the voltage a bit more? Is there a downside to higher voltage, there is still plenty of room on the slider scale.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

 

[marduke83]

The higher the voltage the more heat will be generated (not really an issue for the 460's with such good temps). It will also shorten the life of the components of the card (maybe to 3 years rather than 5 years, so nothing to really worry about), the 'safe' max voltage on these is 1.087V, anything more than that and you risk damage. but I have seen guys running 1.2v on these cards, which to me is crazy..

With better cooling on the VRM's I would be a bit more at ease with the higher voltages.
I run my hawk at 900core, +60mV ( which from what I can gather is about 1.07V as the stock volts on 3d clocks is 1.012V). The max I have tested at was 930core and +90mV and that was stable for unigine heaven and vantage runs.

 

[cory1234]

Try to find the balance between performance and heat. It really isn't worth the extra 20 mhz on the core if it's increasing the temps by a lot. Unless you have an external exhaust, the gpu will increase the temps of every other component.

As many other have already said focus on the core clocks first. The memory clocks on the 460 gtxs' don't affect fps as much.

 

[zlo2]

I suppose I could increase the volts a bit more, assuming the MSI won't let me fry my video card with their own software. The temps seem to be well under control.

I stopped pushing the memory clock after I went from 2000MHz to 2100MHz and saw a very slight drop in performance (-0.1 FPS in Unigine), which I thought was weird.

I'm also pretty disappointed in the performance increase that I got, around +1.5 FPS in Unigine and no noticeable improvement in Metro 2033.

I guess was just got my hopes up too high when people were telling me that I can reach near-GTX480 levels of performance, which I new wasn't going to happen . . . but still

 

[just4funuk]

You can get upto GTX480 levels with 2x GTX460 in SLI but not with just the one GTX 460.