AMD - How To Overclock The Official Way Using Afterburner + Step By Step Overclocking Guide + Comple

[LtMatt]

Lt

Been away a couple days doing boring things like living rofl.

PC has settled after the session a couple of days ago - thanks for that

To move on .... I am aware there are many other things I can "tweek" to get the best out of the beast, tried most over the decades, however need to do it in a steady fashion, as you overclock guide rightly emphasises. Two start points....

1. Clean reboot, no tweeks and all at stock, then apply the overclock you took me through.

2. No other settings changed in any way. Runs at:
Core Volts 1213
Power Limit +20
Core Clock 1225
Memory Clock 1675
Fan Speed: auto
Memory & Aux voltage still at Stock (1600 & zero)
Valley Benchmark with those settings is 4070

Any other parts you recommend I tweek/go through ? (need to do the Card Memory and Aux voltage - hand holding appreciated). The beast is set to boot up at 3.9GHz/2133mhz memory. Main Specs:

Core i7-3960X Extreme @ 3.9GHz 2133mhz memory
2 x ATI/AMD Radeon HD 7970 (TAHITI XT) - timing at comment 2, above
16Gb RAM (G.Skill F3-17000CL9Q-16GBZH )
Memory timing 10066Mhz @ 9-11-10-28 (G.Skill recommended memory settings)
PCIe v3.0 x16 (8.0 Gb/s) @ x16 (2.5 Gb/s)
1500w Platimax PSU
ASUS RAMPAGE IV EXTREME (Full ROG setup, so have access to any part of the BIOS/Hardware/Motherboard setting)

Consider all at "stock" apart from the tweeks we have done so far on the GPU, and the Mainboard ROG CPU setting of 3.9Ghz/2133Mhz

Looks perfect. Let me tell you, you have a great clocking card. That's low voltage for the clock required. My MSI 7970 OC is very similar, maybe needs a notch or two less voltage than yours but not by much. Treasure it.

I expect it will go further if you can keep it cool enough. 1250 core is a real sweet power spot for 7970's. Gives you like a 40gb pixel fill rate. (titan is like 50) If you can then get the memory stable at 1823 you have 350gb of memory bandwidth as well. You will chew through games. I noticed a big difference between a 7950 @ 1100/1600 compared to a 7970 @1250/1823. I could literally feel the difference in speed as well as see it in the fps counter.

 

[Zydor]

#820

Re power draw - not really, you would need to buy a power meter and plug it into the mains socket. For sure there are software ones around that get close, but at the end of the day, its worth doing properly when on the edge. They are not expensive. You can see one in use by Guru3d in the screenshots in the Power Section of the review.

Don't tilt too far into dispare - been there done that rofl You'll have no issues with a 750w, it will go blindly fast, just keep in mind that if you insist on pushing the GPU Hardware to its farthest possible outer limit (NOT a good idea for longevity) using 2x7970s, then you will hit a power wall with a 750w.

Frankly taking the hardware that far, is crazy, not a good idea, it will not have that much effect at the last few % on screen response times and screen lag by staying away a little from the furthest possible overclock and powerdraw. As a euphemism, 100% stretch is painful and lots of work, a 95% stretch on the hardware is fine, life is calm, and you don't notice the difference in the real world.

You will see Lt always telling people to back off a step or increase voltage a tad at the end of a clocking session. That's good advice, find the outer limit for sure, but then back off a step - life is much more enjoyable (and less expensive in hardware replacements) that way

The key is sensible overclock - not stretching the hardware to the outer limits all the time, the latter causes grief and expense. Stay within the 95% solution re speed, and you can get on with enjoying gaming not having grief on hardware (!)

 

[LtMatt]

Good advice Zydor. You should really start using the quote button though.

 

[Zydor]

I noticed a big difference between a 7950 @ 1100/1600 compared to a 7970 @1250/1823. I could literally feel the difference in speed as well as see it in the fps counter.

Cooling will not be a problem, they are MSI 7970s, and I use a Corsair water cooler on the CPU

I'll probably leave it at 1225/1675 for now, work on that when I get some more quality idle time...... 1250/1823 is a good o/c .... nicely done

The Aux part of the GPU (aka Afterburner settings) is still at stock 1600/0, leave it that way, or have a go with it? If the latter where do you suggest I start re setting?

 

[LtMatt]

Cooling will not be a problem, they are MSI 7970s, and I use a Corsair water cooler on the CPU

I'll probably leave it at 1225/1675 for now, work on that when I get some more quality idle time...... 1250/1823 is a good o/c .... nicely done

The Aux part of the GPU (aka Afterburner settings) is still at stock 1600/0, leave it that way, or have a go with it? If the latter where do you suggest I start re setting?

That's the memory voltage if im not mistaken. Likely if you breach 1700+ you will need to start upping it. Just do it the same as the core. In my testing i managed to get 1750 out of the memory with stock voltage. For 1823 i need 1.637 voltage. I can go a bit higher but i need silly voltage to get there and personally i wouldn't advocate going over 1.65v on the memory for 24/7 use.

 

[Born_2_Kill_83]

#820

Re power draw - not really, you would need to buy a power meter and plug it into the mains socket. For sure there are software ones around that get close, but at the end of the day, its worth doing properly when on the edge. They are not expensive. You can see one in use by Guru3d in the screenshots in the Power Section of the review.

Don't tilt too far into dispare - been there done that rofl You'll have no issues with a 750w, it will go blindly fast, just keep in mind that if you insist on pushing the GPU Hardware to its farthest possible outer limit (NOT a good idea for longevity) using 2x7970s, then you will hit a power wall with a 750w.

Frankly taking the hardware that far, is crazy, not a good idea, it will not have that much effect at the last few % on screen response times and screen lag by staying away a little from the furthest possible overclock and powerdraw. As a euphemism, 100% stretch is painful and lots of work, a 95% stretch on the hardware is fine, life is calm, and you don't notice the difference in the real world.

You will see Lt always telling people to back off a step or increase voltage a tad at the end of a clocking session. That's good advice, find the outer limit for sure, but then back off a step - life is much more enjoyable (and less expensive in hardware replacements) that way

The key is sensible overclock - not stretching the hardware to the outer limits all the time, the latter causes grief and expense. Stay within the 95% solution re speed, and you can get on with enjoying gaming not having grief on hardware (!)

Ok thanks for that, maybe I'll stay as I am for the time being, I dont like the extra noise any-way.

1125/1600 should be more than enough to run BF4 anyway? ....and games are unstable enough without having unstable hardware as well.

Maybe I'll try and get my 1.25v down next as it shouldnt need that much for these speeds to be stable?

Its just you see all these 1200+ core clocks and you get carried away...

 

[Zydor]

Likely if you breach 1700+ you will need to start upping it. Just do it the same as the core. In my testing i managed to get 1750 out of the memory with stock voltage

Hmmm .... there's a thought.

When I did the original overclock session with you, I hit a wall at 1700, so backed off to 1675, where its been since - hence my current setting of 1225/1675

If I go for tweeking Aux, what progression-steps are advisable, and where is the danger limit (I don't want to blindly plough on and end up roasting the card for dinner rofl)

 

[LtMatt]

Ok thanks for that, maybe I'll stay as I am for the time being, I dont like the extra noise any-way.

1125/1600 should be more than enough to run BF4 anyway? ....and games are unstable enough without having unstable hardware as well.

Maybe I'll try and get my 1.25v down next as it shouldnt need that much for these speeds to be stable?

Its just you see all these 1200+ core clocks and you get carried away...

If you have more crashes dial back the speeds to 1093/1563. I find this to be a great balance between good performance and low noise. With these clocks you can likely run lower voltage which will bring the heat, noise and TDP levels down some.

 

[Zydor]

Its just you see all these 1200+ core clocks and you get carried away...

Been there done that many moons ago

The problem on Public Games forums, is Ego takes over - that scourge of Mankind rofl, and some tend to try complete with the "biggest numbers" ..... not a good idea.

Stay away from that magnet, just watch from afar, picking up the one in fifty good tips, and be sceptical on the rest until you get third Party corroboration.

Or come here and ask Lt ....... the latter will save you many moons of grief and much expense

 

[craptakular]

what is a good overclock for an MSI TF 7950?

 

[LtMatt]

what is a good overclock for an MSI TF 7950?

1200/1700.

 

[craptakular]

I think mine cannot overclock at all, it artifacts at 1050mhz

 

[LtMatt]

I think mine cannot overclock at all, it artifacts at 1050mhz

What are temps like?

One of my 7950's artifacts at anything over 1100, its depressing.

 

[craptakular]

I think it reaches 55 degrees. I understood that they all overclocked, but mine won't... If I had known I would have just got a GTX680 at the time, oh well.

 

[NoustieChris]

It works with my gigabyte HD7770 OC but not with my HIS 7950. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks LtMatt

 

[B@Th*nG]

i've trawled through this thread, as i bought my MSI twin frozr II OC 7850 2gb a fair while ago now, and just started playing some games which are making demands of the card. I am a bit impatient so i dropped it straight in with the high end clocks:

GPU: 1200
MEM: 1375
Volts: 1.176

This crashed pretty quickly, despite the heat being fine. So i upped the volts steadily, which consistently increased stability, until i got to 1.225 and it would be stable for about 30 minutes like this. I've now dropped the GPU to 1175 and it seems completely stable like this and so far i'm pretty happy with my lazy overclocking So now have:

GPU: 1175
MEM: 1375
Volts: 1.225

I have just a few questions:

1. Is that voltage acceptable?
2. Given that my temps never go above 70C can I push the voltage higher and achieve higher clocks?
3. If so how do I push the voltage higher? In order to unlock the voltage adjustment AT ALL I had to use Trixx, but it only goes as high as 1225
4. Do i need to run Trixx at startup to get the overclock to work at all? be nice to limit the number of programs i have running if possible. I had to use Trixx as Afterburner wouldn't let me adjust volts, irrespective of what changes i made to config files or settings.

Many thanks,

B@

 

[humbug]

1, yes,1225mv is perfectly fine, well within tolerance.
2, 1.250mv is perfectly safe, try to keep it under 80c, preferably no higher than 75c
3, see somewhere in here http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18431335
4, if MSI AB does not work then you need to use Trixx, ask LtMatt about that, he is our resident expert on that.

PS: you might be able to get your memory higher if you try, they can run at anything up to 1500Mhz.

 

[LtMatt]

i've trawled through this thread, as i bought my MSI twin frozr II OC 7850 2gb a fair while ago now, and just started playing some games which are making demands of the card. I am a bit impatient so i dropped it straight in with the high end clocks:

GPU: 1200
MEM: 1375
Volts: 1.176

This crashed pretty quickly, despite the heat being fine. So i upped the volts steadily, which consistently increased stability, until i got to 1.225 and it would be stable for about 30 minutes like this. I've now dropped the GPU to 1175 and it seems completely stable like this and so far i'm pretty happy with my lazy overclocking So now have:

GPU: 1175
MEM: 1375
Volts: 1.225

I have just a few questions:

1. Is that voltage acceptable?
2. Given that my temps never go above 70C can I push the voltage higher and achieve higher clocks?
3. If so how do I push the voltage higher? In order to unlock the voltage adjustment AT ALL I had to use Trixx, but it only goes as high as 1225
4. Do i need to run Trixx at startup to get the overclock to work at all? be nice to limit the number of programs i have running if possible. I had to use Trixx as Afterburner wouldn't let me adjust volts, irrespective of what changes i made to config files or settings.

Many thanks,

B@

1. Yes.
2. You can if your card supports higher voltage.
3. You can try a special modded version of trixxx which might allow you to increase the voltage further. If not then you're stuck at 1.225v. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ginfyzbap9y616r/Sapphire%20TRIXX%20v4.4.0b%20MOD.exe
4. You there should be a setting in trixxx that allows it to start with windows and apply the overclock at startup.

 

[Gelly54]

Ive got my 7970s up and running in crossfire but i seem to only get 50% usage on both cards. Games ive tried are Far Cry 3 and Arma 2 & 3
I get 100% usage on both with Heaven Valley though.
I have 13.5 Beta 2 (comes with the CAP file?)
I have 7970 Reference and 7970 Ghz Edition (both clocked to reference stock 925/1375

 

[LtMatt]

Ive got my 7970s up and running in crossfire but i seem to only get 50% usage on both cards. Games ive tried are Far Cry 3 and Arma 2 & 3
I get 100% usage on both with Heaven Valley though.
I have 13.5 Beta 2 (comes with the CAP file?)
I have 7970 Reference and 7970 Ghz Edition (both clocked to reference stock 925/1375

Cpu bottleneck. Your cpu cannot render enough frames to provide the gpu's with 99% usage.

Arma is very cpu dependant, farcry 3 poorly optimized, will hog 100% usage of a single core.

Sell your i5 and get an i7 2700k (3770k if on Ivy) or faster and clock it to at least 4ghz or faster and you will see 99% pegged usage on both gpu's in most titles.

In the meantime you can help by overclocking your cpu some more.