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Benchmarks and OC stability

Telecaster

Telecaster

Telecaster

Soldato
Joined
17 Jun 2012
Posts
5,951
Are any of the popular GPU benchmarks a reliable test of OC stability?

I only ask because I can run Valley and Heaven clocked up without any issue, but I have to massively reduce it for gaming otherwise I get issues.
 
It depends on what you are testing. For a GC OC they are good because they stress the GPU beyond what most games can do. For a CPU they are not so good as they aren't CPU stress tests.
 
Yes, I was talking about GPU OC. My 750ti will run 1385mhz stable no problem in all the benchmarks, but games don't like it until I back it off down to about 1260mhz.
 
I have found that valley and heaven will let me run massively inflated clocks on my 780 without crashing whereas games will near insta crash on me.

My stability test is overnight + work running of BF3/4. The spawn screen is stressful enough and it also pushes the CPU hard.
 
Benches just run predictable loops. Playing an actual game, you're stressing both the CPU in conjunction with the GPU in unpredictable ways, in particular how they communicate, and highlighting instability not made apparent through standard benchmarks.
 
Yeah, I only recently got into overclocking (both CPU and GPU) and I found games we're the quickest and best way to test overclocks. I could run synthetics for ages, same with Unigine, but it wasn't 'game stable'.

For me Watch Dogs and GTA IV were great at testing my overclocks.
 
In the past I've had games that don't seem to like GPU overclocks at all, they will play fine for hours sometimes then lock up, or only last a few minutes.
 
Michaeljcox24 said:
I can get stable at 1550Mhz on a w/c 980 running heaven all day.

Soon as you put AC Unity on, it crashes (graphics driver) above 1450
Click to expand...

Glad it's not just me or my card then!

When gaming it just starts throttling itself down to idle clocks which makes it unplayable, as soon as I back the overclock down it runs sweet.

So apart from some willy waving on the internet, these GPU benchmarks are pretty much useless for real world stability??
 
You need to run a CPU stability test AND GPU stability test at the same time, think about it.. games use both CPU and GPU at the same time so why stability test each one separately? loading both of them together (like games do) puts a whole lot more stress on both PSU and case cooling - for example if you have a non-blower cooler think about all that extra heat being exhausted into the case by the GPU going around your CPU heatsink!
 
Last edited:
Telecaster said:
Glad it's not just me or my card then!

When gaming it just starts throttling itself down to idle clocks which makes it unplayable, as soon as I back the overclock down it runs sweet.

So apart from some willy waving on the internet, these GPU benchmarks are pretty much useless for real world stability??
Click to expand...

Benchmarks are useful for comparing the power of one card compared to another. As far as stability testing goes though, The vast, vast majority of lads will agree that real world gaming is the only true test of stability.

I can even max out furmark and run it for an hour (w/c rig) and AC Unity still borks out at the same clock speed.

Not tried the combined CPU and GPU test myself. I suppose you could run OCCT and Heaven at the same time. Worth a try, see what happens.
 
mmj_uk said:
You need to run a CPU stability test AND GPU stability test at the same time, think about it.. games use both CPU and GPU at the same time so why stability test each one separately? loading both of them together (like games do) puts a whole lot more stress on both PSU and case cooling - for example if you have a non-blower cooler think about all that extra heat being exhausted into the case by the GPU going around your CPU heatsink!
Click to expand...

But in the games I'm currently playing the CPU is seeing hardly any load, at least nothing serious.

Temps aren't even close to being an issue, barely 10-15 degrees above idle, PSU fan doesn't even come on, I've never heard it once since owning it.
 
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