How far on average can you push a GPU? And what difference would you see?

caveman OCUK

caveman OCUK

caveman OCUK

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Hi there! Couple of questions , I did my first GPU overclock on MSI afterburner yesterday, I pushed it from stock by 100mhz and saw a small difference in benchmark, it’s a gtx 1050, it doesn’t really need it as I’m using a fixed old build as a photo and video editing computer , but anyway, how far on average can or should you push a GPU? (I know like CPU’s that it’s up to the card itself and your either lucky or not) also is there a way of making a msi afterburner profile active when I get into windows or do I have to turn it on from the tray every time I get into windows?
Many thanks in advance and sorry for multiple questions.

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Yeah theres a tickbox at the bottom left to load your overclock on system startup and in settings>general your can tick the box start with windows. In settings>user interface you can change the skin to a default one if its not already using it as its much clearer.

For overclocking its like you said every chip is different, the way i normally overclock is +20 mhz each attempt on the clock speed untill it freezes during your benchmark test, then after youve found the max core speed +50mhz on the memory each attempt.
 
BluD said:
Yeah theres a tickbox at the bottom left to load your overclock on system startup and in settings>general your can tick the box start with windows. In settings>user interface you can change the skin to a default one if its not already using it as its much clearer.

For overclocking its like you said every chip is different, the way i normally overclock is +20 mhz each attempt on the clock speed untill it freezes during your benchmark test, then after youve found the max core speed +50mhz on the memory each attempt.
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Thank you very much ! :D , I haven’t even touched the memory clock yet, just the core clock, so I’ll jump onto that tomorrow :) , and thanks for the information about afterburner too, I’ll set that up in a second, just trying out some games to see how it performs in actual games instead of benchmarks, iv jumped from about 40 something FPS on guild wars 2 at 1080p to 55 to 65 ish at 2560x1440
 
You're on the right track - benchmarks and real use are the way to test stuff. Certain overclocks can actually make performance worse e.g. Pushing the memory clock too far can result in errors, so overall performance dips as errors must be recalculated.

Also, Kombustor is a good overall heat/power stress test but not a good GPU performance test. It puts the card under so much stress that its clock speed is held down by the power limit.

In my opinion real performance is a good test, and tracking boost clock under load is a good metric. 10 series GPUs have GPU Boost 3.0 which is very advanced in its behaviour so it can be hard to push the card much further. Watching boost clocks is a good way to compare from stock performance.
 
LuckyBenski said:
You're on the right track - benchmarks and real use are the way to test stuff. Certain overclocks can actually make performance worse e.g. Pushing the memory clock too far can result in errors, so overall performance dips as errors must be recalculated.

Also, Kombustor is a good overall heat/power stress test but not a good GPU performance test. It puts the card under so much stress that its clock speed is held down by the power limit.

In my opinion real performance is a good test, and tracking boost clock under load is a good metric. 10 series GPUs have GPU Boost 3.0 which is very advanced in its behaviour so it can be hard to push the card much further. Watching boost clocks is a good way to compare from stock performance.
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Thanks for the advice and help :) , currently got it from stock:

Stock core:1354mhz
Overclock core:1454mhz

Stock memory:1752mhz
Overclock memory:1902mhz

Stock boost:1455mhz

Overclocked boost:1555mhz :) ,

Might try upping the core a little bit more, but it’s doing fine at the moment, using unigine valley as the GPU benchmark, but I think I’ll give Kombuster a go too :)
 
caveman OCUK said:
Thanks for the advice and help :) , currently got it from stock:

Stock core:1354mhz
Overclock core:1454mhz

Stock memory:1752mhz
Overclock memory:1902mhz

Stock boost:1455mhz

Overclocked boost:1555mhz :) ,

Might try upping the core a little bit more, but it’s doing fine at the moment, using unigine valley as the GPU benchmark, but I think I’ll give Kombuster a go too :)
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That looks good - 100MHz overclock giving +100 on the boost clock. How are your thermals? The cooler the card, the higher it will boost, right down to 30°C I think.
 
LuckyBenski said:
That looks good - 100MHz overclock giving +100 on the boost clock. How are your thermals? The cooler the card, the higher it will boost, right down to 30°C I think.
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:) glad to know I’m doing alright , as like original post iv done CPU overclocks before but this was my first time GPU OC, thermals seems ok, whilst running unigine valley the max it’s hit is 55c,I did have a read online for that card before starting and people reckon keep it below 80c , the fans are on auto and it’s still on stock voltage at the moment, so I think I have a bit of headroom for a bit more of an overclock :)
 
yeah looks like ya have loads of headroom, btw i just thought i would mention that ya dont wanna tick the "apply overclock on startup" while your still raising your overclock. That way if you overclock too far and get a crash it will reset to stock speeds on the next restart. I have had cases in the past where i've had to start in safe mode and remove the drivers cause my unstable overclock caused a lock up as soon as i tried loading windows.
 
BluD said:
yeah looks like ya have loads of headroom, btw i just thought i would mention that ya dont wanna tick the "apply overclock on startup" while your still raising your overclock. That way if you overclock too far and get a crash it will reset to stock speeds on the next restart. I have had cases in the past where i've had to start in safe mode and remove the drivers cause my unstable overclock caused a lock up as soon as i tried loading windows.
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Okie dokey, cheers for letting me know :) I probly won’t push it too far anyway as it’s just for photo editing and light 1080p gaming, but I’ll bear that in mind if I do add a little extra to it, :D
 
I have been told most GPU's can be ocerclocked by about 10-15% if they have good cooling built in. But just like CPu's you have to count on getting a good one as not all are the same ( sillicon lotto).
 
jabbz said:
I have been told most GPU's can be ocerclocked by about 10-15% if they have good cooling built in. But just like CPu's you have to count on getting a good one as not all are the same ( sillicon lotto).
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Thank you, I’ll work out the percentage in a minute and see how much further I can push it :)
 
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