Overclocking 580 - Worth it?

adamknox · 22 Feb 2011 at 10:30

My friend and I bought the 580 GOOD edition yesterday when it was on sale. I'm a bit torn however. My mate says hes gunna overclock it to 900mhz (or try) as it makes games allot faster.

I've always been led to believe that overclocking gpu's are dangerous (voids warranty), pointless (you end up with only a few more fps) and hard to do. Is this true? If I was to overclock it to 900mhz How much performance gain would I see? I've never overclocked a GPU before (only cpu's) so I'd have to do allot of reading up on it ofc, But is it worth it?

TrojanWhore · 22 Feb 2011 at 13:14

use MSI afterburner, both to overclock, and to beef up your cooling a bit by making the fan curve steeper. GFX overclocking isnt massively dangerous in my experience, just dont take the voltage too high. 900mhz should be achievable provided you can keep the heat in check at a noise level you are happy with

adamknox · 22 Feb 2011 at 13:17

TrojanWhore said:
use MSI afterburner, both to overclock, and to beef up your cooling a bit by making the fan curve steeper. GFX overclocking isnt massively dangerous in my experience, just dont take the voltage too high. 900mhz should be achievable provided you can keep the heat in check at a noise level you are happy with

Is it worth it tho? I wouldnt wana bother with it all if it meant an extra 4fps average in games.

cobhc · 22 Feb 2011 at 16:13

Overclocking up to ~900mhz on the core, and ~1750 on the memory could net you up to 7fps even at 2560x1600.

Just look at any GTX580 reviews on Guru3d.com, Techpowerup.com, and the like. Most give overclocked figures.

Sayso · 22 Feb 2011 at 19:26

Very few games suddenly become playable when you have overclocked a GPU. The high end cards may give you 180FPS instead of 140 in a SP game.

Look at what game you play and at what res to see if its worth it.

Overclocking is simple, if you want to be safe leave voltages alone and clock upto a level you are happy with heat/noise wise.