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Safe overclocking limits you are happy with on your vid card

robin66

robin66

robin66

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I never see this come up much, but it would be interesting to know by how much most of you back down your overclock on your video card once you have found your safe limit?

I see lots of people on the net that have there GTX 470's (which is the card I'm interested in getting right now) overclocked on air at 800 on the core and 900 on water, surely there must be right on the edge of there overclock limit and for day to day use that shouldn't be advisable.

I back off by anything between 25 and 50 mhz once I've found my safe limits on both the gpu and memory.
 
Using Catalyst Control Center I just whack it all to the top settings. MSI Afterburner won't allow me to go any higher or do a voltage tweek so that is the maximum I can go.
 
IKMS said:
Using Catalyst Control Center I just whack it all to the top settings. MSI Afterburner won't allow me to go any higher or do a voltage tweek so that is the maximum I can go.
Click to expand...

Did you trying changing some of the configuration file settings for msi afterburner? It is locked by default.
 
robin66 said:
I never see this come up much, but it would be interesting to know by how much most of you back down your overclock on your video card once you have found your safe limit?

I see lots of people on the net that have there GTX 470's (which is the card I'm interested in getting right now) overclocked on air at 800 on the core and 900 on water, surely there must be right on the edge of there overclock limit and for day to day use that shouldn't be advisable.

I back off by anything between 25 and 50 mhz once I've found my safe limits on both the gpu and memory.
Click to expand...

I back off a about 5-10% for everyday use, but temps are the deciding factor for longevity IMO.

Heat is what damages the majority of cards, and a hot running, highly clocked GPU will have a very short life.
 
I clock my 5770 upto 1000/1400 for gaming and set it to default when im not but i recon i could probably push it further.
 
^ why set it down when not gaming? it goes down by itself to 135MHz or whatever it is when it isn't that much in use
 
robin66

Set your overclock for the 470 in msi afterburner, apply to a profile, set msi afterburner to load profile when in 3d.

it's that simple

Dont have to worry about your overclock as the card/s will throttle back down 51 mhz core & 135 mhz memory whilst in 2d

HW91 what mem clocks u got ur 470 @ I'm currently using 2050
 
hlennie said:
robin66

Set your overclock for the 470 in msi afterburner, apply to a profile, set msi afterburner to load profile when in 3d.

it's that simple

Dont have to worry about your overclock as the card/s will throttle back down 51 mhz core & 135 mhz memory whilst in 2d

HW91 what mem clocks u got ur 470 @ I'm currently using 2050
Click to expand...

It's the long gaming sessions that worry me while your card is at it's absolute limit.

So most think that it's fine to keep there cards at or very close to there limit, as long as there temps are low. And the fact that the cards down clock to default 2d speeds while not gaming most of the time?
 
well if u really that worried just clock the card to about 750 core and standard mem nice little overclock for u with lower voltages and heat output
 
robin66 said:
It's the long gaming sessions that worry me while your card is at it's absolute limit.

So most think that it's fine to keep there cards at or very close to there limit, as long as there temps are low. And the fact that the cards down clock to default 2d speeds while not gaming most of the time?
Click to expand...

well as long as they're not putting too many or too little volts through it it should be fine

on the long gaming sessions, chances are if you game for that long a day then you upgrade your kit quite regularly as in every 6-12 months or whenever a better piece of kit comes out that you can afford, and even if you're running at absolute max it probably won't die within the first 2 to 3 years unless you put an excessive amount of voltage through it.
 
hlennie said:
well if u really that worried just clock the card to about 750 core and standard mem nice little overclock for u with lower voltages and heat output
Click to expand...

well yes I like to play safe, but as the point of overclock limits and how close people are to them isn't spoken about much. I just wanted to get opinions on the subject.

And I have to agree with you HW91, I think that overclocking video card memory is a waste of time, with the heat and the amount you receive back in overall performance.
 
I did upgrade my kit every 6-12 months before. But now I do so every 18-24 months.

I guess I'm getting tight in my old age. :)
 
HW91 said:
^ why set it down when not gaming? it goes down by itself to 135MHz or whatever it is when it isn't that much in use
Click to expand...

Dont know about the new 10.7s. but the .5 and .6 Cats do not return the core to 137 if overclocked. You have to reset it back to stock (flick afterburner profiles etc) after gaming.
 
with the 470 GTX u dont have to set a 2d profile and if u do i found that the driver could stop responding or even crash, so i've left that blank

as to overclocking memory got mine set to 480GTX speeds and I have seen some increase in performance but this can be ofset by how much u put on the core

just a matter of finding the right balace for your card

850 core and 1850 mem seems fine for my sli setup 6 hour session of crisis on max settings @ 1920 x 1200 playing real smooth

highest ive managed on vantage is P 38586
 
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