• Competitor rules

    Please remember that any mention of competitors, hinting at competitors or offering to provide details of competitors will result in an account suspension. The full rules can be found under the 'Terms and Rules' link in the bottom right corner of your screen. Just don't mention competitors in any way, shape or form and you'll be OK.

What program/game to test GTX 280 overclock?

Dutch Guy

Dutch Guy

Dutch Guy

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
24,560
Location
Amsterdam,The Netherlands
What is the best program or game to test a GTX 280 these days?

And what are the signs of a bad overclock, Core = GFX tearing/lockup/BSOD and mem = sparklies, or is that wrong?
 
I've recently used Furmark, it seems to stress out the 280 a lot. You should see (if you've gone too far) possible artifacts (often random coloured intrusions), system lockups, BSODs, or display driver crashes. Most likely you'll see artifacts first.

3dmark vantage can be used too, but you have to pay for that to be able to run it more than once.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, crysis will definitely show artifacts if it's not stable, it's a very GPU intensive game, so if you have that, give it a go too.
 
i dont like furmark really.....I use atitool and if there are no artifacts or yellow spots in a few minutes I will just game. If no crashes then whoopdy doo :D
 
Ati tool is probably the easiest thing to use, it sort of has a furmark style stress test built in. Had had my 280 up to 730 core 1380 mem using this. Well pleased.
 
Yeah, I agree with the above too, ATItool works quite well too, a nice integrated solution, though don't think it works on vista 64, which is why i'm not using it atm.
 
I use ATITool to find the max stable as it will see an artifact even if I dont, and can be left running (and seeing).
But then I use Furmark just to confirm as this adds another 7c to the temp of ATITool and shows up things it doesn't.

Something intresting I found out today is there are frequency bands, at around 700mhz core clock for example there is 691, 702, 710.
Set at 706=702
Set at 707=710

The band jumps are large for shader and mem!

I have ended up with
Core 702
Shader 1458
Mem 1242 / 2484
 
I wouldn't think so. Just be sure you can handle the extra heat :p I use furmark but generally I just game and if no crashes then its fine for me. Had gta 4 lock up on me even though I thought it was furmark stable lol.
 
Furmark heats a card up like nothing else. If it is Furmark stable for an hour, it is STABLE.

ATI Tool is unreliable. With my 4850 I could run 850 core all day without artifacts but Crysis would die with anything more than 830 and Furmark would reboot my PC after a few mins at 805. I settled for 780 as a nice mild overclock:D.
 
Not sure of a program to display temps during games for Ati cards but I just alt-tab out and check the temp history in rivatuner or gpu-z. Still find furmark with xtreme burning mode on to give higher temps so I just put it down to gta 4 not liking the higher clocks.
 
Thanks for the tips guys, I will try ATItools and Furmark, I had ATItools once but it kept giving errors when starting the program even before stress testing.

Stocks clocks on my card are 700/1400/2300Mhz so I don't think I will get any much more out of it but I will try anyway :)
 
ATItools is annoying as it starts testing with the 2D clocks so can take a long time, I also ran Furmark for a while and that sure heats up the card, power usage was 50W higher than 3DMark and temp reached 87C with the fan running at 100%/3100rpm but it stayed stable at 2500Mhz memoryspeed.
 
oh yeah, I forgot nv cards separate them like that. Sorry about that it's been awhile since I've OC'd an Nvidia card.

That will change in a few hours once those lazy DHL bastages deliver my 280!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom