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Why overclock a graphics card these days?

Soldato
Joined
5 Mar 2004
Posts
6,399
Location
Southport
Just curious really, just got an RTX 2060. In Skyrim SSE the core is reported as 1200Mhz however when playing Metro Exodus it ramps up to 1875Mhz. The boost speed of this particular card is only supposed to be 1680Mhz I think. Heaven reports it as 2100Mhz?

What the hell is it playing at and why? Why would I bother OCing it when it seems to run at whatever speed it feels like?

Not really bothered as its powerful enough for me as is...but you know, you just want to tinker :D
 
bear in mind heaven over reports clock speeds. I think it grabs the value from one of the higher bins.

I kinda agree with you considering I have had little success over the years with manual oc's on nvidia gpu's.

gtx 970 (was so bad that stock clocks crashed, never mind overclocking, bios mod which bumped voltages and power limit made it stable).
gtx 1070 (was a reasonable chip but still only about 30mhz obtainable via manual o/c, I said it was reasonable as the stock clock alone took it to nearly 2050mhz. Seems palit were very agressive on factory o/c).
gtx 1080ti, (I can get 20mhz proper stable, 30mhz dodgy stable, and the gigabyte OC mode crashes the card LOL).

To me where the real gains are is using the voltage curve to undervolt. I feel with modern dynamic hardware such as ryzen 2 XFR and nvidia gpu boost, the future of manual tinkering is either undervolting or p-state tuning, not overclocking.

Although I still see videos been made and people posting on reddit with 100+ mhz achieved stable overclocks. So its possible on some cards.
 
I would understand if say the rated boost clock 1680Mhz in my case was the factory setting and that was the max it would hit without overclocking. But it hits 1875Mhz in Metro and the Afterburner test didn't seem to hit trouble til around 1950-2000Mhz or so, even them I'm not entirely sure what it was doing :D I guess I could push another few Mhz out of it for a 1-2FPS increase over 1875Mhz. Not sure why Metro stopped it at 1875Mhz as I'm not sure whare that figure came from?

And why buy an OCed card if my slower one runs faster when needed anyway?

So in short, I guess my point is that I have no idea what I'm even doing anymore :D
 
I've only tried to OC my last 2 cards: a GTX 970 and GTX 1070 Ti both from Asus. It was by far the most worthwhile OCing I've done - off the top of my head there was about a 15% increase in frame rate / 3Dmark graphics score on both cards (they did OC well). This may have been more noticeable as I was gaming at 3440x1440, so it was a massive strain on both cards trying to punch above their weight at that resolution.
 
Because, as performance gaps between gens shrink, the performance boost of OC increases in relation to those. Also because sometimes you need the performance to reach certain performance "thresholds". Had a lot of fun tweaking and playing Witcher 3 at 5K recently, something not at all doable (for a solid 30 fps lock) without a good OC on my card.

So, let's say an OC nets you 10% extra performance (which is generally true, sometimes more). But the difference between your 1080 ti and the newest 2080 ti is 40%, that means that the 10% you get from an OC now puts you a quarter of the way of the difference between gens. For the other three quarters you'd have to pay £700+ (assuming you'd sell the 1080ti).

So, at the end of the day... why not? Especially on Nvidia cards, which are much less time consuming & simpler to OC than let's say Vegas.
 
Just curious really, just got an RTX 2060. In Skyrim SSE the core is reported as 1200Mhz however when playing Metro Exodus it ramps up to 1875Mhz. The boost speed of this particular card is only supposed to be 1680Mhz I think. Heaven reports it as 2100Mhz?

What the hell is it playing at and why? Why would I bother OCing it when it seems to run at whatever speed it feels like?

Not really bothered as its powerful enough for me as is...but you know, you just want to tinker :D

Is it the founders edition you have? Mine appears to boost way over the 1680Mhz stated too. In afterburner I can see that the base is 1365Mhz and the boost is 1680Mhz but when I am in say Witcher 3 is runs at 1900+Mhz pretty much all the time. Ive not done any OC or anything, bog standard install and latest drivers.

No doubt someone who knows more than me can enlighten us :)
 
Depends on the card.. Vegas are definitely worth undervolting and overclocking as you can gain 15%~ performance while lowering temps and power consumption, but with cards like 2060 that boost up to near 2ghz anyway an overclock would only net you roughly 5% so I wouldn't bother.
970/980/980tis were also great for overclocking, easy 10-15% performance boost.
 
Overclocking probably has more impact than ever but there are more variables to play with now.

If I run Heaven for example, it immediately jumps to 2280mhz on the counter: http://www.rooksandkings.com/tech/2280.jpg and I've seen it over 2300mhz. However, my real sustained overclock is well below that - Heaven reports the clockspeed that's briefly hit on launch. Don't put too much stock into that number in the top right hand corner for actual tangible benefits in games and such.

The main thing to consider is the average clockspeed and how high you can push it whilst the power use and temperature try to push it down. When overclocking a modern Nvidia card, think of the overclock more as an 'offset' for a set of circumstances, e.g. at +100 core, you might (random numbers) get 2000mhz at 300w draw/79C Temp instead of 1900mhz. Obviously there comes a point where the offset is too great and the voltage (reduced by the hardware to lower power and temperature) is no longer sufficient to run that clockspeed.

At that point you can work on the other variables: raise the power limit or lower the temperature.

In terms of gains, I don't think this is a bad generation at all. For example, of the top end cards I've owned over two decades, I'd say the RTX Titan can be pushed further than any card other than the 9700Pro and more than any Titan other than the V (which had an even more limiting stock cooler than the RTX). I also had a good overclocking experience with the 2080Ti - and I'd expect the same potential is true for the 2060.
 
I have an overclock for general day to day gaming and then max out until its unstable if benchmarking. I don't see the point in maxing out my card just for gaming
 
no point now days.

Wrong

The same as it has always been, Overclocking gets you more performance. Even with GPU boost 4.0, on Nvidia Turing cards, all of them gain 10%+ more performance just by running Auto OC scan. Towards the upper end of Turing, putting them under water and doing more aggressive clocking can get you 15% or more extra performance.

Now the reason for this is the core clock speed does affect how far the card will boost up. Nvidia cards will not just boost to it's max clock speed given power and temps, there is a ceiling determined by how much above its base clock speed it can potentially go. Raising that base speed up means the whole ceiling moves up with it

 
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For the same reason we’ve always overclocked - free extra performance - no matter how fast stuff gets people will always want more be it a CPU, GPU or whatever.
 
OP you can also overclock the memory sometimes quite a bit higher. I tend to agree for gpu clock I don't think you get much out of it these days. Much better to slap it under water and get thermal throttling right down
 
Yep, overclocking = more performance, I get that.

So this 1875Mhz I'm seeing in Exodus is therefore a limit set by the manufacturer and in fact overclocking will simply raise that ceiling or "headroom"? If that's the case why state a boost speed of 1680Mhz if it'll go higher? Not that I'm complaining, just confused :)

Guessing the Afterburner profile generated is generally safe to apply as a starting point just to see what happens? And I should maybe see the core hit >1875Mhz?

It's the Palit RTX2060 StormX, wouldn't have been my first choice but it was a mistake on a competitors website in a prebuilt system, should have been a 1060 3Gb but they honored it and sent me this card...which is a free performance boost better than any OC :D
 
GPU boost is unpredictable

That could use a more accurate clock speed but the problem is you may go put the card inside a case with no fans, the card gets hot and then you never get the advertised speed.

Running OC scan in MSI is 100% safe
 
Because, as performance gaps between gens shrink, the performance boost of OC increases in relation to those. Also because sometimes you need the performance to reach certain performance "thresholds". Had a lot of fun tweaking and playing Witcher 3 at 5K recently, something not at all doable (for a solid 30 fps lock) without a good OC on my card.

So, let's say an OC nets you 10% extra performance (which is generally true, sometimes more). But the difference between your 1080 ti and the newest 2080 ti is 40%, that means that the 10% you get from an OC now puts you a quarter of the way of the difference between gens. For the other three quarters you'd have to pay £700+ (assuming you'd sell the 1080ti).

So, at the end of the day... why not? Especially on Nvidia cards, which are much less time consuming & simpler to OC than let's say Vegas.

In my case I would say my 1080ti is about 1-2% gain from any O/C I can gain from it. In terms of legacy o/c (moving slider to right). I get more from undervolting as that reduces temp based throttling, as the card will throttle at 35C, then 45C, then 55C, then 65C.

1070 palit going from 2038mhz to 2060mhz what is that in % terms?

My 1080ti goes to about 1940mhz out of the box whilst temp is rising, but will then throttle down to about 1700mhz at stock voltage curve and fan curve, aggressive fan curve gets it to go down to about 1850mhz or so. Moving power limit up and clock speed up it will peak at about 1980mhz (2ghz crashes), but then proceed to hit 70s in temperature and throttle down to mid 1900's.

Voltage curve tuning (undervolting), my most aggressive profile is 1987mhz, going up to below 55C will only drop it to 1974mhz, going above that drops it further to 1965mhz. So faster but not a huge amount faster than non voltage curve tuning, however the card is using 40-50w less power in this config and about 15C cooler in demanding games.

I discovered I can gain no clock speed between 1.031v and 1.075v, its all just extra power and heat for nothing.

I accept the lucky people can get good manual o/c, perhaps they buy a low factory o/c binned card, "AND" get lucky on the silicon lottery, but just remember these are not guaranteed o/c's.

The vendors have got really good at getting the most out of the chips out of the box.

Memory clock speed is another matter tho, no auto turbo for that stuff, so I still o/c memory.
 
^^

I suspect you either have issues with heat or you got a bad card maybe, getting such a minor difference from a overclock is odd.
People are running 1080tis at solid 2100mhz (on water) compared to your 1700mhz

E-peen waving mainly.

Not at 4K but I can sort of understand at lower resolutions. At 1080p and 1440p it’s really easy to get whatever framerate you want by buying cards out of the box. At 4K you still get all the performance you can get and overclocking extracting thy extra 10 to 15% can be the difference between screen tearing 50fps and smooth 60fps
 
Grim5, no I just have a lottery loser.

2ghz will crash within a few seconds with temps below 40C, with maximum voltage.

What makes you think every 1080ti should manage 2.1ghz, what is the basis of that? You think there is no variance on silicon quality?

If that were the case they would sell every card spec'd at 2.1ghz.

So again.

Originally down to so low on clock speed is combination of many factors.

1 - stock power limit not enough to drive max clock speeds at max load. Of course this is why power limit is tunable. The advertised TDP is designed for the base clock speeds. Turbo clocks are designed as burstable speeds not sustained.
2 - The auros cooler is not the best out there, probably the worst cooler I have had out of last 3 gpu's, it has a smaller heatsink and worse fans than my 1070 palit, which was cooling a smaller chip.
3 - gpu boost 3.0 doesnt only throttle for temp at max temps now, it has intermediate steps.
4 - I expect if I watercooled my gpu I would also get temps in 40s or 30s, not sure why you blame my case and then as evidence compare me to water cooled chips. This would gain me 10-20mhz.
5 - Raising the power limit removes the power based throttling but at stock fan curve it still runs hot enough to throttle 4-5 bins.
6 - aggressive fan curve mitigates that but end of day nothing I can do about silicon lottery loser.

Search on reddit there was even a dedicated discussion for people RMA'ing auros 1080ti GPU's as they couldnt even handle gigabyte OC mode which I think is only a 30mhz overclock.

I could run open case, and point a desk fan at the thing, it wouldnt make the chip a winner.

Also bear in mind the new bios for the 1080ti I own has a conservative 100% TDP limit, the first bios had a peak of 375w at 120%, mine has a peak of 375w at 150%, meaning the 100% baseline is lower at 250w vs 300w+.

Also in regards to the water cooling guys, I remember a video from jayz who based on the samples he had determined that nvidia founder cards had better binned chips, and most people who mod for water cooling buy the founder cards. There is people who disagree with him, based on small sample size and such, but it is interesting he formed that opinion. There is probably cards out there that can barely be stable at 1800mhz, the variance will be quite big at the extreme ranges.
 
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