overclocking

[Monsieur Tirets]

i know at least a few of you at least dabble in overclocking and as some of you may know i recently built a new rig with a 6600k and sapphire r9 390, anyway i decided to do a small oc on the cpu without having to up voltage or mess with anything other than the multiplier and it seems to be running fine at 4.2ghz.

but then i decided to try and oc my gpu, again just what i could manage without upping the voltage and i got it from the stock 1040 to 1100 but it wasnt stable at 1090+ so i dropped it down to 1080 and it seems stable. only thing is while the average fps, min fps and score are higher with this oc in unigine valley the max fps is lower with the oc than at stock or lesser OCs. anyone know whats up with that?

edit: ran valley again with the ultra hd preset and the oc score is simply worse than the stock one all around. i guess this card simply isnt going to offer anything in regards to OCing without bumping voltage.

 

[botfly10]

It could be thermal throttling. I would set up custom fan curves if you OC for sure. I would set up custom curves even if you aren't.

On my 980 ti, my temps dropped from 82c at full load to 74c just by setting a more aggressive fan curve at higher temps. Also, I would bump the power target up too. That is usually linked with the temp targets and will raise the throttling temp.

Still, its possible the r390 just doesn't have that much OC headroom which I kind of vaguely remember reading, but I am not sure. Maybe I am confused.

Either way, I would prioritized performance gains you see in game over synthetic benchmarks.

 

[Novak]

It could be thermal throttling. I would set up custom fan curves if you OC for sure. I would set up custom curves even if you aren't.

On my 980 ti, my temps dropped from 82c at full load to 74c just by setting a more aggressive fan curve at higher temps. Also, I would bump the power target up too. That is usually linked with the temp targets and will raise the throttling temp.

Still, its possible the r390 just doesn't have that much OC headroom which I kind of vaguely remember reading, but I am not sure. Maybe I am confused.

Either way, I would prioritized performance gains you see in game over synthetic benchmarks.

this.

 

[Ares]

It could be thermal throttling. I would set up custom fan curves if you OC for sure. I would set up custom curves even if you aren't.

On my 980 ti, my temps dropped from 82c at full load to 74c just by setting a more aggressive fan curve at higher temps. Also, I would bump the power target up too. That is usually linked with the temp targets and will raise the throttling temp.

Still, its possible the r390 just doesn't have that much OC headroom which I kind of vaguely remember reading, but I am not sure. Maybe I am confused.

Either way, I would prioritized performance gains you see in game over synthetic benchmarks.

I've helped a few younger guys get in to building their own gaming PCs and it always cracks me up when they are asking about all kinds of ideas for cooling solutions.

CAN I DO LIKE WATER COOLING AND ALSO BOLT AN AIR CONDITIONER TO MY CASE MAYBE?

I always wind up asking them "What are you trying to accomplish?"

And its always like "Well at full load my GPU hits like 65C and I want to get it down to like 60-62C"

And I ask "Why?"

And they hem and haw and then admit they are obsessively pursuing random cooling standards based on what some dude said on a message board.

I sympathize because I did it plenty lol, but it never fails to make me lulz a bit.

Not a shot at you MT.... you wanna make sure your temps are at levels you deem safe in the long term I know.

 

[Ares]

Just another note, and this is just in my experience building.... but I think people should always consider a full tower case if possible.

First because it is easier to work inside, you have room compared to the mid towers.

But second because the bigger case gives space for actual air flow, I remember having mid tower cases and had to use water cooling because it became impossible to get enough airflow inside the case with it closed up and I always had to take the side off to allow airflow enough to push the heat away from the components.

I found when I built with a full tower, got decent airflow inside the case, the serious cooling issues went away, I always had reasonably safe temps inside the case without needing any liquid cooling, just good aftermarket heatsink/fan on the CPU and good case/fans.Then I dabbled in the ridiculous world of trying to meet random temp standards set by the message board overlords lol.

 

[Monsieur Tirets]

temps on the gpu never went above 73 even with oc, so i think theres just not much headroom. another thing ive noticed is that the sapphire trixx software is automatically setting the voltage to +19mv even when reset to stock.

oh, and in regards to power limit, im still not sure how that works. in the sapphire software there a slider set at zero in the middle and to the left it goes from -1% through -50% and to the right 1% through 50%. what exactly does that mean?

edit:it also appears my 4.2 cpu oc wasnt as stable as i thought, bios was locking up. guess ill just run stock for now, i dont really feel like messing with voltages.

 

[botfly10]

Couple of thoughts

- Cooling has come a long way in PCs. It should be feasible to get very reasonable temps in a mid tower using air cooling even with pretty aggressive overclocking.

- As far as the temps you see people report on the internet, I have come to disregard most of them. I think some people report totally artificial temps where they have nothing but a clean OS and a game or two installed. And it sure seems like a lot of people flat out lie. Or don't heat their houses or some shit. You see people reporting like 55c at full load and I have never seen that from someone I knew.

- People get obsessive about temps and its always an individual choice as to what you are comfortable with, but imo mid 70s on the cpu at load with spikes in the high 70s is completely fine. With GPUs if you stay under 80c you are fine.

- When you start OCing, you have to try pretty hard to make any significant impact on the lifetime of your components. Even with increasing voltage, chances are you will upgrade your components long before you see any degradation. I have never met someone that killed a recent gen CPU with overclocking. Of course, I don't know anyone that is totally reckless about its either. But still. Come to think of it, I don't know anyone that has killed a cpu through regular use at all.

 

[botfly10]

temps on the gpu never went above 73 even with oc, so i think theres just not much headroom. another thing ive noticed is that the sapphire trixx software is automatically setting the voltage to +19mv even when reset to stock.

oh, and in regards to power limit, im still not sure how that works. in the sapphire software there a slider set at zero in the middle and to the left it goes from -1% through -50% and to the right 1% through 50%. what exactly does that mean?

edit:it also appears my 4.2 cpu oc wasnt as stable as i thought, bios was locking up. guess ill just run stock for now, i dont really feel like messing with voltages.

With power limit, you can increase or reduce the total power the card can potentially recieve. +50% seems kind of insane. I have never seen more than +10%. On every card I have seen, the power limit is linked to the target temp slider by default. Increasing the target temp increases the temp at which the card will start to throttle.

As far as your card automatically overvolting, that is probably the boost kicking in. I am not sure about amd, but as far as I know, all newish nvidia cards have boost which kicks in under high loads. Its really more like a power saving feature where most of the time your card is a little underclocked until you put a load on it.

 

[Monsieur Tirets]

in all honestly i know just enough about ocing to not do anything thatll completely **** my shit up, but at the same time dont really get how to dial it all in.

ill probably try to oc again at some point, but for now ill leave shit stock and simply enjoy having a new pc capable of running new games. like i said, originally i was going to go locked cpu and h series board anyway, but was able to get the 6600k for the same price as the 6500 and then for a bit more got a much better mobo that not only simply has better features but also leaves OCing a possibility down the road.

 

[Monsieur Tirets]

decided to give OCing another go already. lol

since i dont really feel like messing with the voltages, due to the fact that with my board setting it manually requires either a fixed voltage or setting an offset... which i do not know enough about, i decided to go with one of the boards preset overclocks. the choices are 4.2, 4.4 and 4.6. the 4.6 runs ways too much voltage so i checked that off the list, and the 4.2 does as well for such a small oc. so, i feel like the 4.4 offers the best performance at the best temps/voltage... gaming the temps max out a 65 degrees and the voltage at 1.31 or so. anyone know if this is alright for a skylake 24/7 oc?

i probably wont upgrade anywhere near as soon as most people do, hell my last pc stuck around for 10 years. lol

gpu ocing is still being a pain in the ass. increasing the core clock somehow hurts fps despite the fact that its stable without artifacting or crashing.

 

[botfly10]

Most people say anything under 1.4 mv is completely safe, from what I have seen. 65c max is very, very good. Should be perfectly fine for long term 24/7 use. Also, keep in mind speed stepping should reduce your clocks when you aren't under load.

I still think it sounds like your GPU is throttling itself. Are you monitoring its performance while you play? I use afterburner personally and it has monitoring graphs.

Keep an eye on the clock speeds while you play and watch if they are reaching the OC targets and watch if you see them dip below the targets while playing. Software that just shows min and max clock speeds isn't going to be good enough for this. You want a real time graphical readout.

 

[botfly10]

check this out:

[video=youtube;b4RKTFTzLqY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4RKTFTzLqY[/video]

 

[Monsieur Tirets]

i seem to have gotten the gpu oc in line. it dosesnt seem to be throttling, temps are fine(70 max) and usage is always near 100%. i think it might just be the valley benchmark, so i stopped using valley and tried the heaven benchmark instead, seeing improvements up to an 1110 core clock with a slight voltage bump(that the card was bumping to at stock clock anyway), and at 1120 i was getting artifacts in game. i also cant seem to budge the memory clock without getting artifacting. i could probably up the voltage some more, but i think ill leave the memory clock stock, since i heard it doesnt offer much improvement at 1080p anyway, and just go with the core clock OC.

witcher 3 seems to run smoother with the 4.4 cpu oc and the gpu core bumped to 1110, so...

 

[botfly10]

Yeah. Just to say it again, always trust in game experience (fps) over benchmarks.

I don't ever **** with the memory on my GPU anymore. I have found that performance gains are so minimal and instability increases so much, its not worth it.

Check this video out too. Its real good imo:

[video=youtube;CV-J2TU08Qk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV-J2TU08Qk[/video]

 

[botfly10]

Check out that video. It is possible you will be able to hit a stable 4.4 with a lower voltage than the preset profile.

 

[Monsieur Tirets]

ive seen that vid, but like i said with my mother board manually adjusting the voltage requires either a fixed voltage, which i dont want to do, or messing with offsets, which i dont know how to mess with.

in that jayz2cents vid he said mobo manufacturers test thousands of chips in order to define their preset OC's and dial in presets that carry very little risk. and it seems most 6600ks require around 1.25 for 4.2G, so, the 4.4 preset doesnt seem too far off. yeah, i probably could get the 4.4 oc at a slightly lower max voltage or even get 4.5 at the same voltage, but again, i dont know how to set offsets, i think ill just live with a max voltage of 1.31 when gaming.

edit: guess i just got a poor card as far as OCing goes. i thought the 1010mhz oc was stable, and it was playing the witcher 3, but when i tested it with rise of the tomb raider it artifact like crazy. i then tried to push further by upping the voltage and even with a +60 on the voltage just to benchmark 1040 without artifacts, rise of the tom raider still artifact.

looks like 1100 might be the limit for this card.

 

[botfly10]

Sounds like you are pretty setup. Oh, also, some games don't like OC's on gpu's. Some people have have to down clock their card from stock just to keep their drivers from crashing in both witcher 3 and tomb raider. I was dealing with that on my 780's.

Oh also, just an fyi, the voltage required to run at a certain clock speed with vary between every individual cpu. Its all in the luck of the bin. That's why I was suggesting trying a manual OC to see if you can get the same result with a lower voltage. But whatever. Would just be tinkering at that point. Seems like you are pretty all dialed in.

 

[Monsieur Tirets]

i was manually OCing the gpu, it just seems to not be a great overclocker. though perhaps thats not true, if i pushed the voltage further i could probably get close to 1200mhz. anyway, i would manually oc the cpu as well but i dont want to run a fixed voltage and dont know how to set offsets.

and I wasnt aware of performance, or lack thereof, varying from game to game in regards to overclocks. guess i can keep the 1010mhz oc profile and run that and just drop it down when i come across a game that doesnt like it. or since i know its a game to game thing, i could try out the 1040mhz oc on the witcher 3, and other games and see how they run.

edit: so far witcher 3 seems to run fine with the gpu clocked at 1140. rise of the tomb raider just doesnt like overclocks i guess.

 

[botfly10]

Yeah, if I had any oc at all on my 780s, tomb raider would crash after like 5 minutes.

The good thing about tomb raider is that its very scalable and still looks nice with some things turned down.

 

[Monsieur Tirets]

well, looks like the 1140mhz oc wasnt stable either. played witcher 3 for over an hour and it was running smooth with fine temps, but then when i got to a camp it started bugging out with enemies floating in the air and fps slowing to a crawl. back to the 1110 OC.

as for tomb raider, i played through it with everything on ultra except some of the post processing stuff. frame rate would drop and stutter at times but it was playable and worth the trade off for the eye candy in my book.