Overclocking the graphics card
Overclocking the graphics card
Most graphics cards you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. Typically you can tweak the core clock frequencies and voltages. By increasing the frequency of the video card's memory and GPU, we can make the video card increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard, but it can really be done in less than a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners, to not increase the frequency any higher than 5% on the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 1500 MHz then I suggest that you don't increase the frequency any higher than 25 to 50 MHz step by step.
More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually, when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 25 MHz and leave it at that. Usually, when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 25 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today's tested card anyway, but we'll still show it. All in all... you always overclock at your own risk.
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| Reference (FE) | This sample | Overclocked |
| Game Clock: ~1725 MHz | Game Clock: ~1750 MHz | Game Clock: ~1770 MHz |
| Memory Clock: 14000 MHz | Memory Clock: 14000 MHz | Memory Clock: 14880 MHz |
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With AfterBurner (download) you can tweak the card both manually and with the new curve based OC scanner. You'll see that most cards out there will all tweak to roughly the same levels due to all kinds of hardware protection kicking in.
We applied the following settings in Afterburner:
- Core Voltage 1200
- Power Limiter: +20%
- GPU game clock @ 1800 MHz (dynamic boost then hovers at ~1770)
- Mem clock 930 MHz (=14.880 GHz effective)
- FAN RPM default
* Game clock is the actual value measured on our side - not the advertised one.
** The memory clock is limited towards that 930 MHz.
The results show respective default clocked results plotted in percentages. To the far right where you can see "Aver Difference %", this is the result of the four games tested and averaged out.
