Overclocking The Graphics Card

Overclocking The Graphics Card

Traditional overclocking - As most of you know, with most video cards you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. Typically you can tweak on core clock frequencies and voltages. By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard increase its clock cycles per second.

Reference	This sample	Overclocked
Core Clock: 1481 MHz	Core Clock: 1645 MHz	Core Clock: 1670 MHz
Boost Clock: 1582 MHz	Boost Clock: 1759 MHz	Max Boost Clock: 2025~2062 MHz
Memory Clock: 11010 MHz	Memory Clock: 11200 MHz	Memory Clock: 12358 MHz

Use any tweaking utility of your preference of course. We use AfterBurner based on personal preference, Gigabyte has nice tweaking software available as well, it's just that advanced overlay and tweak functionality that AB offers that has my personal preference. Our applied tweak:

• Core Voltage : +100%
• Power Limit : 120%
• Temp. limit : 90C 
• Core Clock : + 25
• Memory Clock : +575 MHz (=12358MHz effective data-rate)
• FAN RPM: default

Now +25 MHz on the core, you might feel that our sample is not the best overclocker on the GPU core right? But you need to revise that idea, ZOTAC already nearly maxed out the overclock for you by tweaking it so close to its maximum capability. And that standard tweak is covered by your warranty for 2 years. More Voltage, 100% offset applied was stable. Once overclocked keep this in mind; due to the dynamic nature of the boost clock, your frequency is not fixed. Limiters and monitors, temperature, load, power and voltages will continuously alter a maximum clock state. With this overclock and with that 120% power limiter the card is only slightly more audible at 41 dbA (you can hear airflow, that's all) at roughly 67 Degrees C. Impressive.

Above, a new chart. It is the relative performance difference in between a reference card, the AIB card with its respective applied tweak and our overclocked results plotted as a percentage. The reference card is 100%. To the far right where you can see Aver Difference %, this is the result of the four games tested and averaged out. So the card runs, give or take, 8% faster compared to reference. And once we tweak it manually it is roughly 13% faster compared to the reference card and thus 5% faster compared to the default clocks. This was with the TDP Power Limiter tweak maxed out. The increased TDP certainly did raise the performance a little overall (but not heaps). Below, all overclock results, measured at Ultra HD.