Overclocking The Graphics Card
Overclocking The Graphics Card
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.
What Do We Need?
One of the best tools for overclocking Nvidia and AMD videocards is our own AfterBurner which will work with 90% of the graphics cards out there. We can really recommend it, download here.
Where Should We Go?
Overclocking: By increasing the frequency of the videocard's memory and GPU, we can make the videocard 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 600 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest that you don't increase the frequency any higher than 30 to 50 MHz.
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 20 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... do it at your own risk!
| Original | This sample | Overclocked |
| Core Clock: 705MHz | Core Clock:705 MHz | Core Clock: 855 MHz |
| Boost Clock: 875 MHz | Boost Clock:875 MHz | Boost Clock: ~1137 MHz |
| Memory Clock: 7000 MHz | Memory Clock: 7000 MHz | Memory Clock: 7700 MHz |
With AfterBurner we applied:
- Power Target 120%
- Priority at Temperature target
- Temp Target 95 Degrees C
- CPU clock +150 MHz
- Mem clock +350 MHz
- Volatge + 75 Mv
- FAN RPM 70%
The boost clock will now render at roughly 1100 MHz depending on the power and temperature signature. The GPU will continuously be dynamically altered on voltage and clock frequency to match the power and temperature targets versus the increased core clock. Thermal imaging shows GPU temps running closer to 83 Degrees C. The VRM area climbs towards 87 Degrees C, though that is measured through a thick backplate.
Overclocking was a bit difficult as the temperature is killing the tweaking processes, once we increase fan RPM (very noisy) that's where you'll see results. A liquid cooled Titan-Z would have been the way to go for Nvidia, as it honestly makes a big difference. Have a peek at the results when overclocked, at these settings the card would have been a true competitor to the Radeon R9 295x2.
For all overclocked games above we have used the very same image quality settings as shown before. Overall the generic thumb of rule here for a decent tweak and overclock is that can gain another 5 to 20% performance. The end result depends on a lot of variables though, including power limiters, temperature limiters, fill-rate and so on the performance increment can differ per card, brand heck .. even cooling solution.
