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[Snailys]

Im only overclocking GPU, because 2 years ago I've burned i5 6600k and from this day I decided to don't overclock CPU ever again

 

[Shai-Tan]

CPU overclock will be less and less relevant when they do automatic boost. now On Ryzen 3000 you can maybe enable PBO but it's going to only make a marginal improvement over the standard boost in games.

GPU overclock also gets you max 5-10% on top of automatic boost as most can only get 100-150mhz on a 2080 ti even with water cooling. I do 100-125 sometimes but it causes some stability problems in long sessions (maybe just unlucky) so I only use it when performance is on the margins of acceptable with no oc

 

[TacosNSalsa]

Yes but modestly , I don't try to push it to its limits . Once it's running the way I happy with I'll leave it alone . Partly from my first extremely bad experience .My first gaming pc had a 6700k and I was messing around in the bios , set something to high , it didn't reset and it wouldn't even display anything for like 2 hrs or so . This was before I knew a damn thing about overclocking and thought hey I can just crank sh*t and have it work! Just like when I learned to cook that doubling the temp in the oven doesn't halve cook time numbnuts. Finally found out how to reset CMOS/BIOS by removing the battery ...I swear I haven't felt that much stress in a while..lol . I was a mechanic for most of my life and loved tinkering with cars and fixing them even when customers had no clue how to verbalize what was wrong...so I understand the allure for some to really get into this stuff. But now..I'm happy just with very very modest overclocks thank you.

 

[TaySan]

the fact is, how much you gain by constantly stressing your hardware? 5 frames? 10? is it really worthy? i can just tone down shadows and occlusion and puf 10 frames gained.

of course if we talking about 20-30+ frame gain on every game then maybe i will start to think about overclocking.

Well it all depends on your components and cooling. Every chip is different and can pushed further than others, but it's free performance so if you have the proper cooling I don't understand why you wouldn't at least want to give it a go for better performance.

For some people it could make the difference between a playable and unplayable game.

 

[GymWolf]

Well it all depends on your components and cooling. Every chip is different and can pushed further than others, but it's free performance so if you have the proper cooling I don't understand why you wouldn't at least want to give it a go for better performance.

For some people it could make the difference between a playable and unplayable game.

mix of lazyness to learn and fear of doing damage for relatively small gains, i'm kinda of a noob at the core
and i was stupid enough to buy a 8600k with a noctua cooler

 

[Chromium.Wings]

Honestly, I'm a little dumb with my components. I basically try to figure out what would be a good upgrade component for my current set up and leave it be.

I'm sitting on a machine at default clock speeds with an i7-4790K, GTX 1070. I don't know how much increase I could expect to see in performance (probably fairly significant, would be my guess) if I overclocked, but I don't even know how to do that. Although when my next CPU upgrade comes through I might do some overclocking.

 

[Stuart360]

A small overclock on my 6600k to 4.0ghz (i want to be kind to it). My 980ti has a hefty overclock to 1500mhz. Funny thing is my mate has a 1080, and he wont overclock as he's scared (he's like that), anyway my overclocked 980ti can get slightly better frames in the same games than his stock 1080.

 

[NOLA_Gaffer]

Not currently a PC Gamer, but overclocking is not something I ever dabbled with. I didn't really want to invest in more expensive coolers and start playing around with settings.

I pick the parts I want and keep 'em stock.

 

[CrustyBritches]

Meted

Sweet! You have a nice MOBO and sufficient amount of RAM. Your physics score at 9K is below Ryzen 1600, just a bit, but Fire Strike doesn't hit the CPU like more modern game would. I remember from Gamers Nexus review of RDR2 that some quad-core, especially the 4-core/4-thread chips were tanking performance in RDR2. That's something to keep in mind.

As for your Graphics Score, that's not bad per se for a 1060 6GB. You should be getting more like 13500+, iirc my 1060's could get around 13700. MSi Afterburner is a great program to use for overclocking, nothing wrong there. Is this score with or without overclock?

 

[Bolivar687]

My Motherboard automatically has my 4790k at 4.6. I overclocked a bit when I had an R9 290 but I just never felt the need when I had the Fury X or now with the GTX 1080. Most games I play are already at the max framerate and I have no performance complaints about the games that aren't.

 

[INC]

i want to, but im a noob and will break something

if there was a 1 button solution, that would do it for me, where its getting some extra juice, but well within thresholds, i would

 

[Stuart360]

i want to, but im a noob and will break something

if there was a 1 button solution, that would do it for me, where its getting some extra juice, but well within thresholds, i would

Dont download any programs like that, they will kill your system. Just download and install MSI Afterburner, then seacrh on Youtube. There are tons of vids going through the process step by step, and its quite easy.

 

[diffusionx]

the fact is, how much you gain by constantly stressing your hardware? 5 frames? 10? is it really worthy? i can just tone down shadows and occlusion and puf 10 frames gained.

of course if we talking about 20-30+ frame gain on every game then maybe i will start to think about overclocking.

It's important to note that it's not really stressing the hardware in most instances but simply figuring out where it can comfortably operate. There are variances in the manufacturing which means some chips operate better than others, but the companies simply find a common denominator and that's what they sell it at. For example, I had a Ryzen 5 1600, clocked at 3.2ghz, but was able to run it at 3.7ghz no problem. Some people could push past 4ghz with no problems, it's luck of the draw. The chip isn't stressed by doing this.

 

[INC]

Dont download any programs like that, they will kill your system. Just download and install MSI Afterburner, then seacrh on Youtube. There are tons of vids going through the process step by step, and its quite easy.

yeeeeh not keen, i get 1440p, 144fps for my 144hz monitor on most shit, im happy with that

 

[Meted]

Meted

Sweet! You have a nice MOBO and sufficient amount of RAM. Your physics score at 9K is below Ryzen 1600, just a bit, but Fire Strike doesn't hit the CPU like more modern game would. I remember from Gamers Nexus review of RDR2 that some quad-core, especially the 4-core/4-thread chips were tanking performance in RDR2. That's something to keep in mind.

As for your Graphics Score, that's not bad per se for a 1060 6GB. You should be getting more like 13500+, iirc my 1060's could get around 13700. MSi Afterburner is a great program to use for overclocking, nothing wrong there. Is this score with or without overclock?

With the overclock, i did two testes, one with and one without and the score changed by about 200 points, give or take, so there should be a difference when playing. I did an ingame benchmark for shadow of the tomb raider a week ago and noticed no difference when overclocking so that confused me but it might just be that game

 

[magnumpy]

nah overclocking is too hard on the hardware. or too soft on the software. the middleware is undefined

 

[CrustyBritches]

With the overclock, i did two testes, one with and one without and the score changed by about 200 points, give or take, so there should be a difference when playing. I did an ingame benchmark for shadow of the tomb raider a week ago and noticed no difference when overclocking so that confused me but it might just be that game

Your 12592 Graphics score is low, especially in light of it being an overclocked result. Guru3d saw scores of 13156-13544, depending on the 1060 6GB being tested. As I mentioned, I was getting over 13500, and up to 13700. I'm guessing at this point your CPU being 4-core/4-thread is the culprit.

If you get time, could your run Fire Strike again, and install and run Time Spy?

Before you run the benchmarks, open up MSi Afterburner. Down below where the monitor graph/window is, right-click and select properties. You'll be presented with different readouts that can be enabled for the monitor graph. Select/Check: 'GPU Temperature', 'Core Clock', 'Memory Clock', all 'CPU Usage Cores(1-4)', and lastly 'CPU Usage %'. Hit 'Apply', then 'OK'. You can press that little tiny button that's just above the monitor/graph in the middle that says 'Detach' and then resize so you can see everything at once afterwards. It's very tiny.

Then run the Fire Strike and Time Spy benchmarks. Afterwards, check your graph to see your GPU temps in case you're thermal throttling. Then check your Core and Memory clock to get a general idea of what speed they're running at. It will also show your Max at the top of box area. You should be getting around or above 2000MHz on the Core, and around or above 5000MHz on the Memory. Lastly, check your CPU usage for each core, and overall. Then take a screenshot.

Here's my screens for Fire Strike and Time Spy, along with graph/monitor readout:

You can see the medium-sized zig-zags on the graph where each test begins. For my readout stats I got:
-Max Temp = 62° C
-Max Core Clock = 2130MHz
-Max Memory Clock = 7601MHz
-Max CPU Usage(Overall) = 98% during Time Spy CPU Test. You can see the elevated usage during Fire Strike and Time Spy CPU test. Otherwise, very little usage overall.

There you have it. I know I'm not hitting a thermal limit, since that's set to 83°C, and the card won't throttle hard until even higher. My Core and Mem OC's took nicely. I'm getting about 7% performance boost over stock, and the mem could easily push higher. That's about where I comfortably land with this card...+7-8%. A lot of GPUs and CPUs will boost on their own these days, so a 7-8% OC on top of that isn't bad, per se.

 

[Shifty1897]

Never really had a need to OC my CPU except back when Wii emulation was brutal, before Dolphin was optimized.

 

[Meted]

Your 12592 Graphics score is low, especially in light of it being an overclocked result. Guru3d saw scores of 13156-13544, depending on the 1060 6GB being tested. As I mentioned, I was getting over 13500, and up to 13700. I'm guessing at this point your CPU being 4-core/4-thread is the culprit.

If you get time, could your run Fire Strike again, and install and run Time Spy?

Before you run the benchmarks, open up MSi Afterburner. Down below where the monitor graph/window is, right-click and select properties. You'll be presented with different readouts that can be enabled for the monitor graph. Select/Check: 'GPU Temperature', 'Core Clock', 'Memory Clock', all 'CPU Usage Cores(1-4)', and lastly 'CPU Usage %'. Hit 'Apply', then 'OK'. You can press that little tiny button that's just above the monitor/graph in the middle that says 'Detach' and then resize so you can see everything at once afterwards. It's very tiny.

Then run the Fire Strike and Time Spy benchmarks. Afterwards, check your graph to see your GPU temps in case you're thermal throttling. Then check your Core and Memory clock to get a general idea of what speed they're running at. It will also show your Max at the top of box area. You should be getting around or above 2000MHz on the Core, and around or above 5000MHz on the Memory. Lastly, check your CPU usage for each core, and overall. Then take a screenshot.

Here's my screens for Fire Strike and Time Spy, along with graph/monitor readout:


You can see the medium-sized zig-zags on the graph where each test begins. For my readout stats I got:
-Max Temp = 62° C
-Max Core Clock = 2130MHz
-Max Memory Clock = 7601MHz
-Max CPU Usage(Overall) = 98% during Time Spy CPU Test. You can see the elevated usage during Fire Strike and Time Spy CPU test. Otherwise, very little usage overall.

There you have it. I know I'm not hitting a thermal limit, since that's set to 83°C, and the card won't throttle hard until even higher. My Core and Mem OC's took nicely. I'm getting about 7% performance boost over stock, and the mem could easily push higher. That's about where I comfortably land with this card...+7-8%. A lot of GPUs and CPUs will boost on their own these days, so a 7-8% OC on top of that isn't bad, per se.

Looks like im getting a little less than 2000MHz on the core clock, but a lot less than 5000MHz on the memory

 

[10000]

CPU yes
GPU yes
RAM no
Laptop no

 

[CrustyBritches]

Looks like im getting a little less than 2000MHz on the core clock, but a lot less than 5000MHz on the memory

I think I misread something with the 5000MHz memory target. Should have been 4500MHz+. However, your 1936MHz Core/4007MHz Mem are low for a 1060 6GB. I looked at some tests I did on my old MSI 1060 6GB and I had 2101MHz Core/4500MHz Mem. Guru3d's MSI 1060 6GB has 2050MHz Core/4705MHz Mem. Their Gigabyte 1060 6GB had 2126MHz Core/4728MHz Mem.

You're getting no OC on your Memory, and a low result for your Core clock. You're not experiencing thermal throttling with 70°C max.

Here's Guru3D's settings for Afterburner and their results:

MSI:

Gigabyte:

Try resetting your overclock parameters on Afterburner using the big gray reset button in the middle between the settings wheel button and apply/checkmark button. Then close out Afterburner and make sure it's not running in the system tray in the bottom right corner of Windows. Download and install GPU Tweak II. You can get it from Techspot. Use that to start at something like 1900MHz Core/8500MHz Mem(this would be equal to 4250MHz in Afterburner)/100% Power Target.

That's a minor OC that should give you a higher result for Core in the monitor readout and about exact on the Mem. GPU Tweak has a little button in the bottom left-hand corner that says 'Monitor', used to hide/show the monitor. It also has a button to choose what parameters to monitor and the order, as shown in this image:

---
Run Fire Strike and Time Spy, without the demo segments if possible to save time. Can't remember if that's allowed in the Free version. It's a switch that says "Include Demo". Results are based around the tests, you don't need it. Start at 1900MHz Core/8500MHz Mem in GPU Tweak with 100% Power Target and move your way up, step-by-step. If you verify a 1900MHz+ Core and 8500MHz Mem, move up to 1950MHz Core/8700MHz Mem/105% Power Limit and run again. Keep moving up until you start seeing artifacts or negative/reduced performance results. When you hit the wall, step back just a tiny bit and that should be your stable result.

*Note: You might not even have to mess with Power Target that much depending on your GPU. I had my 1060 6GB at Power Target 100% with 1940MHz Core/9000MHz Mem. That resulted in 2101MHz Core boost/9000MHz Mem(4500MHz in Afterburner).

 

[AGRacing]

I just finished a system at the beginning of the month.

R7 3700X
16GB 3600
Red Devil 5700XT

I came from an intel that I did over clock (i56600k) but the only thing I’ve don’t with this system is :
-Turn XMP on
-Turn precision boost overdrive on
-Slightly under volt the Radeon

This is my first Ryzen and first AMD graphics card (since 7950 back in the day). So I’m still figuring the ins and outs of the platform and would appreciate any advice any of you have.

Thanjs!

 

[Meted]

I think I misread something with the 5000MHz memory target. Should have been 4500MHz+. However, your 1936MHz Core/4007MHz Mem are low for a 1060 6GB. I looked at some tests I did on my old MSI 1060 6GB and I had 2101MHz Core/4500MHz Mem. Guru3d's MSI 1060 6GB has 2050MHz Core/4705MHz Mem. Their Gigabyte 1060 6GB had 2126MHz Core/4728MHz Mem.

You're getting no OC on your Memory, and a low result for your Core clock. You're not experiencing thermal throttling with 70°C max.

Here's Guru3D's settings for Afterburner and their results:


Try resetting your overclock parameters on Afterburner using the big gray reset button in the middle between the settings wheel button and apply/checkmark button. Then close out Afterburner and make sure it's not running in the system tray in the bottom right corner of Windows. Download and install GPU Tweak II. You can get it from Techspot. Use that to start at something like 1900MHz Core/8500MHz Mem(this would be equal to 4250MHz in Afterburner)/100% Power Target.

That's a minor OC that should give you a higher result for Core in the monitor readout and about exact on the Mem. GPU Tweak has a little button in the bottom left-hand corner that says 'Monitor', used to hide/show the monitor. It also has a button to choose what parameters to monitor and the order, as shown in this image:

---
Run Fire Strike and Time Spy, without the demo segments if possible to save time. Can't remember if that's allowed in the Free version. It's a switch that says "Include Demo". Results are based around the tests, you don't need it. Start at 1900MHz Core/8500MHz Mem in GPU Tweak with 100% Power Target and move your way up, step-by-step. If you verify a 1900MHz+ Core and 8500MHz Mem, move up to 1950MHz Core/8700MHz Mem/105% Power Limit and run again. Keep moving up until you start seeing artifacts or negative/reduced performance results. When you hit the wall, step back just a tiny bit and that should be your stable result.

*Note: You might not even have to mess with Power Target that much depending on your GPU. I had my 1060 6GB at Power Target 100% with 1940MHz Core/9000MHz Mem. That resulted in 2101MHz Core boost/9000MHz Mem(4500MHz in Afterburner).

I can't go over 1900MHz for the gpu or 8500MHz for the Memory, am i missing something like an option to go over a certain amount.

 

[CrustyBritches]

I can't go over 1900MHz for the gpu or 8500MHz for the Memory, am i missing something like an option to go over a certain amount.

No, you shouldn't be missing anything. Can you run one or both of the test to see if that 8488MHz Mem clock will stick? That's still higher than your 4007MHz(8014MHz effective) speed in Afterburner. From what I can see in GPU Tweak, you have the ASUS DUAL 1060 6GB, is that correct? Do you have the DUAL-GTX1060-6G regular version, or the DUAL-GTX1060-O6G? One says "OC" on the front of your box in the bottom left corner, and the other doesn't. Both of those cards are listed with 8008MHz Memory Clock on their respective pages. That's not far off your 4007MHz/8014MHz readout in Afterburner.

I'm guessing you have a card that's BIOS-limited to those speeds. Try running with the 1873MHz Core/8488MHz Mem and see what happens with the readout in the monitor.

 

[Mokus]

Yeah, I use blue pills.

 

[Bolivar687]

This thread made me want to finally manually overclock my Aorus 1080 Xtreme. I know this is what the brand is meant to do, but it seems they already got almost all of the remaining room out of the card out of the box. I was only able to go +50 on the GPU clock, to about 2100 Mhz and +94 on the Memory, to about 10300 Mhz. Increasing voltage wouldn't let it budge an inch beyond that.

 

[Bolivar687]

daily double

 

[TaySan]

This thread made me want to finally manually overclock my Aorus 1080 Xtreme. I know this is what the brand is meant to do, but it seems they already got almost all of the remaining room out of the card out of the box. I was only able to go +50 on the GPU clock, to about 2100 Mhz and +94 on the Memory, to about 10300 Mhz. Increasing voltage wouldn't let it budge an inch beyond that.

Just the luck of the silicon lottery. Sadly my 2080 Super can't be pushed very far either at only 60mhz on the core.

 

[Filippos]

AMD CPUs are hard to overclock, so no. But I do overclock Nvidia GPUs.

Same

 

[GreatnessRD]

I overclocked my RAM because I'm a boss. Slightly overclocked my 1060 3GB. But my proud achievement is my RAM.

 

[Meted]

No, you shouldn't be missing anything. Can you run one or both of the test to see if that 8488MHz Mem clock will stick? That's still higher than your 4007MHz(8014MHz effective) speed in Afterburner. From what I can see in GPU Tweak, you have the ASUS DUAL 1060 6GB, is that correct? Do you have the DUAL-GTX1060-6G regular version, or the DUAL-GTX1060-O6G? One says "OC" on the front of your box in the bottom left corner, and the other doesn't. Both of those cards are listed with 8008MHz Memory Clock on their respective pages. That's not far off your 4007MHz/8014MHz readout in Afterburner.

I'm guessing you have a card that's BIOS-limited to those speeds. Try running with the 1873MHz Core/8488MHz Mem and see what happens with the readout in the monitor.

My card is the OC version.

 

[CrustyBritches]

Meted

Hey, sorry it took me so long to get back. So it looks like GPU Tweak allowing you to bump your Memory Clock gave you a bump from 4007MHz(8014MHz) to 8488MHz, and in turn a jump from 12,708 Graphics score in Fire Strike to 13,404. That's at least some progress. As mentioned I was getting ~4500MHz(9000Mhz in GPU Tweak) Memory Clock, while Guru3D was going even higher. It's apparent your card is limiting your OC. 2000MHz Max Core clock isn't bad, but if you could get to ~2100MHz Max Core Clock(Boost, of course, not base), and your Memory Clock at least to 9000MHz(GPU Tweak), then you'd easily hit the high 13000s in Fire Strike.

Only option from here is if they had an enhanced BIOS you could flash your card with. I wouldn't recommend it, honestly. Some cards have a BIOS switch that can mitigate some of the risk. Couldn't find info on whether your card has dual bios with a onboard switch, and since you already have the OC version it takes away incentive to flash to a different BIOS. Furthermore, looks like their newer BIOS for your card just affects the fan curve.

Wish we could have gotten you more than a 5% bump in Fire Strike, but that's how it goes. No biggie. At least now you can easily tune and verify your next GPU.

 

[kingbean]

What's your biggest success story? After a couple weeks of playing around I finally managed to get a stable 5ghz overclock at 1.261v on my i9 9900k. )

5.1ghz 1.275v i7 9700k.

 

[Meted]

Meted

Hey, sorry it took me so long to get back. So it looks like GPU Tweak allowing you to bump your Memory Clock gave you a bump from 4007MHz(8014MHz) to 8488MHz, and in turn a jump from 12,708 Graphics score in Fire Strike to 13,404. That's at least some progress. As mentioned I was getting ~4500MHz(9000Mhz in GPU Tweak) Memory Clock, while Guru3D was going even higher. It's apparent your card is limiting your OC. 2000MHz Max Core clock isn't bad, but if you could get to ~2100MHz Max Core Clock(Boost, of course, not base), and your Memory Clock at least to 9000MHz(GPU Tweak), then you'd easily hit the high 13000s in Fire Strike.

Only option from here is if they had an enhanced BIOS you could flash your card with. I wouldn't recommend it, honestly. Some cards have a BIOS switch that can mitigate some of the risk. Couldn't find info on whether your card has dual bios with a onboard switch, and since you already have the OC version it takes away incentive to flash to a different BIOS. Furthermore, looks like their newer BIOS for your card just affects the fan curve.

Wish we could have gotten you more than a 5% bump in Fire Strike, but that's how it goes. No biggie. At least now you can easily tune and verify your next GPU.

So running it at 1873 and 8488 all the time should be fine? My plan was to get a new video card around next gen, as the expectation is for prices to go down significantly if i'm not mistaken.

 

[CrustyBritches]

Meted

That's a modest OC for a 1060, and of course it doesn't run like that at all the time, only under load.

I can't guarantee your card, but I ran 2 1060s OC'd almost 24x7 for over a year during the ether bonanza. GPU Tweak is made by ASUS, and they have those 3 preset modes to the side, and you can just press default to go back to normal. You can also create a user profile, a max OC mode so to say. No harm in using one of those.

I enjoy overclocking and benchmarking. I usually look up reviews for my GPU and see what they get to be safe. Then step the card gradually, verifying with 3DMark as I go. If the run hitches or glitches, like weird little dots or shading, then you need to roll back a little.

AMD should have a pretty competitive GPU product stack later this year, so hopefully bang for buck will be decent on both sides. For what it's worth, I'd expect the 3060 to be about 2080 performance. 1060 was about a 980, and 2060 was around a 1080. Price between $300-400. Probably $350 if AMD presses them. I'll sell my 2060 Super right before launch and hopefully get something good at the $500 price point.

 

[Meted]

Meted

That's a modest OC for a 1060, and of course it doesn't run like that at all the time, only under load.

I can't guarantee your card, but I ran 2 1060s OC'd almost 24x7 for over a year during the ether bonanza. GPU Tweak is made by ASUS, and they have those 3 preset modes to the side, and you can just press default to go back to normal. You can also create a user profile, a max OC mode so to say. No harm in using one of those.

I enjoy overclocking and benchmarking. I usually look up reviews for my GPU and see what they get to be safe. Then step the card gradually, verifying with 3DMark as I go. If the run hitches or glitches, like weird little dots or shading, then you need to roll back a little.

AMD should have a pretty competitive GPU product stack later this year, so hopefully bang for buck will be decent on both sides. For what it's worth, I'd expect the 3060 to be about 2080 performance. 1060 was about a 980, and 2060 was around a 1080. Price between $300-400. Probably $350 if AMD presses them. I'll sell my 2060 Super right before launch and hopefully get something good at the $500 price point.

Cheers, really appreciate you taking the time to help me fiddle with this all