Smokey said:
I have that monitor. It's great. I use it for FPS on consoles and there is no noticeable input lag (as you'd expect with a 2ms response time). Same with PC games.
Nvidia kit contains what's in the first picture
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814998052
I'd assume you need everything in that kit to make 3D work with a Nvidia card.
Oh ok. I'd let it run through. It's only 7 mins long or so.
I made the jump from 8GB to 16GB because it was so cheap. You won't notice a difference unless you're doing heavy work (graphics, virtual machines etc), but for me the price was so low I went ahead and made the jump.
Before you do anything uninstall SmartDoctor and get MSI Afterburner. SmartDoctor is very limited in what you can do. If it's stable at 850 and that voltage then you can leave it or go up. You need to run Heaven though and make sure you don't see any artifacts. If it gets through that fine, then you can up it. If you have issues you most likely need more voltage.
Would Heaven qualify as a stress test? That's what I've been using when OC'ing my card.
Smokey and Exodus are both correct. For starters, dump the ASUS program and get Afterburner, it is much better. To Exodus point, increase the core first without a voltage tweak. Run Unigine for a bit and monitor temps. If you dont crash, dont get artifacts and temps are good then up the core again.
I have a 580 as well and I am at 900mhz with a 1.100 voltage. I had the voltage a llittle higher, but was able to go back down to 1.100. At 900mhz anything lower that 1.100 volts and I would crash. For a while, I was running it at 1.25 voltage at 900mhz, then the other day I decided to drop it down to see if I would be stable at 1.1 and I was. I think I was just lazy the first time I did it cause I was too excited to get to some games..lol.
I know alot of folks "on air" can go much higher than 900mhz, but for me, even running Unigine for 1-2 hours, I peak at 83c...so I know I have some room to go a bit higher, but I prefer not to push it beyond that temp, even though it is 100% normal to run at that temp. I also have EVGA's 580's.
Smokey, which has the new hotness MSI Lightning Extreme could easily hit 950-980 on the core and probably be at 75-80c or even lower at max load cause of the cooling system on that card. It really depends on the card you have and how it handles heat. The lighnings dispose of heat through the back but also into the case, my Evga's strictly blow hot air out of the back. Now if you have a good cooling setup with your case and your cards disipate some of the hot air both out the back and into the case, you are good.
It is all about heat and testing in ideal circumstances (gaming). Unigine does a good job as it maintains the cards close to 98% usage, most games do not use 98% of your card (some do though)...so good testing, doing slight increases to the core, then adjusting volatage will gain you some good yields on increased performance. For me, I took 2 stock 580's from the factory set of 772mhz and am running them at 900mhz for the last 4-5 months with no issues. That is a huge gain in speed for a simple tweak that you can easily do.
If I did not say it enough and others have as well, just keep an eye on the temps and if you get artifacts. Always increase core without voltage..once you crash or get artifacts, then add some v-core voltage a little at a time. This can be time consuming cause of the testing time, but well worth it. Lastly, one 580 can be different than another 580 right next to it, even if it is the same brand. Some GPU's just OC better than others, it just depends on what you get, so just cause you know someone that has the same GPU as you do, does not mean you will get the same exact results.