New to Overclocking GPUs

[hoofhearted4]

so yea. first GPU ever. needless to say im completely new at all this.

 

i installed it today. updated the drivers to the latest 12.11 Beta drivers. at stock settings, ran a few tests and everything was fine. then i wanted to see what i was able to do. got the latest Catalyst Control Center and messed around with it, but it doesnt seem like i can get much from it. from what ive read, using just the CCC i should be able to get roughly 1000-1050Mhz on the Core Clock and i should be able to max out the Memory Clock, if i put the Power Settings at +20%. but i cant. i cant even get 1000Mhz stable. if i set it to that, and run 3Dmark 11 Performance, it fails. sometimes at the beginning, sometimes after the first graphics test. but has always failed.

 

so just out of curiosity, i downloaded MSI After Burner, set it up so i could alter my voltages and stuff, and messed around with that. i tried a couple of settings i had read that people had gotten, with no luck. my screen just flickers at any setting besides the default. though for some reason if i run the Kombustor thingy, my screen wont flicker anymore... so i tried changing settings in small increments of 25. tried changing the Core Clock to 975, with no changes to the Voltages or anything, and got screen flickering. tried only changing the Voltages by 25mv and got screen flickering.

 

im wondering if im doing something wrong, or if i just got a bad card that doesnt want to OC?

 

any help or tips would be appreciated.... :/

 

 

EDIT:

after messing with it some more, with the CCC (so no Voltage Tweaking) i was able to get a stable OC of 1010Mhz on the Core Clock and 1475Mhz on the Mem Clock. (up from 900Mhz/1250Mhz) tested it with 3DMark 11 both P and X, Unigine, and a 15 minute Furmark Burn. everything was all set and stable. so i figure ill pick it up again tomorrow (its 330am here now lol) put those settings into Afterburner, and slowly start turning up the Voltage from there and seeing if i can get anything. worst case scenario is i cant get anything out of it, and in which case i can only get a slight OC with the GPU, which in the end is no real biggie lol.

 

 

oh and i guess i should put the rest of my system info in case thats important :P

 

3570k @ 3.4GHz (stock, non OC)

8gb DDR3 Ram 1333 (stock, non OC)

ASRock Z77 Extreme4

Windows 7 Pro x64

Edited December 27, 2012 by hoofhearted4

[kalikka]

Do you have 120hz display?

With AB my screen flickers too @120hz. 1 sec of 3dmark/etc. fixes it untill I reboot.

 

I usually activate the OC profile only when Im about to start playing so I dont really mind the flickering/fixing it.

You could also try trixx or some other OC software.

 

The best test for stability is a game like bf3. The benchmarks dont always tell the truth.

[bben46]

If you are going to OC, you need to keep an eye on the GPU temperature. If it starts going above 70c under load back off a bit. :thumbsup:

[kalikka]

Thumb rule for the temps:

1. If the reference cooler has X core temps at full load, all the better coolers can handle 5-10C higher temps.

2. VRM temps. They can handle +100C temps but try to keep them under 80-90C. Software like HWiNFO or gpu-Z can show VRM temps of the GPU.

 

For example reference 7950 at full load has 75C (core) temps. So ~85C shouldnt be a problem, but try to aim for under 80C.

But with windforce cooler there shouldnt be any problems with core nor VRM temps. 65C/70C core/VRM... VRM of 70C or under is the same as swimming in a frozen lake.

Edited December 27, 2012 by kalikka

[Dan3345]

Download GPU-z and check the ASIC quality. Anything below 75% will be tough to overclock. My card got 77%, pair with that with locked down voltages courtesy of Nvidia and I have a card that wont OC much.

 

THats really all I can assist with. The last AMD cards I tried to overclock were my 6950's and that failed miserably. Neither would take even a 2% overclock without the drivers failing..

[hoofhearted4]

hmm i got 59.8% :/

[kalikka]

62,0%, and can easily go to 1200mhz/1500mhz core/memory clocks :thumbsup:

With 1250mV voltages. And iirc vapor-x for example uses those as stock-voltages.

Edited December 27, 2012 by kalikka

[hoofhearted4]

as soon as i did anything with the Voltages, even only 1125mV (when it starts at 1093mV) i get screen tearing.

 

i guess im gunna have to settle for my 1010mhz/1475mhz at stock clock.

 

kind of a bummer my first GPU ever and i cant really OC it much :/

[kalikka]

After a little Search-Fu:

 

The problem with the flickering is the drivers. 12.11 doesnt like unofficial OC (=voltage tweakin) so it creates flickerin/tearing in the desktop.

Link

Not sure if trixx has the same problem as AB. Some say that trixx works better with ATI cards than AB does.

And if you dont know, trixx is same as AB but from sapphire.

i haven't been able to update my catalyst driver for my heavily overclocked 7950 due to issues like this. every driver after 12.4 have the broken 2d idle clock problem. 12.11 beta 11 fixed the 2d clock but now it's giving this horrendous idle flickering problem that would give a sane person seizure. it doesn't matter what clock you set it to, once you change the clock speed, the display goes into crazy mode. my 7950 is a well clocked beast that can do 1200mhz and 1600mhz mem, unfortunately without enabling unofficial overclocking, it'll only allow me to do 1100mhz core.

So disabling powerplay should fix the tearing/flickering.

 

How I fix the flickering/tearing:

1. Save the working OC profile, never mind the flickering/tearing.

2. only activate the profile when you want to play something, run 3dmark/etc. to temporarely fix the tearing every time you activate the OC profile. For me the tearing goes away till I reboot/change the OC profile after running 1sec of 3dmark11.

Edited December 27, 2012 by kalikka

[hoofhearted4]

ok well i will try disabling Power Play. if that doesnt work ill try Trixx. then if that doesnt work ill see if i get the screen flickering in game. i actually havent tried running any Benchmarks with the screen flickering, because i assumed it would happen in game/benchmark too. but maybe not. so yea guess i have a few options to try. thank you very much kal.