Reference GTX 760 - will the cooler allow overclocking?

TurboJ

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Sep 8, 2013
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10,540
The GTX 760 has a tempreature target ( 82 celcius ) and when it goes above that, it supposedly downclocks itself. Otherwise it is supposed to run 'boost' clocks, as it has the boost 2.0 function.

My question is, will I gain any extra performance if I overclock the GPUs? I have two 760s in SLI, but I can't run Metro Last Light and Euro Truck Simulator 2 on full settings.
For Metro, 3x Anti Aliasing is the max I can run and ETS2 only allows scaling 300%.
For me, a playable frame rate is a minimum of 52-55 fps constant.
The cards will run at 82 degrees after a few minutes of gameplay.

So, since I have reference coolers, does overclocking make any sense?

Also, what software should I use that would show the current clock rate of the cards while gaming?
 

TurboJ

Honorable
Sep 8, 2013
46
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10,540
A custom fan profile did allow me to increase the base clocks on my 760s to 1080 MHz. Boost clocks are 1215 and 1150 MHz respectively, and that's at +3mV overvoltage.

Actually, while testing, I noticed two very interesting things. First, the faster of my two reference cards did a boost clock of 1137 MHz as stock - that's more than many factory OC cards. AND, the custom fan profile was needed to actually use the boost clocks on my system. The cards would always run at 80-82 degrees as stock, but now with a custom fan profile, I can get much higher clock speeds and still the cards always stay under 79 degrees.

So, if you have a reference 700-series Nvidia, running a custom fan profile will actually give you more graphics performance as the card(s) can run at boost clocks constantly which they can't with stock fan profile.