Overclocking EVGA GTX 980 SC with PrecisionX

not trying to necro, but you never got an answer.

Figured I'd help, in case you never solved this, and as I just dove into this myself on my GTX 980.


From what I gathered (and testing proved this) adjusting the power slider does not change your voltage, and therefore is not incredibly risky. You want to start by running your power to 124%.

Next run a benchmarker (http://unigine.com/products/heaven/ is what I used)
Write down everything, pencil and paper is probably the best way, as your system might crash, losing any open digital notepad.

Start adjusting your GPU clock one tick at a time, running the benchmarker each time you increase.
when testing you should be looking for any artifacts(pixels sticking, bright lights, etc.)
For my card when I tested my GPU clock it would just straight up crash if it pushed too hard.
Keep a notepad and write down everything (and keep an eye on your temperatures, from what I heard 80 is the danger zone, however some people like to keep theirs under 70)
If your CPU supports onboard graphics it might help to plug a second monitor into the MB, that way when your GPU crashes you can instantly see whats going on by keeping your monitoring software, and precision, on the second screen.(that's what I did)


Next, reduce your core clock offset back to 0
GPU Memory clock is the same, however moving one tick at a time is far too slow as you can usually get a MUCH higher boost compared to the GPU clock...for my memory I was able to overclock +575 mhz (It's DDR, the one "d" stand for double, so an offset of 575 is an increase of over 1,000 Mhz (or 1Ghz))
I moved the slider 100 Mhz at a time, until I started seeing artifacts, at which point I went back 100 Mhz and started going up by one tick on the slider.

Figure out where the maximums are for your core and memory clocks.
Try setting both clocks to the max you were stable, chances are you will crash.(almost certainly)
Reduce both clocks by one tick and re-run.
Continue until you don't crash/have any artifacts

Those clocks are your highest theoretical clocks, however you may find you still crash during actually gameplay...for this reason I further reduced my clocks by two more ticks each.

This is a very good article that helped me a lot.
http://www.pcgamer.com/how-to-overclock-your-graphics-card/

Here is a picture of my notes.
There is an organization to the madness!

Oh, and I ended up at a GPU boost of +89Mhz and a Memory Boost of +575.
So that puts my overall clocks at:
GPU=1,481 Mhz
Mem=8,160 Mhz

And this is my build:
https://pcpartpicker.com/b/9PD8TW

Here's a good intro video that I used. Not very extensive explanation, but it'll help you at least understand the basics.

http://youtu.be/pIOqTM3gZpw

And no, power slider does not affect voltage. The "mV" slider in the right side does. The center one is more about trying to cap how much power it pulls from your system (I assume this is watts or amps). As long as your PSU can supply it, and you can keep the chip from overheating, you should be safe increasing this as much as you want. I've got plenty of headroom from my 1000w PSU, so I just maxed that out and put priority on the temp cap of low 80s