I have the EVGA GTX 970 SSC and I use MSi Afterburner, start it, then set this set (default) to profile 1. then I use t he core clock and memory clock in 25 increments. Using HWINFO to monitor my temperature , which I adjusted the fan as well using MSI afterburner the default settings by EVGA are mild and at full usage I run 1400Mhz GPU Clock and 1800 Mhz Memory Clock, and I set my fan to be with 3 ways points only setting them 20/20, 30/45, 60/70 and 100/80 being x/y xx being fan % y temperature of gpu. and I get those speeds at 72c, I guess I could push it further, and I may later, considering my card defaults are 1100/1600Mhz cor/memory my overclocking of an OC card is mild. The nice thing about MSI Afterburner is if your card pukes on you, monitor goes black, just wait a moment, msi recuperates to your profile 1/defaults and everything is back to where you started. then try again a bit less OC on the card.