Is overclocking through CCC safe?

[madman322]

I overclocked my 5850 a few weeks ago, and recently have been noticing games getting glitchy and losing frames. I also heard the fan reving to about 85% during some parts of the game. I set my card back to all of its defaults. However, I am reluctant to play any games again for fear of further damaging the card. Is it legal to OC the card via CCC? Can i still send it back to HIS and see if they can send me a replacement that might have less problems? Or am i overreacting to a situation that does not deserve as much attention as I am giving it? Also, the game I've been playing is Fallout 3. Should be getting frames in the 60's but i was dropping to 30's and the fan was revving. Thanks for the help.

 

[anonymousdude]

Overclocking causes more heat and more heat causes the fan speed to increase. It's safe to overclock using CCC, but I prefer rivatuner or atitool. Both are free and both do the job just fine. The most important thing when overclocking is making sure it's stable and in the case of a GPU no artifacts. Also monitoring the temps are important so use HWmonitor or some other temp monitoring program.

 

[madman322]

i also just put my clock speeds back to stock. (I had not even pushed them to the max in CCC). However, my game is still running laggy at times and the fan is going crazy. Is it possible that I damaged the card in the overclock? Or that the fan/card is faulty and I need to RMA?

 

[darkguset]

I overclocked my 5850 a few weeks ago, and recently have been noticing games getting glitchy and losing frames. I also heard the fan reving to about 85% during some parts of the game. I set my card back to all of its defaults. However, I am reluctant to play any games again for fear of further damaging the card. Is it legal to OC the card via CCC? Can i still send it back to HIS and see if they can send me a replacement that might have less problems? Or am i overreacting to a situation that does not deserve as much attention as I am giving it? Also, the game I've been playing is Fallout 3. Should be getting frames in the 60's but i was dropping to 30's and the fan was revving. Thanks for the help.

What values did you overclock to? It sounds like you overclocked your video ram too much, hence the protection kicked in and instead of getting more frames, you got less. You should read more on overclocking and specifically on your cards abilities and see how far other users got to. For example if other users found their video ram to overclock to about 5,000MHz as a limit, you can't expect your card to reach 6,000MHz with no problems.

It does not matter HOW you overclock your card, obviously running something outside its specifications it was designed to run at is dangerous and although "legal" it is usually warrantied by the manufacturer up to a point. After that you are on your own... Now usually all cards have a safety margin where you can overclock without any problems, but that is quite small so don't expect miracles.

How do you know you should be getting frames in the 60's with Fallout 3? What is your PC configuration and what resolution and settings are you running at?

 

[anonymousdude]

It's possible that the card was damaged during the OC, but that is usually due to heat. Did you ever notice the fan increasing it's speed before the overclock?

 

[vvhocare5]

I have 5850's and you cannot hurt the card by overclocking - especially with CCC. The card has an automatic slowdown if you go too high - even the voltage modders hit a wall where the card drops clocks if it thinks you are too high - and they are running lots of voltage and 1000 MHz (1GHz) reliably. When not in 3d or game mode the card throttles back to 137/300 further reducing the load.

In CCC I got to 775/1100 reliably, with little increase in fan noise.

What value does the Overdrive tab report for your fan speed?
You can track fan speed with a small app called GPUz, run it during a game and tell us what temps you hit and what percentage fan speed you are reaching...

 

[madman322]

Just used GPUz vvhocare5...after only 10 minutes of play I saw my card get all the way up to 82C. It isn't even overclocked anymore. Back to the stock 725/1000. GPUz also said the max load wsa 25% and the max fan speed was 33%. Could the problem be that the fan is not working properly? Cause I dont believe it should be getting this hot. Granted, I'm playing fallout 3 at its max settings but regardless the 5850 should be able to handle it. At least that was the impression I was under.

 

[darkguset]

Please include your case temperatures as well as your card's temperature by itself says almost nothing...

 

[jasobnd]

I have a 5770 powercolor PCS+ and stalkers new DX11 game Call of pripyat.

using CCC rather than auto tune which i do no like one bit. i just play the game and up the clock settings by one notch each time i open the game. so far i havent had any glitches or hangs. I want to squeeze as much VRAM and GPU speed out of the card with the stock cooler as i can. The good thing is i play for very long slots of 5 hours which tests the card very well. i have a 20" moniter with maximum settings on everything. It gets a little bit laggy on rare occasions but im more inclinded to blame poor drivers and the only just solved XRAY engine which used be as buggy as anything.

I will post temps and settings / clock speeds etc. if anyone wants me to, im just not on my comp at the moment because its quite loud and the misses is asleep lol.

 

[jasobnd]

Try to uninstall everything. drivers, the lot. Carefully take card out and check all connections between card and fan. and make sure the power cable is connected properly. DO NOT MOVE / REMOVE / CHANGE fan.

Install once again. re install drivers and CCC. Keeping the game on default settings and GPU at default clocks. play the game and see what happens.

When you delete the drivers and CCC run a registry cleaner to make sure everything has been removed. when this is done you have narrowed down any stupid driver issues or any CCC settings which havent returned to default. and you also remove the possibility that any connections are loose / damaged.


Then you have the following options to consider

1. during your overclock something was damaged by heat like a diode which would mean that the card thinks its at normal temp when its actually burning. Hense the 33% fan but 83 degrees card.

2. how hot is your case?you overclock your GPU. do you overclock you CPU and ram. What cooling set up do you have? is it stock, high end air or water.

3. whats the air flow of you case like. is the hot air leaving the case due to a good air pressure or is it just swirling around getting hotter and hotter. How many fans in your case and what do they do.

just a few things that may be basic and even stupid (no offence ) but will help narrow down the posibilities or may even help you stumble on the cause.

 

[DinkyDogg]

Check The CCC fan settings and airflow of all your fans. I know when i OC'd my 5750 from 700/1150 to 800/1380 at first it went above 80C, but i was using the Auto fan control, its now set at 65% with only slight increase in sound and runs under 70C.