Is it ok to overclock your video card to the max right away?

[d3lit3]

^ Topic title. Does it make a difference whether you overclock little by little, bumping around 15mhz at a time until you reach the max as opposed to bumping up the voltage and increasing the clocks to almost the max right away? Would the former help you achieve a greater OC? Just asking because i just got a gtx 460 HAWK and I'm wondering the correct way to OC it. Thanks.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

The correct ( safe) way to OC anything is in small increments testing each increase. That being said you pretty much know that the GTX460 will go to 800-1600-2000 out of the box no matter the brand. So with a good card like the Hawk you can start "testing"a little higher than stock. I run mine at 821-1642-2000 and still have room to go higher but that speed seems to play everything I throw at it.

 

[KBentley57]

the small MHz at a time is a load of crap. I would scour the web for people who have the same card, and try their settings. Chances are, you will be close to stable. THEN you can start fine tuning for stability.

If you try to OC 10 MHz at a time you could spend days stress testing that thing instead of jumping into games. Not to mention all of the wasted energy during the test.

 

[Psychoteddy]

the small MHz at a time is a load of crap. I would scour the web for people who have the same card, and try their settings. Chances are, you will be close to stable. THEN you can start fine tuning for stability.

If you try to OC 10 MHz at a time you could spend days stress testing that thing instead of jumping into games. Not to mention all of the wasted energy during the test.

It takes patience and if you're not willing to sacrifice a few hours testing it then you shouldn't be doing it at all. You can seriously damage components by cranking everything up to their highest extent.

 

[KBentley57]

I didn't say to the highest extent, I implied to a reasonable average of several people's setup with the same components, there is a difference.

 

[julius 85]

I didn't say to the highest extent, I implied to a reasonable average of several people's setup with the same components, there is a difference.

You could damage your components that way too because overclocking works differently for everyone because some motherboards overclock better than others.

 

[KBentley57]

So I suppose for every OC you have started at stock, and ONLY incresed by 10 MHz at a time? stressed for hours, then incremented again 10MHz and repeat? no skipping around even a little? I call BS on that.

 

[Psychoteddy]

I didn't say to the highest extent, I implied to a reasonable average of several people's setup with the same components, there is a difference.

That's fine in that case, then. I thought you were saying peel the clock speeds from the ceiling, lol.

 

[Psychoteddy]

So I suppose for every OC you have started at stock, and ONLY incresed by 10 MHz at a time? stressed for hours, then incremented again 10MHz and repeat? no skipping around even a little? I call BS on that.

You don't have to stress test for hours with incremental increases. Run the game for 5 mins, bump, run for another 5, bump, wash, rinse, repeat.

Assuming you take a total of 10 minutes for this entire process each time, you can jump 60 MHz clock rate in an hour. That's more than adequate pacing if you're patient enough to do this sort of thing. Again, if you don't have patience, then happy GPU frying to you. Makes no difference to me.

As long as I have a stable OC on my graphics card, that I know will work no matter what, that's all that matters to me. A pissing contest over proper methods of GPU OC'ing doesn't really concern me because it's not my GPU being annihilated.

 

[julius 85]

So I suppose for every OC you have started at stock, and ONLY incresed by 10 MHz at a time? stressed for hours, then incremented again 10MHz and repeat? no skipping around even a little? I call BS on that.

Dude no offense but it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Graphics cards aren't something you can fix with a screwdriver ( [:julius 85:4] )when they break down and they aren't always cheap...