Suggestions as to overclocking Palit GTX 460 1GB?

[pathfindermolly]

Hi Guys & Gals,

Im interested in overclocking my Palit NE5X460SF1102 GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Sonic 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16. Iv been researching it a bit and i see there are two tools one is MSI AFTERBURNER and MSI KOMBUSTOR, however my MOBO is an ASUS...is it okay to use those tools? Or is there another one that would be better for this video card?

Also can you overclock the GPU strictly through the BIOS?

I overclocked my CPU through the BIOS with out using any kind of overclocking utility.

Any advice as to how to approch this would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Ed

 

[Toxxyc]

MSI Afterburner will work perfectly. MSI Kombustor is MSI's benchmarking tool (a bit wierd, but it works) that is installed together with Afterburner, it's not an overclocking utility.

GPU overclocking through the BIOS... I don't even think you can do that, TBH.

CPU overclocking is preferred in the BIOS, as you can access clock multipliers and FSB speeds from there.

MSI Afterburner will work on all PC's, all graphics card makers and all GPU's (well, given it's not a GeForce 2 or something), so use it with confidence. It really handles well as well, I use it and OC daily.

 

[pathfindermolly]

MSI Afterburner will work perfectly. MSI Kombustor is MSI's benchmarking tool (a bit wierd, but it works) that is installed together with Afterburner, it's not an overclocking utility.

GPU overclocking through the BIOS... I don't even think you can do that, TBH.

CPU overclocking is preferred in the BIOS, as you can access clock multipliers and FSB speeds from there.

MSI Afterburner will work on all PC's, all graphics card makers and all GPU's (well, given it's not a GeForce 2 or something), so use it with confidence. It really handles well as well, I use it and OC daily.

Thanks Toxxyc,

I will go ahead and install it. Also have you heard of a tool called NVMAX4? when i tried to install that one it said i needed a driver called Nvidia Detonator 4

In anycase, I am going to try and overclock my GTX460, iv never attempted this before so if anyone has any advanced knowledge and or suggestions as to exactly how to go about this i surly would appreciate it!

And as for what i was referring to about overclocking the GPU through the BIOS are the PCI-E Frequency setting as-well as the PCI-E Speed Spectrum Settings? Would those have any bearing on the graphics card performance?

Again thank you for your time in responding and helping out.
Ed

 

[Ari3sgr3gg0]

Msi afterburner has a very easy to use overclocking interface. First thing I'd do is set the fans manually up to 60% at least to help keep the graphics card cool. Increase the sliders by only 25mhz one at a time and do some form of testing to make sure it's stable. Bios overclocking is possible though it requires a full bios flash and quite frankly is too complicated for what you get out of it

 

[Toxxyc]

Thanks Toxxyc,

I will go ahead and install it. Also have you heard of a tool called NVMAX4? when i tried to install that one it said i needed a driver called Nvidia Detonator 4

In anycase, I am going to try and overclock my GTX460, iv never attempted this before so if anyone has any advanced knowledge and or suggestions as to exactly how to go about this i surly would appreciate it!

And as for what i was referring to about overclocking the GPU through the BIOS are the PCI-E Frequency setting as-well as the PCI-E Speed Spectrum Settings? Would those have any bearing on the graphics card performance?

Again thank you for your time in responding and helping out.
Ed

Never heard of NVMAX4 before. I'm quite new to overclocking, specially graphics cards, but I've learned a lot lately.

Try the following: Install Fraps and run it (it's a small screen recording program that displays FPS in the top left corner of your screen). Test the GFX performance with a game, something like Metro 2033 or Crysis 2, and note the FPS a specific mission runs at. Now:

Go into MSI Afterburner's options and enable manual Voltage control. Set the GPU core clock to 725MHz and the VCore voltage to 945mV. This should be stable. Keep the fan profile on "Automatic" (I prefer Auto, it works wonders for me), and make sure to tick the "Apply overclocking at system startup" option, otherwise it will revert to default with every restart. Test the performance again with the same game on the same graphical settings, and note the FPS. This is more or less the performance you get from an MSI GeForce GTX460 1GB Cyclone edition (a card like mine). From here on you can set the Core Clock to 800MHz and with a VCore of 960mV. Keep the temperatures in mind and run MSI Kombustor. View maximum temperatures, and if they remain under 60'C under load, go with a 825MHz OC with 975mV VCore. This is where my card runs at (my MSI one, that is), and I get exceptional performance and great cooling.

Remember the following:

Keep your load temperatures below 75'C. Safe ranges are usually below 90'C, but I don't like this amount of heat, as power usage go up enormously for very little performance increase.

STOP OVERCLOCKING once you see broken lines or funny crap on the screen. These are called "artifacts" and indicate possible damage occuring to the graphics card. Fall back to the last solid & stable OC immediately and stay there. It's not worth gaining 1FPS in a game and losing 1 year on your GFX card life.

If the OC fails (the PC restarts, bombs out or shuts down), increase the VCore by small amounts gradually. Small amounts mean 5mV at a time, waiting a minute or two while testing to ensure stability and moving on from there.

Any questions, come back here.

 

[bamanec]

Toxxyc this was a very well written post. And I may just follow the exact way you just described it with my own 460. Now I am running Two 460's in my system (will once it arrives) I heard that once you overclock the "Main" card the other card will follow suit is that correct?

 

[Toxxyc]

I'm not quite sure. I think you can OC the cards individually, but since I'm not yet running two GTX460's in SLI I really cannot tell. Also remember that overclocking a SLI setup card will dramatically increase produced heat on the top card, as ventilation between the two cards are always less than ideal. You can OC, go for it, but remember to change the cards every few months, so that they each get a turn to run a bit hotter than the other.

I've heard of people running two different branded GTX460's, one with a core clock of say 750MHz and the other with a core clock of 800MHz, and then they just OC the slower one to match the faster one or drop the faster one's clock to match the slower one. I'm getting SLI sometime with my next upgrade, so then I'll know better...

 

[bamanec]

Hmm, interesting I just heard that someone mentioned that when you Overclock the "Main" GPU the slave will match that speed. I was just wondering honestly, I decided to not do it for a while anyways. Only good thing is, the GTX460 have alot more room than the Bigger 580s and so on in between

 

[Toxxyc]

Like I said, I'm not sure, so I may very well be wrong. Also, I wouldn't even start overclocking SLI setups like that, two GTX460's should last you a while at stock or even reduced speeds. I'm looking at SLI in the near future as well, and I intend on dropping the GPU speeds to reference (675MHz), as I can already max out all my games with the single GPU (OC'd) and I don't see the why I would need more + more power if it's not going to be used.

 

[pathfindermolly]

Never heard of NVMAX4 before. I'm quite new to overclocking, specially graphics cards, but I've learned a lot lately.

Try the following: Install Fraps and run it (it's a small screen recording program that displays FPS in the top left corner of your screen). Test the GFX performance with a game, something like Metro 2033 or Crysis 2, and note the FPS a specific mission runs at. Now:

Go into MSI Afterburner's options and enable manual Voltage control. Set the GPU core clock to 725MHz and the VCore voltage to 945mV. This should be stable. Keep the fan profile on "Automatic" (I prefer Auto, it works wonders for me), and make sure to tick the "Apply overclocking at system startup" option, otherwise it will revert to default with every restart. Test the performance again with the same game on the same graphical settings, and note the FPS. This is more or less the performance you get from an MSI GeForce GTX460 1GB Cyclone edition (a card like mine). From here on you can set the Core Clock to 800MHz and with a VCore of 960mV. Keep the temperatures in mind and run MSI Kombustor. View maximum temperatures, and if they remain under 60'C under load, go with a 825MHz OC with 975mV VCore. This is where my card runs at (my MSI one, that is), and I get exceptional performance and great cooling.

Remember the following:

Keep your load temperatures below 75'C. Safe ranges are usually below 90'C, but I don't like this amount of heat, as power usage go up enormously for very little performance increase.

STOP OVERCLOCKING once you see broken lines or funny crap on the screen. These are called "artifacts" and indicate possible damage occuring to the graphics card. Fall back to the last solid & stable OC immediately and stay there. It's not worth gaining 1FPS in a game and losing 1 year on your GFX card life.




If the OC fails (the PC restarts, bombs out or shuts down), increase the VCore by small amounts gradually. Small amounts mean 5mV at a time, waiting a minute or two while testing to ensure stability and moving on from there.

Any questions, come back here.

Hey TOXXYC;

So i went ahead and followed your directions, however iv got two things im confuessed about, first should i be worried about changing the Shader Clock setting? And second i dont play and games, so is there a benchmark program i can run instead of installing FRAPS and follow your suggesting...
"Test the GFX performance with a game, something like Metro 2033 or Crysis 2, and note the FPS a specific mission runs at."

Im mainly using photo editing programs, and video conversion.

I used to have two Palit NE5X460SF1102 GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Sonic 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 installed in SLI, however i thought it was overkill and i was slightly concerned about the Heat. Right now iv got the i7860 overclocked to 3.92ghz, i did have it running at 4.2 for a while however i just felt i was pushing the cpu harder than i needed it to. Im very new to overclocking, and im really trying to learn how to overclock the GPU aswell as the ram...but id like to get the GPU set nice and stable the best it can be set to....so id just like to be able to set the settings and run somekind of test to make sure its stable...do you think i should run pcmark 6? Pcmark 7?? or anyother programs to test the GPU?

Thanks again!!
Ed

 

[Toxxyc]

If you're not playing games, you can test the performance with video conversion as well - the GPU's are used for it as well. Take a specific video file, convert it to a set format and data rate and see how long it takes. Repeat with the overclocked GPU. Now, doing this with the SLI setup will show a difference. You gain much performance with the SLI setup, and the Fermi architecture is seriously good with SLI scaling, even delivering a 100% increase in performance in certain applications, so it's not overkill, it's awesome...

Either way, when it comes to photo editing the CPU is used, but the GPU is used much more when video is concerned. In both your RAM is very important, but not so much the RAM speed, so refrain from overclocking it (both normal RAM and VRAM, cooling and increase in performance is pathetic in both situations).

Easiest overclocking is with MSI Afterburner, that's a fact and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Afterburner allows you to OC the Shader Clock, but I think you've noticed that it keeps overclocking itself to double your GPU clock speed automatically, so you can just leave it as it is and not worry about it too much. You're way too new to overclocking to start playing with it, hell, even I am (seriously, I've only been lightly overclocking for a few months now).

If you are really looking for a benchmarking tool to use instead of a game, try 3DMark, Prime95 or CPU-Z (not sure if it allows benchmarking). Try to avoid using FurMark for your GPU, as I've heard that it degrades the GPU life quickly with it's benchmark. Rather stick with 3DMark and Prime95. Both are very popular and used often by many people.