How can I be sure my OC is stable

[Peaks]

Hey,

I have an Asus GTX 570 Direct CUII.

I have been trying a lot of different mem/core frequency combination and have been using the Unigine Heaven benchmark stress test my overclock. Unigine has returned stable results after hours of testing for the following.:

Core: 860, Mem: Stock, Vcore: 1.05v
Core 860, Mem: 4000Mhz, Vcore: 1.05v

In both cases the fan speed has been set to min and the temps have been in the low-mid 70's

However, my GPU still seems to crash in some games. For example, Crysis Warhead crashed with core speed of 860 and mem speed of 4000, as did Splinter Cell Conviction and today AvP crashed with a core speed of 860 and mem at stock. In all cases voltage was set to 1.05v.

So I am not too sure what I am doing wrong here, is Unigine just not a very good tool to stress test and OC? What should I be using?

- Thanks

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

One reason your games could be crashing could be because it's over heating. When I overclocked my card it kept crashing is CoD: Black Ops; but mine passed the Unigine Heaven bench too. I realized that my fans were not set to what I wanted them too, so I fixed that and it worked fine.

One thing I would also use is FurMark; that will get the highest temps possible. So if it passes that it should be fine.

http://www.ozone3d.net/benchmarks/fur/

 

[cburke82]

Are you getting any of the green and purple blobs at all when playing games? And are you looking at temps that occur wile playing games and not just on benchmarks? I would say if your passingh benchmarks and not getting hot you could also try raising the voltage a bit more and see if that stops some of the crashes of coarse dont do that if the card is close to getting to hot.

 

[Peaks]

Ah thanks guys.

@IAreKyleW00t : Yes, when AvP crashed the other night I had the Asus SmartDocter util open in the background and it did seem like the crash may have been caused by temps as the temps were very high! After tweaking my fan profile a little I was able to play AvP without any issues last night, so I think you are right.

I guess Unigine Heaven doesn't produce that much heat? If you dont mind, what settings do you normally run when benchmarking with Heaven. I usually run everything on full apart from AA on 4x and Tessellation set to medium (or something, cant remember the exact term).

@cburke82: No I am not getting the blobs, infact that is how I determine the stability in Heaven. If I get the blobs, or any kind of rendering issues, then I determine its not stable! When AvP crashed the other night however, I was noticing some strange, pixel size oddness in the top corner, but didn't see them last night.

Could artefacts be caused by an overheating GPU or do they solely mean that the GPU cant take that frequency?

 

[Tamz_msc]

The ASUS Smart Doctor has utility been known to cause crashes in some cases. Disable that and use MSI AfterBurner for OCing.

 

[Peaks]

Really? Thanks for the tip. I was thinking of doing that anyway as the fan control is pretty terrible. Unless you set a fixed speed you can never get the fan to run at its minimum setting which is annoying because when in the desktop, I dont want my fan running at around 20%!

 

[Tamz_msc]

Afterburner offers much better fan control. It works on almost all cards on the market.

 

[Peaks]

Cool! Can I assume that the settings I have in SmartDoctor will be stable in AfterBurner? Pretty stupid question but just making sure.....

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

Cool! Can I assume that the settings I have in SmartDoctor will be stable in AfterBurner? Pretty stupid question but just making sure.....

Yes, they should be stable; considering it's still the same graphics card, haha. But the settings I use in Heaven Benchmark are these.

API: DirectX 11
Stereo 3D: disabled
Shaders: High
Tessellation: Normal
Anisotropy: 16
Anti-aliasing: 4x
Full-screen: ☑ (checked)
Resolution: 1920x1080

I set it to that because those are the settings I use playing any other game, So you can adjust it accordingly to what you normally do.
And Tamz is right, from what I've heard and read ASUS's overclocking software isn't that great... I would agree that MSI's Afterburner is WAY better.

EDIT:
Yes, artifacts can be caused by a variety of things such as overheating, having too much voltage or even not enough voltage. I wouldn't mess with the voltages unless you know what your doing and have done some research on it.

 

[Peaks]

They are the same settings I use

Hmmm, I have installed MSI Afterburner but for some reason I cant change the voltages. The slider is greyed out and I have all the options for voltage controls tick in the settings. Any Ideas?

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

Go to Settings > General Tab > Safety Properties > Unlock Voltage Control.

If you still can't do it then your Graphics Card isn't supported for Voltage Control. My PNY GTS 450 is able to use voltage control but I think only some non-MSI cards can. :\

 

[AdrianPerry]

Yeah unlock voltage control and tick the "voltage monitoring" box aswell. Before you just jump right in and start moving sliders, i suggest checking out either some youtube vids or forums for some "stable overclock" settings. This will first of all almost guarantee a stable overclock, and second of all if it doesnt work it could point towards there being a problem with components.

 

[Peaks]

I am a little confused as I know my card supports voltage control as I have been altering the voltage in Asus SmartDoctor. I had all options controls ticked in Afterburner yet the tab was still locked. Now I have reinstalled Smart Doctor and I cant alter the voltage in that either???

EDIT: After installing the version of SmartDoctor from the CD that came with my GPU I can alter the Vcore again. Is there some setting I have to alter in one of the AfterBurner files to open up support for my card or something?

 

[IAreKyleW00t]

AfterBurner only supports voltage control for MSI cards and some other brand cards. I never used ASUS SmartDoctor, so I wouldn't know why that's acting weird.