Planning to OC my HD 6870 with its stock cooler.....

[kentthegamer]

im planning to oc my 6870, powercolor, oc it a bit -- or maybe just right.. with its stock cooler,

im expecting for the worst that might happen, will it explode? LOL.. or will it heat up? or does the cooler
keep the 6870 in place? im a bit nervous lol coz it's a big card....... bigger than my old gts450 xD

so thanks in advance, im looking forward to all your feedbacks and comments.

PS : Merry x-mas in advance! 7 months to go!! lol

 

[xtreme5]

try to squeeze it a bit not much otherwise the fan will be broke or you will get BSOD, i'm afraid if you have an MSI brand which allow you to overclock it to it's maximum level cause msi are often cooler brand with big 2 fans.

 

[C12Friedman]

The included heatsink should get you some decent numbers. The worse that will happen is you'll lose your display from it... hehe, always fun especially if you do not have on board graphics on your mobo. Have a thermal monitoring program open when you do it (GPU-Z is good) and increase in small increments until heat (or fan noise) becomes an issue or the picture starts doing crazy things (artifacting, hesitating, etc.. ) under load - back it off from there.
A good program to stress the GPU is Furmark, it's free and available here
http://www.geeks3d.com/20120510/furmark-1-10-1-gpu-burn-in-stress-test-videocard-geforce-radeon/
Take small steps, good luck...

 

[photonboy]

Furmark:
Different programs cause different amounts of heat. Furmark is a program that will stress your GPU more than any other program.

The advantage of Furmark is that if your card can handle that, it can handle any other program. The disadvantage is that it can kill your card.

So if you plan to overclock your GPU, do so in very small increments. You could jump to say 5% overclock then run Furmark for at least 5 minutes then jump up 1% at a time. If you hit ARTIFACTS, jump down at least 3%.

*I don't recommend overclocking pre-HD7000 series graphics cards as they don't seem to be that overclockable. The new 28nm process (HD7000) seems more overclockable. Still, you might get a stable 10% overclock but it's also hard to say if that will kill your GPU over time too.

 

[kentthegamer]

Furmark:
Different programs cause different amounts of heat. Furmark is a program that will stress your GPU more than any other program.

The advantage of Furmark is that if your card can handle that, it can handle any other program. The disadvantage is that it can kill your card.

So if you plan to overclock your GPU, do so in very small increments. You could jump to say 5% overclock then run Furmark for at least 5 minutes then jump up 1% at a time. If you hit ARTIFACTS, jump down at least 3%.

*I don't recommend overclocking pre-HD7000 series graphics cards as they don't seem to be that overclockable. The new 28nm process (HD7000) seems more overclockable. Still, you might get a stable 10% overclock but it's also hard to say if that will kill your GPU over time too.

oh , now that you've mentioned HD 7000 series....

what do you mean pre-HD7000 series? now im planning to get an HD 7850 and overclock it... is it oc'able?

 

[amuffin]

Either crossfire your 6870 or overclock it.