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Is My 6950s' Overclock Safe For Everyday Use?

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Hey folks,

Got a quick question involving the overclock I've got set on my ASUS DirectCU II CF 6950's.

My GPU Clocks are set at 950 MHz

My Memory Clocks are set at 1350 MHz

And my voltage is 1.25.

Temps. also don't go above 75*C when gaming

I'm using the 11.9 Drivers found on this site, (Which have honestly helped out my BC2 performance for the moment *fingers crossed* ), CCC to control the clocks, and ASUS Smart Doctor to control the voltage.

I've had trouble in the past and have read where other people have had trouble with smart doctor causing voltage to jump around but the newest version of SD seems to be completely jitter free. Voltage set at 1.25 is stable for me and hasn't budged.

Is this a safe place for my CF 6950's?, I've read where so many other people have raised their GPU core to over 1000 and their memory to over 1450 and are stable, (Not that I EVER plan to do this), and I would hope that an overclock a little milder than that would be OK for everyday use.

Thanks in advance.

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Best solution

If you are using CCC to adjust the core clock, you shouldn't even need to adjust the voltage. CCC will only let you OC so far before you actually need a voltage bump. Not to mention that even though you're OCing the cards, the core clock drops when its not needed to around 150Mhz.

So, unless you are gaming or doing something graphics intensive, your cards aren't actually OC'd. Its kind of like Intels SpeedStep program that lowers clock speeds when you aren't doing anything intensive. You should be perfectly fine where you're at.

Also, you don't want to OC your memory too high. For whatever reason when you are OCing, higher memory clocks can actually hinder performance. You really want to find your cards' sweet spot. Focus more on the core clock.

You will also find the MSI afterburner is a better program for montioring, OCing, voltage, and setting fan speeds than any other program.

Hope this helps!

Also, your temps are fine as long as its not running at 75C all the time. Use the MSI Afterburner program to manage your fans. I have mine set so that the higher my temps get, the faster my fans spin. In my experience, CCC does not effectively control your fan speeds. CCC is either going to have really low fan speeds or really high.
Overclocking Expert

I think the bigger question is why do you need to overclock xfired 6950's for everyday use?

Are they not playing the games you play well enough? Is your cpu even fast enough to keep up?
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Guess I should have included a little more info in my first post..

Here's my setup:

Intel i5-2500K @ 4.2GHz
2x ASUS DirectCU II 2GB Radeon HD 6950
16GB DDR3 Mushkin Silverline RAM
Asrock P67 Extreme 4 Mobo
1TB Samsung F1 Spinpoint HDD
HAF 922 Case
ASUS Optical Drive
CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX850
Windows 7 Home Premium x64
3x Dell 19" Monitors

I use this computer for about 90% gaming and the rest is used for School/MS Office/browsing etc.... I had been using the same computer (Dell Dimension 5150 Desktop) for the last 6 years and decided that it was time to do myself a favor and build me a computer worth having. To be completely honest I saw an Eyefinity setup for the first time was instantly in love with it :love: 

Not to mention the newest addition to my favorite series (BF3) being right around the corner :D 

The reason I don't use Afterburner for my main program is because I can't change the voltage with it. I've tried changing the config. files for it to unlock voltage controls but I cannot get it to work. I've been told/have read that since my cards are non-reference versions (ASUS) the only program I'm able to use for voltage tweaking is Smart Doctor. So far I've had no problems controlling my fan speed with CCC. I have both cards running at 65% fan speed during gaming, which for 2 cards is alot quieter than I expected thanks to the DirectCU II cooling. If I could successfully control voltage, fan speed, and OC with just Afterburner alone, trust me I would.

My temperatures don't stay at 75'C all the time, only when gaming, and that's only my top card running in CF, the bottom one doesn't even reach 60'C. At Idle my top card chills between 54-57'C, and the bottom one at 37'C. Since these are 3 slot cards they're right next to each other on the Mobo. My room is also not air conditioned right now so it's a little on the warm side. I'm sure the temps will be cooler come winter time. At MAX I've seen my top card reach 85"C... But even that's not extreme is it?

Finally as to why I would like to overclock my Crossfired 6950's for everyday use..... My monitors in Eyefinity push my resolution to 4080x1024. I know that isn't super huge or anything but it's a whole lot bigger than one of my 1280x1024 monitors by themselves. As of right now I can play BC2 with very very smooth frame rates at my resolution. I haven't used FRAPS in a while so I don't have an FPS number to give, I'll post back with one when I get the chance. Bottom line is I wanna safely push my 6950's as far as they'll go... We all want a little more graphics HP right? And as far as my CPU goes, I would hope an i5-2500K @ 4.2Ghz would be fast enough to keep up..

Thanks for the input so far guys.



EDIT: While running FRAPS in BC2, I am averaging almost 90 FPS throughout the whole game, while indoors my FPS is spiking into the 130's, while the lowest FPS i happened to notice was in the high 70's. I'm quite happy with that, I didn't think it was going that high :kaola: 
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