OC'ing a GTX 970 Strix help

Shoud i overcock for 1440p gaming?

  • Yes

    Votes: 2 100.0%
  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • i love you!

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    2

Radion Barakov

Honorable
Jan 16, 2014
46
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10,560
Hey guys,
So, i am planning to get a GTX 970 Strix with a 4790K and i want to OC the GPU with the GPU Tweak from ASUS but i need help with that.
I'm gonna get a 600w PSU, i am going to have only one GPU so no SLI.
If you could tell me the perfect OC spots (clock speeds and power consumption) for this specific card it would be great.

PS:Monitor is Asus ROG Swift 1440p 144Mhz RR G-Sync

TNX!
 
G

Guest

Guest
These cards are basically made for overclocking. They do it with little fuss.
Overclocking will net you a pretty decent performance boost for 1440p.

For starters, I would advise against GPU-Tweak. I used it initially and it's not a bad program, MSI Afterburner just feels more stable and overall more maintained. Both will get you to where you need to go though.

Before you overclock, download GPU-Z, Afterburner, and some benchmarks such as Unigine Heaven, Unigine Valley and 3DMark. In addition to some real-world games of course.
Overclocking a modern GPU is remarkably simple in all honestly. Voltage caps are in place to prevent damaging the card.

Using Afterburner, you can immediately set the voltage to its maximum allowance, this will be set at the factory and it varies by chip binning. Don't worry it's not a huge boost, just enough really. Compared to CPU overclocking it's actually quite straight forward, barriers are pretty much put in place to make it fool proof.
If you're feeling adventurous later on you could drop the voltage down a bit until you see instability. There's little point though.

Up the Power Limit to either 110 or 120%. This allows the card to draw more watts from the supply, generally 110% will be fine but if your card is capable of a super-high clock it may need the 120. I've never observed mine go any higher than 108% unless it's using a program deliberately designed to make things toasty (Such as Furmark or Firestrike).

Also, it's not really necessary because these cards all run so cool, but a temp target of about 80c will be good. It will likely never reach that.

Now begin your overclock. Use GPU-Z to monitor the final resulting clock speeds. These Maxwell chips overclock incredibly well therefore you should be able to achieve between 1280 and 1340+ on the core quite easily (Boosting to around 1400-1500 respectively). Since it's your first overclock it's recommended that you up things in increments of 50Mhz and running a bench such as Heaven each time. Look out for throttling (The monitor should tell you this bit) or artifacts on screen, when you see them; your clock is too high.

As for the memory frequency, an effective rate of between 7700 and 8000 (8GHz) has been consistently achieved. The Samsung modules are a god send.
Memory doesn't effect things quite as much as the core, but it helps. It can be difficult to see effective rates in Afterburner and GPU-Z. As a reference, 7800MHz effective is 1950 in GPU-Z. Basically take the number and x4.

Then run a course of benchmarks and games. Watch for any artifacts or crashes. Job done.
Also watch the temps, but... yeah they're not going to be a problem.
 

Radion Barakov

Honorable
Jan 16, 2014
46
0
10,560
Man... this helped a lot.
Sorry i didn't answered before, i wasn't in town.
I'm gonna to some FAR (Furious Academic Reaserch) on this thing and as soon as i get it i will tell you the resaults.
BTW, if i change the thermal paste on the GPU to something better (like Prolimatech PK - 3 Nano Aluminium), is it gonna be cooler?
 
G

Guest

Guest
Probably I guess, but there's a chance of messing it up in the process.
These cards run so cool that there's really no need to.
 

interpolnyc

Reputable
Oct 15, 2014
37
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4,540
I don´t think you should mess with the vcore.

It´s not really neccesary.

I have an MSI 970 and just sliding 2 bars in MSI Afterburner went to gpu 1329 to 1450 and vram 3506mhz to 4001 mhz (8ghz effective)

All without increasing TDP or Vcore volts.

If you want to push more to the limit its up tou you.

Good luck

PS Remember that ASUS STRIX have less power connector and MAY have lower OC capabilities.