back to the basics (ish)

[SilverFord01]

Hey y'all, I'm fairly new to the user interface controlling of systems and components. I built a gaming rig and made it work but didn't get much past the "plug & play" part of the machine. I built this machine in December 2014, and recently had to have my OS wiped & reinstalled due to OS corruption (still no idea how it corrupted, it worked fine earlier in the day). Anyways, since the fresh install, all my control software had to be reinstalled, all drivers updated, games installed fresh etc. My question is, I have read that the card I have, a PNY GeForce GTX 550 Ti XLR8 can be OC'd. (Yes I know it's an old card, but bare with me) I am in the market for a GTX 1060 6gb, but before I buy and install, I want to learn how to OC a GPU with a card I wont feel bad about blowing up if I make a mistake. I'm just learning to OC the CPU, but as it goes I don't even know where to start with the GPU. I have no control center or controlling software installed to see or adjust the actions of the GPU and would prefer something from NVIDIA if they make said products. The board I bought for the build came with "Control Center" and "ClickBIOS 2" software to make user interface easier, I was curious if there is such a product for the NVIDIA GPU as well? System build is a MSI Z77MPower, Intel core i5 3570k OC'd to 4.2 (using the OC Genie atm), 3.5" HDD, 8gb ram in dual channel and a Zalman 120mm closed loop liquid cooler stuffed in a CoolerMaster CM Storm Stryker case.

 

[Shektron]

You can use MSI Afterburner. It's quite simple to OC using MSI Afterburner - turn the power target to the max, and then gradually keep increasing the clock speed slider and, along with it, the voltage slider(careful with the voltage, that's what fries stuff usually - take it extremely slow) and keep stress testing each time, until you hit a point the system is no longer stable, and then move to the previous stable setting, and you're done OCing the GPU.
You can always check online guides/articles for in-depth instructions on OC.

 

[SilverFord01]

From what I've read about CPU overclock, voltage should be increased as little as possible when pursuing max performance, I can understand that same theory being true for a GPU. I had considered the MSI tool, I just wasn't sure if it would work since the card is a PNY brand, regardless of the mobo being MSI. I just finished downloading the NVIDIA Experience updater, I assume I would need to make sure I have the latest drivers before beginning this venture? are there any other tools or interfaces I should have on hand to check performance or make adjustments as well? I currently use CPU-Z for basic multifunction system info reference but it gives minimal information on the graphics tab.

 

[Shektron]

Yes, keeping the voltage as low as possible is usually recommended.

MSI Afterburner works with all brands, no issues there.

Yes, latest drivers is also recommended.

You should install HWMonitor just for temperatures, though Afterburner's got you covered there, and maybe an application of your preference to stress test the GPU(games is a possibility, but synthetic tests do it better). I'd recommend AIDA64.

 

[SilverFord01]

Any suggestions on where to get AIDA64 or is it like CPU-Z with its own website? (my recent hard drive corrpution has me slightly skittish)

 

[Shektron]

http://download.aida64.com/aida64extreme590.exe

Here you go .

 

[SilverFord01]

Much appreciated. Ran a benchmark on the stock configuration. Is there reference material somewhere that I can run my results against to see how well it's performing, or need I only bother with pre-oc vs post-oc numbers?

 

[SilverFord01]

One other thing, I noticed when I opened Afterburner that my voltage was set to 1150mV, and the slider is near full to the right. I set it lower to 950mV because that's what it runs at without a load on it. Is it just me or is 1150mV high for a card that hasn't been tuned yet?

 

[Shektron]

If you want to compare, it is better you run UserBenchmark, because that gives you a very nice idea of how well your components are performing compared to what they should be. It gives you a percentile of how many people's similarly-specced PC performed better/worse than yours. It's a good way to see if your PC is performing at par with others.

You should check pre-OC and post-OC numbers as well, but they're not everything.

MSI Afterburner usually allows only safe voltages to be provided to the card, so if your card is not running hot/noisy at 1150 mV, you can run it at that. Afterburner usually wouldn't allow you to turn up the voltage dangerously high, but you never know. But 1150 mV is not dangerously high.

 

[SilverFord01]

Ok thanks. Once I hit 1k MHZ on the core clock, Heaven crashed and it jumped the voltage back up to 1125 and dropped the core back to 900. I guess it's time to see where I land with higher voltage. So far I haven't broken through 70 Celsius on the GPU.

 

[Shektron]

70C under load, I presume? Don't go above 75C under load...

Good luck!

 

[SilverFord01]

Yes under load, it only varies about 3 degrees between 950v and 1125v. So I think temp control will be ok

 

[Shektron]

Well then get to raising those clocks. OC the silicon out of that GPU .

 

[SilverFord01]

I'm gonna work on it later tonight or this weekend. I guess when Heaven crashes again when I get done tuning voltage I can play with memory clock?

 

[Shektron]

Yup, memory clocks after core. Memory clocks really speed things up - so don't hesitate pushing it as far as it would go. MSI Afterburner really has enough safety features to avoid permanent damage to the GPU - you can play with it without too much worry.

 

[SilverFord01]

Ok I thought I was ready to continue. However: I recently inherited a 32 inch tv monitor from a relative (Vizio flatscreen) it's running on HDMI and set very high on research due to making the display fit within the dimensions of the screen. Beforehand I was running dual display, 1 x 24 inch on VGA and 1 x 22 inch on HDMI. I was getting 815 as my top score with the dual setup, just rand a heaven test and came up with 427. Since I changed monitors need I start over or can I continue with my current top numbers and begin adjusting memory?

 

[Shektron]

No, you can continue overclocking - monitors don't really matter to overclocking. Overclocking makes your GPU work faster, so it doesn't really care if you changed the monitor - but if the resolution of the monitor is different, performance will, of course, change.

 

[SilverFord01]

Alright I'm back on VGA since a few of my games didn't wanna play ball with the higher resolution on HDMI. I ran another Heaven benchmark with my core clock set to 1010 (10hz over last successful test) and memory clock set to 2072 (20 hz over last successful test) and experienced not just a benchmark crash, but entire OS crash and auto-reboot. Upon restart was met with a "MSIRegister-
Bad Image" error "C:\\Windows\system32\rsaenh.dll is not designed to run on windows or contains an error." Is this normal or need I dig deeper? I'm not exactly recording any operations logs or datalogs.

 

[Shektron]

Run an SFC scan, it might detect the problem. I really am not sure about this...but this doesn't look normal. Don't overclock as of now. Is everything running normally once you close this? Just make sure everything's running fine, including MSI Afterburner. Restart a few times, see if you get the error again - if you do, run that sfc scan, re-install Afterburner. See if this fixes it.

 

[Shektron]

It could be a disk problem... just run that SFC scan.

 

[SilverFord01]

Imy typing this on a tablet. I had to restart twice. On the second restart I got everything back, everything works except games. I have audio but no video, and the machine is incredibly sluggish since launching a game. I'm gonna put it to bed for the night and see if it turns out better tomorrow. I have an asus 1060 strix oc on the way so if I fried something it won't be long before I'm back in action.

 

[Shektron]

Do report what happens tomorrow...I'm pretty confused about what seems to have gone wrong here... You really can't hurt your GPU with MSI Afterburner usually, but who knows, there's always exceptions. I hope it works fine tomorrow. I'm really hoping I didn't give any bad advice here.

 

[SilverFord01]

I doubt you did. If the voltage was going to hurt it, that would have happened days ago. It may be that I'm just working this 6 year old gpu to death. When benchmark goes blackscreen then comes back, but reports a minimum fps of 5 or less, that's a benchmark crash, Correct? I'm not incredibly versed in how all the hardware interfaces on an expert level, but the only difference here compared to past benchmarks is the memory clock was boosted by 20Hz. I can't see that crashing the whole OS. So far I've only had what I described earlier, black scree NC followed by the bench test continuing, just with a very low minimum fps.

 

[Nighterlev]

Idk what Shektron has been telling you but from the sound of it, it seems like your GPU is unstable at the moment. Reset everything back to the default settings is what I'd recommend.

Although Idk why you decreased your GPU voltage from the default settings, don't do that lol. Those default settings were placed there by the manufactor. When your GPU isn't on load, it'll obviously use less voltage/less watts then what's listed, but when it is on load, it'll use the full voltage that you placed for the GPU it-self.

Oh and DO NOT over-clock your memory to far, usually just over-clock the GPU clock speeds and don't mess with the memory at all honestly. You'll get way better FPS by doing the clock speeds instead, as over-clocking the memory can really limit what you're able to achieve by over-clocking it.

From the sounds of it though, it sounds like your GPU became unstable and resulted in a full system crash. You should push the settings back a bit, or just make everything default and go from there. That's my best advice to you honestly.

BTW My best suggestions for over-clocking the GTX 550Ti is by simply googling it, see how far you can actually push the GTX 550Ti altogether. Look at videos of people who over-clocked it, and other forums etc. You should find plenty, abit probably a bunch of old ones though because the 550Ti is a really old GPU altogether at this point.

 

[SilverFord01]

Yeah I know age is a factor here, I knew I was getting a current Gen card and like I mentioned toward the beginning if the thread I wanted to learn how to OC on something I wouldn't feel bad about blowing up. So far his advice has been sound, I guess I just got a bit carried away with tuning. The only reason I decelerate the voltage was because everywhere I look I see people saying "be careful about voltage, stay away from max power" etc and when I initially opened Afterburner, the voltage slider was only 35mV from maximum. However I put it back to the 112mV it was originally set ant and haven't had any temp issues (the hottest I've ever seen is 71 Celsius and that was just for a second) so far I've gotten about a 2.7 fps gain, I wanted to see if boosting the memory clock would compound the core clock gains. Aparently, it does not.