GTX 980 qoverclocking and frame-rate questions

Is it worth overclocking a GTX 980 is you are running at 1080p with everything one and at ultra? Right now i am maxed at 60FPS and don't seem to have any issues. The reason i ask is because i am trying out EVGA precision X and i get a decent overclock and it is very stable with no artifacting in heaven bench and hits about 60C, but it seems to not like this when i play games. So should i even bother or start with a small OC? and should i OC the memory on the card too?

The whole point of OCing is to get extra performance when you need it. If your already at some FPS over your refresh rate, all your OC is doing is eating power, generating heat, and putting more wear and tear on the system.

My recommendation:
Keep it at stock clocks. If/when you find a title that you notice could use some FPS improvement, you can either fiddle with lowering the graphics options, or go back to that overclock to see if that gets you over the hump. But I wouldn't burn an overclock 24/7 for no reason, especially if it's not netting you any tangible performance benefits.

And as a side note:
That's great if it's stable in one benchmark, but if it's not stable in another (or a game, or whatever), I don't think you can call it a stable overclock -- you've taken it a bit too far.

Thanks for the info, guess i will lower it to stock

It's worth finding the max stable overclock your card can handle with your cooling setup and acceptable volume levels because there will always be that unoptimized title where you can use extra frames.

And there's DSR - so it's not hard to bring games back down to 60 FPS if exceeded by cranking up the resolution. That way you can always put that extra power to use.

As t1337Dude says Trying DSR is not a bad idea. That basically runs your games at a higher resolution then downsamples them to your monitors Native Resolution of 1080P. That usually should give you a noticeable IQ boost at the cost of some performance.

On games that require very little horsepower from that card/s I would recommend trying that to see if you see any value in the gains and then if your lacking performance try overclocking, Basically a GTX 980 can add some more value in terms of image quality than you may be taking advantage of.

If you Try DSR and don't like the extra IQ improvements enough run it at stock because just like Brian_B said if your already running at your target fps overclocking is wasting resources and putting wear/tear on your system for nothing.

Option C = Get a new monitor to really tap into that card's power. I hear good things about Gsync from a few friends who run it.

Also one of the first things I do after I install new cards is finding my max stable overclock on them. (just good to know)