6800GT at Ultra speeds

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Nobi125

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jun 7, 2005
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I just recently got a BFG 6800GT OC and want to run it at Ultra speeds but I am kinda worried about ruining it. At stock settings my current temps are 60 idle and 68-69 under load. Do I need to improve cooling before overclocking? Or is there anything else I should know?

Edit: By Improving cooling, I meant getting more case fans, or PCI exhaust fan.....etc. Not replacing the card's cooling.

Also, at what temps will the card have problems?
 
IMO, it would have been worth the extra money to just buy the Ultra, because you'll lose your lifetime warrenty trying to improve cooling.

Don't laugh, but this is what I did, a minor thing, but it did help improve cooling a little. You may want to try that if you have any 80mm lying around.. that may take some more C off your temp.
 
but don't they come out the box overclocked? so you basically void warranty when you go above their OC speeds?
 
Yes, it's warrentied at their OC speeds, but if you overclock further you void the warrenty.
 
ya but who the feck is gonna know that? if it breaks down, and you have modified cooling, just remove it and put on stock and rma it. simple. didnt say it was right, but it works. besides, like your added cooling actualy broke it? doubt it, so dont sweat it.
 
the guys right, there's no way for them to tell if you ever removed the stock hsf or overlocked it past their warranted speeds.
 
aldy402 said:
the guys right, there's no way for them to tell if you ever removed the stock hsf or overlocked it past their warranted speeds.
Click to expand...
Unless they see the burn marks.....;)

jk. Seriously though, I highly doubt it's gonna just break running at ultra speeds. I have a brand new Leadtek 6800GT that I wanna overclock but am a little worried as well so I'm reluctant to go for it. And there's not much need at the moment :D.

 
you really shouldnt be worried about damaging the card when overclocking, just do it with some common sense.

analyze the temps at stock speeds, then OC in small 3mhz increments then run benchmark tests or loop some timedemos. Check the temps after each OC and jus keep be aware of them. Video card Ocing is extremely simple compared to CPU OCing
 
Breaking something from your own stupidity and making them pay for it is, well, frowned upon around here to say the least. :rolleyes: You fuck it up, you pay for it.

And I run my Ultra overclocked at 440MHz on the core, 1.19GHz on the memory every day...and I'm personally not worried. Hell, I benchmark it at 459MHz/1.22GHz. But, if it fries, then it's my fault.
 
hell ive had 3 9800's fry on me. lol, on the 3rd rma, i got back a 9800 256 instead of my 128, whitch i flashed too xt. has that for a feckin moral of the story? and ocing , its really kinda hard to fry a card from ocing, cause ull see artifacts when uve gone too far, or itle just shut down. i wouldnt be worried at all, in fact im not. go ahead and oc all u want. why u think alot of manufactuars ad in ocing tools w/ thier bundle? oh ya maybe it was 2 9800's fry on me i dunno.
 
As long as your not a complete moron, there's no danger in overclocking. You just have to take it slow, pay attention, and be observant of changes. Video card overclocking, as said, is pretty easy, just take you time. Adding an extra fan or something might help a bit, but it wont do much. If there's no fan there, introducing some air will help. I doubt you'll get very far on stock cooling, but I got Zalman's VF700-Cu kit and it worked wonderfully. So far I've taken my 6800GT to 435/1180. I could go higher if I coult give it more volts, but the circuitry on it is evidently cheap, so it craps out on me when I try to overvolt. That's right, I got screen locks and everything, took the volt mod off, and she still runs like a beut everyday at 425/1150

That said, you arent even overvolting. Basically just watch your temps and for artifacts. Rather then getting artifacts, my card would just start pausing mid-test/mid-game and then resume 5 seconds later at much lower performance, so watch for that too.

First off, play a game for a half hour or so to get your card warm (starting off cold will give you inaccurate results). First up the core, raise it 5 MHz at a time and test with a modern benchmark/game (3d Mark 05, HL2, Spliter cell 3, all those work well). If after about 5 minutes you see nothing, raise it another 5 MHz. When you really start getting high (say 430) start raising it by 3MHz or so. When you start getting errors/artifacts/pauses, back off 5MHz or so. Then start raising your memory using the same process (memory I think goes up by 10MHz at a time by default using coolbits, so use that). After you thing you've found it, play a game at those settings for at least an hour and see if you get any errors again. If you do, back it down, if you dont, you're good. Beaware that the more demanding the game, the more accurate a result you'll get. 435/1180 runs fine for me in HL2 and 3dMark05, but I can only run 427/1160 in SC3, which is much more graphically intensive.

Dont expect anything big with stock cooling, but you should be able to get something. And for all those morons on their high horses about overclocking and RMAing and blah blah blah can screw. I dont think half of them have ever been without money nor had to work with it. If you dont just, by chance, have a bad card (which is rare), RMA it. These companies have techs that inspect the hardware. Compared to thousands of cards that they punch out everyday, the one you RMA is a drop in the bucket, they're in business, so are you. Good luck. Like I said, take it slow and there's no problem.
 
I would try to cool down the card by having a fan on it to get the temperature down a bit. These cards will overclock to ultra speed or beyond. I had mine run at 460/1200 but then again i have water cooling. Overclocking it beyond BFG's spec will void the warranty. However, from what I have seen and heard from various sources, it is hard for BFG to find out whether your card fried due to overclocking. Though I have been lucky and have my card run normally now at 435/1130 with 49C loading temperature (due to watercooling) without it frying on me, many people I have talked to who have fried their cards have had successful RMA experiences with BFG.
I would recommend going slow in increasing the core and memory settings when overclocking. Increase each in 5Mhz increments with testing in between (3dmark05 or farcry benchmark for an hour or so) to make sure the card can handle the new speed.
Good luck and go slow.
 
Thanks for the info guys, but I have another question. At what level do the temps get dangerous for the card??
 
A BFG tech person I know told me that he recommends having the cards lower than 75 to 80C. His words were that these cards go that high anyways at load which I find that hard to believe but he must know what he is talking about. Above that, "it is anyone's guess when and at what temp the cards will fail".
 
They're rated at 120C for fail temp, but I think that's a little high. I was getting errors on my card when it was reading a load of 76C :confused:
 
nobody in their right mind buys a computer part for a waranty. If you're not going to overclock it, why buy it?
 
great, another simple evil thread turns into "well if u OC it, U void the warranty, then you shouldn't RMA u IDIOT!"

Please keep this to yourself, saying this DOES NOT make the person change thier ways with an expensive card! It just causes flaming and a thread lock down, back to subject!
 
tsuehpsyde said:
Yes, it's warrentied at their OC speeds, but if you overclock further you void the warrenty.
Click to expand...

They cant tell that you overclocked, so technically the warranty is only voided by doing a flash or changing the card in a physical way.

I mean come on, if your un-modded yet overclocked 6800gt broke, you'd send it back. Stop with this charade of legitemacy and just tell it like it is.

To the topic starter. Overclocking card without flash/changing cooling pretty much does no damage to the card at all, so long as your cases cooling can dissipate the extra heat. As no extra voltage is going through it, then theres no worries, o/c away.

Disclaimer: If you dislike/disagree with my opinions/views and wish to, in some way, try and convince or prove me otherwise, go right ahead, i like listening to people make fools of themselves :)
 
my load temp is 44C with it running 1.4v instead of the gt 1.3v and idle is 40C :) and the arctic silver hasnt even finished settling in yet ;)
http://img137.echo.cx/img137/1733/untitled1qi.jpg
thats 3 loops of doom 3 timedemo as you see the load and idle doesnt really change with time :D

the funny part is since i do not have the dual molex i would need to physically modify the card to do more voltage :( and i been too lazy to find the max core and memory,it runs at 450/1200 but its unstable and will crash within a hour or so playing games
 
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