780ti Overclocking

digitalgunfire

Limp Gawd
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Aug 26, 2008
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I've Googled a bit but haven't found exactly what I'm looking for. Obviously the process is a little different with these cards than my 570s were..

I got my 780ti yesterday. I downloaded Afterburner 3, set the power to 106%, target as temperature at 95c. I put +150MHz on the core and +350MHz on the memory. Played BF4 for 3 hours or so with no stability problems, didn't get above 80c or so with the fan at 45-50%. I see when people discuss the 780 there is the regular clock and 'boost clock' - I'm not sure how to tell which one is being displayed as there is no separate monitor in AB3 for core vs boost clock. So when I look at other stable overclocks, I am not sure whether I have a lot more room to play or whether I should leave it as is.

Not looking to take this thing to its limits, just seems like these cards have a lot of headroom and I don't want to leave free performance on the table!
 
What I would suggest is using the onscreen display that comes with Afterburner; go in options and select which items you want to appear in the overlay. You can select items such as GPU clock, memory clock, etc. If you select GPU clock, the boost clock will appear if you're playing a demanding 3d game - however keep in mind that Kepler has dynamic power adjustment, so if you're playing a non demanding game the clockspeeds will be lower. Think of something like Darksiders. Very undemanding game that could be played on low end hardware - if you play that on a 780ti, it will not boost to max.

So to guage your boost speed, use the overlay and play the most demanding 3d games you have in your library.

But as far as your question, the overlay will display your boost clock assuming the 3d application is demanding enough.
 
But as far as your question, the overlay will display your boost clock assuming the 3d application is demanding enough.

Cool, that's pretty much what I understood, just wanted to make sure I was right. I did not know about the overlay, I had been using the detachable monitor on my 2nd monitor, I'll give the overlay a shot too.

From looking at other stable/daily OCs, it looks like +150/+350 is pretty decent, I see other people have taken it a bit higher but I don't want to really run the fan maxed out constantly and the performance seems excellent right now. Pretty happy with this card so far!
 
Xoleras is correct. I was playing Skyrim the other day (with minor mods) and I couldn't figure out why my boost clocks wouldn't go all the way up. Turns out the cards didn't need to in order to keep the screen at 96fps (my refresh rate)

I was thoroughly confused at first.

Use Heaven or Valley to test speeds. They never fail to push my boost clock to its limit. (1310 on my 1 lightning with an h90 attached to it last night :) )
 
I was going to ask something similar about clock speed vs. GPU load.

Thanks chaps!

I mentioned on another thread that I left 3DMark looping last night, my temps hit 86*C or thereabouts. Is this acceptable?

These are EVGA 780Ti SC cards, base clock 980MHz IIRC.
 
I was going to ask something similar about clock speed vs. GPU load.

Thanks chaps!

I mentioned on another thread that I left 3DMark looping last night, my temps hit 86*C or thereabouts. Is this acceptable?

These are EVGA 780Ti SC cards, base clock 980MHz IIRC.

I read that it is pretty safe up to 90c or so.
 
That's better than what I get in bf4. I can do +200/+100. Boosts to 1194 mhz. Any higher on the memory and it freezes. Runs benchmarks fine at higher memory though.
 
That's better than what I get in bf4. I can do +200/+100. Boosts to 1194 mhz. Any higher on the memory and it freezes. Runs benchmarks fine at higher memory though.

Wow, that is a pretty big discrepancy.. I was tempted to take mine higher but left it alone since it was rocking. You have a Ti or regular 780?
 
I have a TI, PNY brand. I should have gone evga since I want to water cool it now but oh well.
 
I could do 1250 on air with mine, but it wasn't the epitome of stability once the temps got into the 80s. On water now they do 1350 at 1.212v using Skyn3t's BIOS, but backed them down to 1250 once I got my benchmarking jones taken care of. .

I recommend the Skyn3t BIOS if you're looking for big overclocks or just more stability and less variability. It's proven to be very stable, it's easy to flash (and back for warranty if needed), lets you raise the power and temp targets higher than stock, disables Boost and sets default base clock at 1045, and gives you up to 1.212v to play with.

I'd also recommend avoiding Afterburner for now (and maybe forever) since it doesn't really support voltage control on the TI and it's not likely to change since any time soon for a number of reasons. Use EVGA's Precision X instead.

It's both a crapshoot on memory OC with the TI, and it's generally not worth even doing for most folks, very little score/real world improvement, and it tends to hamper getting better stable core overclocks, which actually make a noticeable difference.
 
I could do 1250 on air with mine, but it wasn't the epitome of stability once the temps got into the 80s. On water now they do 1350 at 1.212v using Skyn3t's BIOS, but backed them down to 1250 once I got my benchmarking jones taken care of. .

I recommend the Skyn3t BIOS if you're looking for big overclocks or just more stability and less variability. It's proven to be very stable, it's easy to flash (and back for warranty if needed), lets you raise the power and temp targets higher than stock, disables Boost and sets default base clock at 1045, and gives you up to 1.212v to play with.

I'd also recommend avoiding Afterburner for now (and maybe forever) since it doesn't really support voltage control on the TI and it's not likely to change since any time soon for a number of reasons. Use EVGA's Precision X instead.

It's both a crapshoot on memory OC with the TI, and it's generally not worth even doing for most folks, very little score/real world improvement, and it tends to hamper getting better stable core overclocks, which actually make a noticeable difference.

How so? Both Afterburner and EVGA Precision X allow me to increase the voltage by +75mV. Whats the difference?
 
How so? Both Afterburner and EVGA Precision X allow me to increase the voltage by +75mV. Whats the difference?

It's not really increasing voltage any unless you flash it to a custom bios like that from Skyn3t.

Step 1 ) Flash bios to Skyn3t
Step 2 ) Set voltage to 1.212 and target/power slides to max. Set it to prioritize temperature.
Step 3 ) Raise core until you get instability. Use multipliers of 13.
Step 4 ) After you find the unstable point, back off 13mhz at a time and try again.
Step 5 ) Try the memory OC, crapshoot based on the card but for single GPU, it will make a difference. Increments of 50 until you reach instability, then back off 25 until you hit a stable point.

If you follow this pattern, driver recoveries and sudden reboots are generally related to not enough voltage for core. Artifacts are also related to this but tells you are closer to optimal balance. Snow/Red bricks, weird colors -- memory is too high. Bring it down. 3dMark is the least reliable measure of stability I have found on these cards. Valley is a good indicator. Playing games is the best, of course.

Optional -- You can try decreasing voltage after reaching your max stable OC to trim some power use and manage thermals a bit better. You should be using Precision X for a custom fan profile. Also, when using Precision X, don't be afraid of using the frame rate target function for games instead of vsync. Really cool feature.
 
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Without any flashing/changes, it seems like it is pretty stable at 150/350. I ran it at 175/400 last night, played BF4 for about 2 hours and I got screen corruption and dropped to desktop. Wasn't a hard lock, just green squares and the game froze.

I'll try bringing the memory down and core up, I wasn't sure if the memory was really that big of a deal.
 
Without any flashing/changes, it seems like it is pretty stable at 150/350. I ran it at 175/400 last night, played BF4 for about 2 hours and I got screen corruption and dropped to desktop. Wasn't a hard lock, just green squares and the game froze.

I'll try bringing the memory down and core up, I wasn't sure if the memory was really that big of a deal.

Have fun. I love this card. Flashing the bios was 100% worth it to me as it locks the boost clock so I know I am getting 100% of my OC. Reduced power states still work, of course.
 
Have fun. I love this card. Flashing the bios was 100% worth it to me as it locks the boost clock so I know I am getting 100% of my OC. Reduced power states still work, of course.

Yeah, it seems super solid so far. I wasn't expecting a ton more performance over my 570 SLI but it is measurably better in BF4, probably in large part due to the fact that my configuration is using about 2.5GB of VRAM according to AfterBurner.. my SLIs were 1.2GB and maxed out on VRAM usage all the time I was playing.

I can run ultra textures/AF and high for everything else and maintain 60+FPS all the time at 2560x1440 which was more than I expected. I may flash the BIOS if it seems like there is a lot of extra performance to be gained but I'm purely interested in a daily, stable overclock from a 'free performance' perspective, I'm not looking for big numbers in benchmarks.
 
Yeah, it seems super solid so far. I wasn't expecting a ton more performance over my 570 SLI but it is measurably better in BF4, probably in large part due to the fact that my configuration is using about 2.5GB of VRAM according to AfterBurner.. my SLIs were 1.2GB and maxed out on VRAM usage all the time I was playing.

I can run ultra textures/AF and high for everything else and maintain 60+FPS all the time at 2560x1440 which was more than I expected. I may flash the BIOS if it seems like there is a lot of extra performance to be gained but I'm purely interested in a daily, stable overclock from a 'free performance' perspective, I'm not looking for big numbers in benchmarks.

I pushed the OC a bit because I wanted as close to 100fps @ 1440p/100hz in BF4 consistently on ultra. Even with the new bios, it still caps the voltage at a lowly 1.212. TI does not have unlocked voltage yet but 1400+ core is really the purview of watercooling anyway.
 
Cool, thanks for the input. The highest core I've seen on mine is around ~1200 (I think 1194?) according to AB. I will have to see if I can get a little more out of it.
 
Cool, thanks for the input. The highest core I've seen on mine is around ~1200 (I think 1194?) according to AB. I will have to see if I can get a little more out of it.

1200ish was my highest core at stock volts. The small bump to 1.212 on the new bios got me to 1300ish core. Don't neglect memory. It's hit or miss on a good OC but for benchmarks, I get 1 point in Firestrike per mhz of memory OC which is sorta nuts.
 
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