First time OC vid card.. question

[david_]

I've lurked here awhile, thanks for all the info. Built my system two weeks ago, details in signature. It's my first time to OC a video card.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125385

All 1536 shaders are unlocked and I've just maxed out the GPU clock (900), memory clock (1325) and power control (+20) in CCC. I ran Furmark for 15 mins and temps didn't go about 61C which seems great. I play Skyrim and BF3.

So is that it? Is this 'safe' for 24/7 use? Am I getting 6970-level performance?

 

[david_]

After having some anomalies show up in Skyrim (some walls loading textures slower than others) I backed the memory back to stock OC and the core to 880 (10 over stock factory OC). I'm gonna try Afterburner to increase voltage if possible. I'm not sure what the voltage is now... how can I check, didn't see it in GPU-Z?

If I can bump the voltage I will; have plenty of temperature overhead.

 

[david_]

ok... 3dmark 11 seems to be testing my z68 "cpu video" performance, not my 6950. anyway to fix this? i want to run benchmarks then overclock and compare.

 

[SonDa5]

Not sure what the problem is but it seems like cpu and video card are having a conflict.

 

[Mr. K6]

First, welcome!

Now, to answer some of your questions:

So is that it? Is this 'safe' for 24/7 use? Am I getting 6970-level performance?

Yep, it's that simple. Without applying any additional voltage, there is literally no risk in overclocking.

After having some anomalies show up in Skyrim (some walls loading textures slower than others) I backed the memory back to stock OC and the core to 880 (10 over stock factory OC). I'm gonna try Afterburner to increase voltage if possible. I'm not sure what the voltage is now... how can I check, didn't see it in GPU-Z?.

Are you sure that wasn't just Skyrim being funky? Test several games to make sure. Generally artifacts due to overclocking are very quick "blips" of miscalculated geometry and shaders that flash on and off the screen, due to the core being too fast. If your vRAM is too high, it's pretty much impossible to see artifacts due to the error correction (ECC) technology on the cards. As you increase vRAM clocks past stability, usually you'll just lose performance (as the ECC has more to correct) until the vRAM crashes in monotone vertical bars.

ok... 3dmark 11 seems to be testing my z68 "cpu video" performance, not my 6950. anyway to fix this? i want to run benchmarks then overclock and compare.

Just run the benchmark, not demo (if you aren't already). 3DMark11 runs six tests that check your GPU and CPU performance. The first four tests look at GPU performance; the fifth, CPU performance; and the sixth, combined performance. Run the whole suite and you will get your score.

That said, I'll just relay my technique for overclocking cards. It's served me well since I started overclocking almost a decade ago. First, always divide and conquer. Overclocking the core and the core alone until it obviously artifacts or crashes so you know where your limit is. The quickest and easiest way to do this is to play a game in a window and just keep raising the GPU clock by 10MHz every minute. Raise it, play and watch, raise it, play and watch, etc. Once you get a crash, back it down by about ~30-40MHz and those are guaranteed stable clocks for every day gaming. As I mentioned, the RAM is more difficult because the ECC will hide artifacts, but a crash is still a crash. Raise it 25MHz at a time and back it down by at least 50MHz once you crash. My favorite games for testing are older Source games like L4D: since the pump out such high frame rates, they really tax the cards and crash earlier than most other applications I've used. Post back if you have more questions and good luck!