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Overclocking help with 460s

S

Starslayer67

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 17, 2010
Messages
68
So I bought the 460's in my sig about a month and a half ago, and I love them. I then went NV Surround (5760x1200) a few weeks ago. Also, totally awesome. Now I've decided to try my hand at OC'ing, and that hasn't gone as well as I had hoped, or so I think.

So far, I've only tested it using DiRT 2 and Far Cry 2, not exactly the latest GPU killers I know. Anyways, in DiRT 2, I managed to hit 850/1700/2000, but not so in FC2. Since the artifacts suggested memory getting too hot, I backed it down, and got it looking stable with 830/1660/1925. However, after playing a while, some textures would stop loading properly (plants would turn white at night, people's arms would suddenly turn black, etc.), again suggesting a memory problem. So I backed everything down to stock clocks (720/1440/1800), and the problem showed up again, always after about 15 minutes or so. My temps have never exceeded the low 80's on the top card, and have never gotten above 65 or so on the bottom one, so at this point I don't think it's a heat issue, and may be an issue with FC2.

I am currently using EVGA Precision to control the clock speeds and for GPU temperature monitoring, and running the 260.89 drivers. I did not use Driver Sweeper this time, but it also showed up with the betas, where I did do the whole song and dance, so I don't think it's a driver issue either.

Side note: any good programs out there besides Furmark for continuous stress testing? If I could run one of those, it might help narrow the issue down.

EDIT: Oh, one more thing. I decided to run Furmark again at stock clocks for my cards, using 4x MSAA, 5760x1200 fullscreen, post-processing, and displacement mapping. After about 25 minutes, my top card hit a steady 95 C, while the bottom hit a steady 71 C. I don't know if the temperatures had finally stabilized, because at that point I shut it down to prevent any possible damage to the top card. In light of this, do I need better cooling to even think about overclocking, or will the stock coolers be fine? Like I mentioned above, in game, I never exceeded the low 80's on the top card, even after playing for a couple hours.
 
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if this didn't happen with an earlier driver, it would be best to roll back to it untill the current one is fixed, unless the new one does something specifically that you need and the old one didn't do.

did you try swapping the cards around and/or running them one at a time to see if the still ran into memory problems?

if you can rig up a fan to help direct fresh air to the top card, this should help your temps a bit.
 
Okay, I can try going back to the 258's (I have not yet tried OC'ing with those) and see what happens. I have not tried running the cards one at a time yet; I will do so this weekend and get back to you.
 
if it was me.. id run furmark and slowly increase your clocks with it running til you start seeing artifacts.. start with either the gpu or ram dont overclock both at the same time.. overclock the gpu til you see artifacts.. then put it back to stock and overclock the ram til you see artifacts or you notice your frame rate dropping. remember that DDR5 doesnt show artifacts like DDR3 and lower.. the frame rate will start decreasing due to errors in the memory and it trying to fix them then it will start showing artifacts if you keep trying to go higher.. once you have figured out the max for both work on trying overclocking with both the gpu and ram..

as far as the temps go 95C is perfectly fine unless the fans running at 100%.. thats the way nvidia decided to make the fan profile.. but if you are really that worried just manually set the fan to 70-80% while your overclocking the card and running furmark.. in game you wont have to do that..
 
I think the memory and stuff on these cards must get pretty hot, most designs dont have any heatsinks other than on the GPU itself. I tried running mine up to about 850MHz and it started artifacting even though the temp wasn't much above 50C.
 
Thanks for all the help, guys. I think the issue lies with FC2, strange as that is. As a more stringent test, I finished off Crysis at 820/1640/1925 (the highest stable in Furmark, following the procedure sirmonkey laid out), and saw no issues, despite the cards being at almost 100% usage the entire way, so for now, I think the issue is solved.
 
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