Any drawbacks to overclocking video card?

[9nines]

I have an eVGA GTX280. At stock speeds it gets to about 68-70 Celsius under load. Using eVGA?s precision program I over-clocked the core and memory about 10 to 15%. It runs about 70-72 Celsius under load at those speeds.

Any drawbacks or pitfalls to over-clocking it most of the time? Should I watchout for anything, while doing it?

 

[Drsignguy]

Your temps is the biggest thing.

I overclocked both my ATi cards and kept them around the same temps by adjusting the voltage down on them, and keeping stability. They have a higher threshold than cpu's, but still keep an eye on your temps...

 

[videopho]

I second on the temps.
I also use RT tool to control what speed it should run i.e. 2d vs 3d
Lastly I have never kept my current g/c longer than a year in order to find out any long term ill-effect that might have incurred to the silicon.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: 9nines
I have an eVGA GTX280. At stock speeds it gets to about 68-70 Celsius under load. Using eVGA?s precision program I over-clocked the core and memory about 10 to 15%. It runs about 70-72 Celsius under load at those speeds.

Any drawbacks or pitfalls to over-clocking it most of the time? Should I watchout for anything, while doing it?

How are you watching temps in Precision? 2nd monitor? G15 LCD? Continue monitoring temps under load while gaming, but those temps are really excellent on air with stock cooler so you're good there.

Some things to look out for are your typical artifacting. Like bright flashing textures or pixels, rubber-banding/morphed polys, really obvious stuff like that. Also random crashes, BSODs, TDR driver start/stop errors etc can be a sure sign of instability.

What clocks are you running now? From what I've seen most GT200 hit around the same clocks on stock cooling without changing any voltages. For me increasing shader clock leads to instability faster than anything else. Increasing beyond 1430 or so leads to some of the artifacting I mentioned above.

 

[manimal]

Only card I ever had issues with was a card that I kept bone stock!!!! My old school volt modded Ti4200 is still running!!


Anecdotal evidence aside any deviance from stock will shorten the lifetime of your graphic card, so if your ok with it dying in a few years then oc away. Test your oc and if your temps on that card stay under 90ish on load and do not artifact on ati tool then your good to go. I try to keep my stuff under 70 loaded but 90s is safeish on that card.

 

[9nines]

Originally posted by: chizow
How are you watching temps in Precision? 2nd monitor? G15 LCD? Continue monitoring temps under load while gaming

I was looking at the history graph in pecision. Ill do it with HWMonitor to see what the peak is over a longer period.


I ran HW monitor and set core and memory to ~ 15% overclock (core to 690.) I played Age Of Conan maxed for about 30 minutes - HW reported peak of 74 Celsius. I heard the fan ramp up but not much. Probably did not go over 50% speed.

 

[Bill Kunert]

Originally posted by: manimal
Only card I ever had issues with was a card that I kept bone stock!!!! My old school volt modded Ti4200 is still running!!


Anecdotal evidence aside any deviance from stock will shorten the lifetime of your graphic card, so if your ok with it dying in a few years then oc away. Test your oc and if your temps on that card stay under 90ish on load and do not artifact on ati tool then your good to go. I try to keep my stuff under 70 loaded but 90s is safeish on that card.

He has an EVGA and they have a lifetime warranty-even if overclocked-so his liability is limited. Run FurMark and see what your temps do. It causes higher temps on my overclocked 8800GS than anything else I've run.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: 9nines

Originally posted by: chizow
How are you watching temps in Precision? 2nd monitor? G15 LCD? Continue monitoring temps under load while gaming

I was looking at the history graph in pecision. Ill do it with HWMonitor to see what the peak is over a longer period.


I ran HW monitor and set core and memory to ~ 15% overclock (core to 690.) I played Age Of Conan maxed for about 30 minutes - HW reported peak of 74 Celsius. I heard the fan ramp up but not much. Probably did not go over 50% speed.

Yep looks good, you must have good case airflow as those are really good stock cooling temps while OC'd. You can run some artificial stress/benches like Furmark or ATI tool, they'll typically expose any artifacts quickly. Otherwise just keep an eye out for crashes or artifacting in gaming and adjust from there.

 

[9nines]

Thanks. I have it in an Antec 900. I have the large fan on medium and other three on low.