Overclocking a Geforce 8800 GTS

[pcslookout]

Is it really worth it for any games sense your still going to be limited to only 320 MB of video ram? I play at 1024x768 and 1280x1024 a lot of the time. Not really 1600x1200 but I may soon. Though not above 1600x1200 for a while I am thinking. I know this could make a huge difference if I see a big enough difference when overclocking my card and if it would make it worth it. Processor is E6420. Right now I put it back to stock speeds. 2 GB of ram

 

[jkresh]

you will likely be able to gain a few fps, so if you are planning such that your settings/res gives you framrates that are too low then go ahead and get those couple of frames, if everything is working fine then don't bother. Also consider that overclocking the gpu will increase its power draw (possibly substantially) so make sure that your psu can handle it and you have adequate ventilation in the case to keep it from overheating.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: jkresh
you will likely be able to gain a few fps, so if you are planning such that your settings/res gives you framrates that are too low then go ahead and get those couple of frames, if everything is working fine then don't bother. Also consider that overclocking the gpu will increase its power draw (possibly substantially) so make sure that your psu can handle it and you have adequate ventilation in the case to keep it from overheating.

Thanks. Didn't think it would make a huge enough difference. You can't turn a Geforce 8800 GTS into a Geforce 8800 Ultra by just overclocking it or unlocking it somehow.

Not like you were able to do a long time ago with the ATI 9700!

 

[DerComissar]

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: jkresh
you will likely be able to gain a few fps, so if you are planning such that your settings/res gives you framrates that are too low then go ahead and get those couple of frames, if everything is working fine then don't bother. Also consider that overclocking the gpu will increase its power draw (possibly substantially) so make sure that your psu can handle it and you have adequate ventilation in the case to keep it from overheating.

Thanks. Didn't think it would make a huge enough difference. You can't turn a Geforce 8800 GTS into a Geforce 8800 Ultra by just overclocking it or unlocking it somehow.

Not like you were able to do a long time ago with the ATI 9700!

However
I use Rivatuner to overclock my 8800GTS and there is a large gain in 3DMark scores, as well as some very good fps gains in games such as FEAR when I do the built-in benchmark test.
I noticed an improvement in smoothness of some games with lots of AA enabled and an elimination of any slight lagging compared to running the card at stock clock speeds.
This actually can bring up the performance close to a stock 8800GTX.
A few years ago I almost bought a 9700 but had to get a 9800 because the 9700's were no longer available. That was a great card at the time

 

[lopri]

I'd say go for it. IMO, stock GTS frequency is way under-clocked. Remember that it has the same G80 core as GTX, which runs @575MHz. And often times, the smaller amount of memory gives more headroom on the core and it ends up clocking higher than most GTXs which tops out @621MHz. I have mine at 648MHz which is the next performance plateau. But you do have a point because I see the core is kind of bottlenecked by memory bandwidth. And unfortunately GTS memory doesn't overclock very well. But all this depends on the game so I just leave it at that. Sweet spot seems to be 621/1000 just like GTX, but your memory might not be able to do 1000MHz reliably.

 

[Cheex]

I want to OC my GTS 320MB now too....

Do I have this correctly:
RivaTuner to OC, ATI Tool to monitor temps?

Also, what should I use to test it for stability?

 

[DerComissar]

Originally posted by: Cheex
I want to OC my GTS 320MB now too....

Do I have this correctly:
RivaTuner to OC, ATI Tool to monitor temps?

Also, what should I use to test it for stability?

You can use either to overclock, I prefer Rivatuner. It also has a temp monitor.
Run the 3DMark benchmarks, do some gaming, for stability testing.

 

[TheRyuu]

Get the newest Rivetuner. It'll automatically load the settings at startup too.

You should be able to get it pretty close in terms of fps speed to a 8800GTX, at least I think the 640mb versions do.

 

[Zenoth]

It's worth it as long as the CPU won't bottleneck the card.

My case is a great example of a CPU bottleneck. At stock speeds (GTS) I score 8340'ish in 3DMark06. At 550Mhz Core / 850Mhz Memory, I score 8590. At 600/900 I score 8612, and at 630/930 I score 8624. And that's with my CPU already OC'ed by an extra 200Mhz, and Memory by 40Mhz. I reached a limit that is forced upon the graphics card from the CPU, because the CPU cannot contend with the GPU. If I'd get a better CPU and then OC it even further, the score would jump considerably. And, I took 3DMark06 as an example, but the bottleneck is noticeable in 3DMark05, Aquamark and many of my games I've been testing with FRAPS lately.

 

[Cheex]

I used ATI Tool to OC my GTS to 600/900....Temperature is okay, what next?

Should I go higher?

 

[Zenoth]

Most GTS'es will top at around 640Mhz Core and 1000Mhz Memory, according to what I've read, at least without any, or with a bare minimum of extra voltages, and on stock cooling. Perhaps with some well-adjusted voltages and a better cooling solution it can do better. However due to the architecture of the card it's not like anyone will be able to bring their GTS to a GTX magically just by OC'ing it. A GTS will always remain inferior to a GTX on a technical point of view.

So, OC it, because a GTS is a great over-clocker, and at 580+ Core and 880+ Memory I believe that the extra performance can be worth it, especially at lower resolutions (let's say at or below 1280x1024). It's almost a guarantee, that a GTS will be a good OC'er, but don't push it too far for marginal, and negligible gains in performance above a certain speed. You must find a comfortable spot, or else you'll just keep OC'ing it further and further until you damage it permanently.

 

[Cheex]

How can I know when I have gone too high with the OC?

Also, how do I know which one (core or memory) is causing any instability?

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: Cheex
How can I know when I have gone too high with the OC?

Also, how do I know which one (core or memory) is causing any instability?

Use the artifact test in ATITool to test if your OC is stable. Do some gaming also. OC each separately to find the max for the core and mem then OC together to find a balance.

 

[Zenoth]

According to my observations, if a Core is unstable due to over over-clocking it will do one of two things, or both things separately, namely either showing up artifacts in your games and/or other application types, or will simply hang/freeze the whole system, and nothing will respond anymore, not even Ctrl+Alt+Del, forcing one to hard-reset their system. Artifacts coming from an unstable Core are also visually easily recognizable. They are mostly little dots filling either the whole screen (severe instability) or small portions of random textures/polygons during game-play. They can be white, green, red or yellow (usually white, sometimes red or yellow, and very rarely if ever green, but possible). A popular example of Core-related artifacts can be seen using ATiTool's Artifact scanning tool. It will usually show yellow dots if unstable (shown on-top of the rotating 3D cube).

As for the Memory, if unstable, will usually cause various screen corruption, distortion, strange lines appearing in games as well as in mere Desktop activities, or even during early Windows booting (loading screen for example). In-game, when severe instability is the case, it will distort the very polygons themselves, will deform the shapes of certain (if not all) surfaces on-screen, will change or shift colors, sometimes making the game look 16-Bit colored rather than 32-Bit (just a visual impression). The famous "huge triangles" symptoms are caused by Memory over over-clocking (instability). As far as I know Memory instability, even severe, cannot actually crash or hang/freeze a whole system (Windows not responding), but can crash an application back to the Desktop (Core instability can do that as well however).

And don't quote me on this, but, again as far as I know, severely "damaging" (just pushing too far and too often) a GPU Memory can result in permanent artifacts much faster than a Core would suffer permanent issues. In other words it would be more difficult (again, not proven by me, only observations) to permanently damage a Core than a GPU's Memory, although permanently damaging a Core is still possible but is done so more via bad over-voltage selections and manipulations than anything else, since a Core will just hang a system if it lacks "juice".

Hope it helps.

 

[Cheex]

Thanks Zenoth...That helped a lot.

I don't plan on increasing ANY voltage whatsoever on my GTS. How far do you think I can take it on stock volts and cooling?

Keep in mind that mine is the 320MB version.

 

[Zenoth]

The amount of Memory isn't relevant from what I know.

And how far you'll push yours at stock voltage and cooling depends on many outside variants in terms of temperatures. If one day the temp jumps to around 30ºC (excluding humidity factor, which can bring such a base temperature to 40ºC for example) then your card might not be able to contend with the heat, resulting in artifacts or strange slow downs in your games usually happens right before artifacts show up, and I don't mean slow downs due to technical limitations of the card, but slow downs due to over-heating on the very card's board/circuits, but that rarely happens).

Let's presume that there is a constant ambient temperature allowing you to push it without taking that exterior factor into account, then how far you can push it will depend on ... well, on luck, pretty much. Similarly to CPU's, GPU's don't OC all the same way and not all to the same limits at their voltages. There is no universal, absolute OC "limit" for the GTS series for example. Mine, in the exact same ambient conditions and installed in an exact same system, using the very same drivers, could well OC better or worse than yours, either by 0.5Mhz increments, or by 50Mhz. It cannot be said exactly "how far you can push" it.

A good estimation would be in the range of 550Mhz+ on the Core and perhaps a little higher on the Memory (usually Memory can clock higher than a Core ... not always though, but it has been the case for me for all of the GPUs I bought since I buy such hardware). Above that it can just depend on luck really. I've read on many forums that the usual "maximum" (that's relative) stable OC on a GTS is around 640Mhz for the Core and 1000Mhz on the Memory. But sometimes what those persons forget to mention is that they're using third party cooling solutions, or that they have two 120mm fans blowing air into the case as well as have front intake fans and back-side fans for pushing that hot air in the back, creating some unbelievably efficient air-flow. Sometimes however it's just generic ATX cases, maybe one extra fan on the back, sometimes people will take out one or two sides of their case (like me), and it also results in good OC's.

In my case, as written in my sig, my GTS is currently set at 600/900, and I like it so. Not to mention that my CPU is bottlenecking the heck out of it at those speeds (and even lower than that). So I won't go higher until I 1) get a better base CPU and 2) get better cooling solution to bring the full load temperatures down, even if the idle temps are decent.

 

[Cheex]

Thanks again Zenoth.

I think I should just satisfy with my 600/1800. After all I don't consider my CPU as a bottleneck. That would be my 1GB of system memory (I plan to upgrade this soon to 2GB) and 320MB of video memory.

How much that system memory upgrade help my gaming framerates?

 

[Matt2]

Originally posted by: Cheex
Thanks again Zenoth.

I think I should just satisfy with my 600/1800. After all I don't consider my CPU as a bottleneck. That would be my 1GB of system memory (I plan to upgrade this soon to 2GB) and 320MB of video memory.

How much that system memory upgrade help my gaming framerates?

It's not going to increase your framerates. What it will do is make everything run smoothly and take the stutter out of your games.

 

[SickBeast]

Originally posted by: Matt2

Originally posted by: Cheex
Thanks again Zenoth.

I think I should just satisfy with my 600/1800. After all I don't consider my CPU as a bottleneck. That would be my 1GB of system memory (I plan to upgrade this soon to 2GB) and 320MB of video memory.

How much that system memory upgrade help my gaming framerates?

It's not going to increase your framerates. What it will do is make everything run smoothly and take the stutter out of your games.

It could with DX10 games like Crysis. One of the features of DX10 is to allow the graphics card to directly access main memory. :light:

 

[Cheex]

Beautiful!!

I'm glad to hear all that because I honestly don't think that my framerates are bad...It just stutters too damn much and that is annoying.

So...If i can have just above average framerates but with everything maxed and smooth gameplay...I will be happy with just above average framerates...

 

[gramboh]

I run 610/950 on my 640MB eVGA and love it. There is about a 13% improvement in 3DMark06 and game benchmarks from running at stock. I can push it a bit farther (probably 630/975 is max) but I prefer to run video cards back a bit to reduce the chance of introducing permanent artifacts. I use ATITool to detect artifacts.

FYI check out this graph: http://www.cet.com/~maniac/pix/g80_clock_chart.jpg

8800's core/shader clocks are increased in 'steps', so increasing your core clock 5MHz might not make a difference of the real clock speed unless you go into the next bin/step.

 

[Cheex]

Great going gramboh!! I'm running at 600/900 for now to see if i have any problems, if not then i'll go higher.

 

[lopri]

Originally posted by: Zenoth
According to my observations, if a Core is unstable due to over over-clocking it will do one of two things, or both things separately, namely either showing up artifacts in your games and/or other application types, or will simply hang/freeze the whole system, and nothing will respond anymore, not even Ctrl+Alt+Del, forcing one to hard-reset their system. Artifacts coming from an unstable Core are also visually easily recognizable. They are mostly little dots filling either the whole screen (severe instability) or small portions of random textures/polygons during game-play. They can be white, green, red or yellow (usually white, sometimes red or yellow, and very rarely if ever green, but possible). A popular example of Core-related artifacts can be seen using ATiTool's Artifact scanning tool. It will usually show yellow dots if unstable (shown on-top of the rotating 3D cube).

As for the Memory, if unstable, will usually cause various screen corruption, distortion, strange lines appearing in games as well as in mere Desktop activities, or even during early Windows booting (loading screen for example). In-game, when severe instability is the case, it will distort the very polygons themselves, will deform the shapes of certain (if not all) surfaces on-screen, will change or shift colors, sometimes making the game look 16-Bit colored rather than 32-Bit (just a visual impression). The famous "huge triangles" symptoms are caused by Memory over over-clocking (instability). As far as I know Memory instability, even severe, cannot actually crash or hang/freeze a whole system (Windows not responding), but can crash an application back to the Desktop (Core instability can do that as well however).

And don't quote me on this, but, again as far as I know, severely "damaging" (just pushing too far and too often) a GPU Memory can result in permanent artifacts much faster than a Core would suffer permanent issues. In other words it would be more difficult (again, not proven by me, only observations) to permanently damage a Core than a GPU's Memory, although permanently damaging a Core is still possible but is done so more via bad over-voltage selections and manipulations than anything else, since a Core will just hang a system if it lacks "juice".

Hope it helps.

Very helpful information. Thanks!

 

[Cheex]

I don't like the way ATI Tool does the overclocking using profiles.
I've tried nTune but...I clock it to 620/1800 and set that.....everthing is fine but then whenever I reboot....I'm back to 600/1800...

Why doesn't the core clock maintain the OC??

How good is RivaTuner for OCing my GTS?

 

[Cheex]

Bump....

Also, does the overclocked settings remain after restart with RivaTuner?