***The Official 8800 GTX/GTS Overclocking Thread***

[Gary Key]

I did some further testing tonight on the EVGA card, 722/1100 with the new 96.97 drivers on the 680i board. This is without additional cooling and in the case. The card will optimize itself at 748/1080 but it is not stable in the 3DMarks.

I was only able to get to 708/1020 on a P965 board (assume it is a power issue at this time, trying other boards now). I edited my previous posts about the memory speeds, had double data rates on the mind this morning.

 

[gramboh]

Originally posted by: thilan29
Got my eVGA 8800GTS to 650/1000.

Dang I'd be happy with that. The eVGA 8800GTS is $569 Canadian here too in town.

C2D @ 3.4, 2GB RAM, 8800GTS 650/1000 and 15k drive, how is gaming on that beast?

 

[thilanliyan]

Originally posted by: gramboh

Originally posted by: thilan29
Got my eVGA 8800GTS to 650/1000.

Dang I'd be happy with that. The eVGA 8800GTS is $569 Canadian here too in town.

C2D @ 3.4, 2GB RAM, 8800GTS 650/1000 and 15k drive, how is gaming on that beast?

Get it shipped by DirectCanada.com out of BC. It's selling for $524CAD plus 9 for air shipping. The BFG version is selling for $511CAD. I should have waited. I ordered yesterday for $540CAD plus tax/insurance/shipping but I got it today so it's not too bad.

Haven't had a chance to game yet. just testing stability right now. Oh and it's only ONE GB of ram right now...haven't really found the need for a whole lot more.

 

[lopri]

After reading Gary's results I've adjusted my expectation accordingly. I originally aimed for 650/1000 with my upcoming G80, but now I don't think I'll be satisfied unless I get at least 700/1100.

 

[Elfear]

It's weird though that all the other results I've seen for GTX's are around 640-660/1000. Maybe Gary has some secret ocing utility or something.

 

[Nightmare225]

Wow, these really give me hope for my incoming 8800GTX.

 

[Centurin]

Was there substantial gains when overclocking the GTX? I'm curious as to real world gains.

*Edit* Xbitlabs says they got 625/950 and was very stable.

 

[Dethfrumbelo]

Originally posted by: Elfear
It's weird though that all the other results I've seen for GTX's are around 640-660/1000. Maybe Gary has some secret ocing utility or something.

Or maybe he's running it in a very cold room. It seems like 650 is as high as it goes under normal circumstances (normal room temperature/air cooling) while still remaining 100% stable.

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo

Originally posted by: Elfear
It's weird though that all the other results I've seen for GTX's are around 640-660/1000. Maybe Gary has some secret ocing utility or something.

Or maybe he's running it in a very cold room. It seems like 650 is as high as it goes under normal circumstances (normal room temperature/air cooling) while still remaining 100% stable.

The room stays at a constant 20~21C. I run my cards in our standard case, Cooler Master Stacker 830, of course it has four 120mm fans on the side door. ;-) I am also using a high quality 700W power supply for single card testing and an 850W for SLI. The 96.97 drivers do clock the memory better than the 96.94 drivers. All overclocking is done with the NV Control Panel. I am expecting a new PowerStrip release shortly that should let us fine tune the clocks. The NV utility likes to throw out random clock numbers here and there.

 

[nib95]

Yea, I dont think people should aim for his OC's.
Every other review site has got to around the 625-650/1000 mark.

Not sure how he's managed so much farther unless his room is an ice brink.

Anyway, my new 8800 GTS cam today, I'm just gonna install now and get to overclocking.
See you guys in a bit

Will post some benchmark differences aswell.
I'll also do some comparisons against my old 7950 GX2.

That I was supposed to ahve already sent to my eBayer buyer.
But It wasnt my fault, my dad posted it to me instead of him!

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: Centurin
Was there substantial gains when overclocking the GTX? I'm curious as to real world gains.

*Edit* Xbitlabs says they got 625/950 and was very stable.

Still working on the overclock numbers and what they really mean in most games. Not like you really need to overclock unless you are playing Oblivion or Filght Simulator X (1920x1200 4xAA/16xAF range) and even then the improvements are not that great.

 

[nib95]

Originally posted by: Gary Key

Originally posted by: Dethfrumbelo

Originally posted by: Elfear
It's weird though that all the other results I've seen for GTX's are around 640-660/1000. Maybe Gary has some secret ocing utility or something.

Or maybe he's running it in a very cold room. It seems like 650 is as high as it goes under normal circumstances (normal room temperature/air cooling) while still remaining 100% stable.

The room stays at a constant 20~21C. I run my cards in our standard case, Cooler Master Stacker 830, of course it has four 120mm fans on the side door. ;-) I am also using a high quality 700W power supply for single card testing and an 850W for SLI. The 96.97 drivers do clock the memory better than the 96.94 drivers. All overclocking is done with the NV Control Panel. I am expecting a new PowerStrip release shortly that should let us fine tune the clocks. The NV utility likes to throw out random clock numbers here and there.

Control panel overclocking has been disabled with the G80's from what I heard :s

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: lopri
After reading Gary's results I've adjusted my expectation accordingly. I originally aimed for 650/1000 with my upcoming G80, but now I don't think I'll be satisfied unless I get at least 700/1100.

Currently, I'm running 625/975, 650/1000 is probably going to be my goal... I'm going to move her up slowly, and play some games on the higher clockspeeds as I ramp up to ensure true stability and not just the ability to complete 3DMark06.

Along those lines, I'm not really sure what app would be a good test for stability for the 8800GTX. I ran 3DMark06 after a 25MHz bump in clocks on both core/mem and only got about a ~200 point increase (10100 to 10300), which is very small IMO... 3DMark06 is pretty odd with this card, as I don't think that 10k is especially high for this card, but yet somehow I feel that 3DMark06 simply isn't tapping into all this card has to give. I really think that cpu/physics test has pretty much killed any usefulness 3DMark ever had for benching video cards, but that's a whole other topic so I digress.

As a sidenote, I actually wasn't an idiot before: you do need nTune 5.05, and nvidia was only serving up an older version at the time. However, they now have 5.05 available on thier site:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/sysutility.html

I will go ahead and warn anyone who hasn't had the 'pleasure' of using nTune before that if you disliked the new CP, you are going to absolutely hate the CP/nTune combo as it sucks really bad right now. I can't get it to show me gpu temps and if I attempt to use the detect frequencies option in nTune, the screen just goes completely grey and I have to reset my computer. Also, nTune and the new CP are only sort of half integrated at this point, for instance if you click to monitor temp settings in the CP it tells you that this is now a performance function, so you click ok and it takes you to a screen that doesn't have the option to view the temps... nice...

While NVIDIA has come out with an awesome piece of hardware, they have completely struck out on software IMO - nTune is actually worse than ATI's CCC, I kid you not - at least the CCC works as it should. Hopefully nTune will get better, as I'm sure it just jumped in popularity with the 8-series release (which was probably the point).

Gary, aside from your actual clocks, it might be interesting to hear a bit about your experiences with oc'ing and nTune... I take it that you aren't experiencing the grey screen issue I mentioned, since you mentioned that used the detect option.

edit: I'm using the 97.02 driver btw, not the 96.94 (nTune is required).

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

Originally posted by: Sunrise089
The interesting part of this will be whether or not an OC'd GTS can really match a GTX - a 7900GT could match a 7900GTX it could, since they were basically the same card, but the GTS lacks more than just clockspeed.

That has me bugged as well.. How can a card that has 32 less stream processors, 64 less bus bits, 4 less rops, etc etc perform the same with a slight overclock?

Here's a theory. Maybe the GTX is only using half of it's shaders for current games. And not nearly all of it's bandwidth. That would mean that the GTS in turn only has a clock speed deficit.

Example:

Oblivion only stresses 1/2 of the shaders on a GTX. 64/128
Therefore, it would only stress 2/3 of the shaders on a GTS 64/96

So, both cards are not even being taxed yet. Not anywhere near. All somebody has to do is bump up the clocks on a GTS and voila!!! GTX performance. Now, this will not work as games may soon require more than 96 shaders that the GTS has to offer and then we will notice that just an overclock will not be sufficient to equal GTX stock performance.

Anyway, just a theory.

EDIT: Before anyone jumps on me about how many shaders are used for Oblivion, they are just hypothetical examples. I have no source or links to back up these numbers, as they are just pulled out of the air. Just used as a reference to make the point understandable. (I can't believe I actually felt the need to add this little disclaimer) LOL

 

[redbox]

Please can we create a poll for this thread? It makes it so much easier for a member to quickly look at the thread and see how the majority of the cards are clocking to. That way you don't need to look through pages of scores to see a treand.

Just set up the question: How high does your GTX core clock? And then have the answers be x or y or z. Something like that would work real well.

Just a helpfull suggestion

redbox

 

[tylerw13]

i have mine at a measly 630/975 but i can push it more if i want...what is a safe temp reading for these things anyway??? anyone know??

 

[Gary Key]

Control panel overclocking has been disabled with the G80's from what I heard :s

The legacy control panel overclocking with Coolbits has been disabled in the latest driver sets. Still need to test it on the beta 97.08 drivers. You need to use the "new" Control Panel with NTune at this time. The next version of PowerStrip should work fine from what we have been told. I am also sure someone will figure out a way to bypass it.

 

[nitromullet]

you know where to get the beta 97.08's?

 

[nib95]

Originally posted by: keysplayr2003

Originally posted by: ShadowOfMyself

Originally posted by: Sunrise089
The interesting part of this will be whether or not an OC'd GTS can really match a GTX - a 7900GT could match a 7900GTX it could, since they were basically the same card, but the GTS lacks more than just clockspeed.

That has me bugged as well.. How can a card that has 32 less stream processors, 64 less bus bits, 4 less rops, etc etc perform the same with a slight overclock?

Here's a theory. Maybe the GTX is only using half of it's shaders for current games. And not nearly all of it's bandwidth. That would mean that the GTS in turn only has a clock speed deficit.

Example:

Oblivion only stresses 1/2 of the shaders on a GTX. 64/128
Therefore, it would only stress 2/3 of the shaders on a GTS 64/96

So, both cards are not even being taxed yet. Not anywhere near. All somebody has to do is bump up the clocks on a GTS and voila!!! GTX performance. Now, this will not work as games may soon require more than 96 shaders that the GTS has to offer and then we will notice that just an overclock will not be sufficient to equal GTX stock performance.

Anyway, just a theory.

EDIT: Before anyone jumps on me about how many shaders are used for Oblivion, they are just hypothetical examples. I have no source or links to back up these numbers, as they are just pulled out of the air. Just used as a reference to make the point understandable. (I can't believe I actually felt the need to add this little disclaimer) LOL

I agree with this theory.
It would explain a lot.

Anyway, my benchmarks coming soon.
Inc 8800 GTS vs 7900 GX2.

Overlocking results also.
So anyone who is un-sure can get a clearer idea soon!

 

[piddlefoot]

Bit off topic l know, but as this whole new area of clock has been opened up, you can only imagine the same thing in the pipeline with physic's cards.

 

[Gary Key]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
you know where to get the beta 97.08's?

They are not for public release.

 

[Gary Key]

Gary, aside from your actual clocks, it might be interesting to hear a bit about your experiences with oc'ing and nTune... I take it that you aren't experiencing the grey screen issue I mentioned, since you mentioned that used the detect option.

edit: I'm using the 97.02 driver btw, not the 96.94 (nTune is required).

I just used the official 5.05 release, having the same lock issue on optimal overclock detect settings but my screen seems to be pale blue. I also found some issues with it changing FSB settings on the 680i. I will try a clean image shortly but right now I have a message into NVIDIA about it.

 

[nib95]

Anyone know what the best software for overlocking a 8800 GTS is?

Ntune 5.05 is'nt working for me.
When I click on adjust GPU settings, manually overclock, it doesnt allow me to.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: nib95
Anyone know what the best software for overlocking a 8800 GTS is?

Ntune 5.05 is'nt working for me.
When I click on adjust GPU settings, manually overclock, it doesnt allow me to.

Anyone have any ideas?

You still have to do the coolbits regedit... Did you do that?

 

[nib95]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: nib95
Anyone know what the best software for overlocking a 8800 GTS is?

Ntune 5.05 is'nt working for me.
When I click on adjust GPU settings, manually overclock, it doesnt allow me to.

Anyone have any ideas?

You still have to do the coolbits regedit... Did you do that?

I have yes, but NTune is still blanked out.
What is the best second option for OC'ing?