Hey what's going on guys, my name is David, and today I'm going to show you a how to overclock
graphics card. The gameplay you're seeing is Crysis 3,
it's going to be rather short for the introduction, and just something for me
to talk over. The game mode is assault, which is like search and destroy in Call of
with no respawns, I go 6-1 but I'm going to shut up about the
gameplay now i'm going to begin with basic terminology and a background on
how overclocking works
then i'm going to go through a step-by-step
If at any point during my background discussion, you feel like you've got a
pretty good handle on the terminology
just click annotation on screen to skip to the step-by-step
overclocking means setting your graphics card to performance fee higher than what
is recommended by the manufacturer
To do this, the card has to draw more power, and more heat is generated.
Clock speed means how fast your graphics card is performing
and it is measured and frequency units of megahertz
100 megahertz means the graphics card is going through 100 million cycles
per second
Overclocking can have the benefit of getting your current graphics card better
performance
however it is not without its draw backs as mentioned previously you will be
using more power
and that will be reflected in your electricity bill.
To keep the card cool, you will have to deal with correspondingly more noise.
You will also shorten the lifespan of your graphics card.
before you overclock and i cannot stress this enough you must have
realistic expectations you're not going to make your graphics card to perform a whole
generation better
If you manage to get an increase of 10 frames per second from 50 to
sixty frames
at the setting that you want to play at
that is already a fantastic overclock quite possibly a best case scenario and better
better than what most can hope for
Overclocking is not as relevant in 2013 as it has been in previous generations of
previous generations of graphics cards For example, if an older card had a clock
at seven hundred fifty megahertz
and you pushed it to 850 mhz,
that's an improvement of thirteen percent
before a new card
you could have a clock speed of nine hundred megahertz
and with an overclock to 1000mhz, you get
an improvement of only eleven percent
these are just example numbers but the principle is the same
you get diminishing returns
Another big reason why overclocking is not as relevant is because keplar cards
aka the Nvidia 600 series
have built-in boost
meaning that as long as your card is not reaching its maximum power limit or heat
and the game is graphically demanding enough
it will overclock itself
Each model of gpu has its own kepler boost clock, but it is always
in multiples thirteen megahertz
nonetheless it is a satisfying endeavor to perform overclocking as you know you
are getting the best possible performance out of your hardware
your warranty should still be intact even if you overclock
However, if you are using an OEM graphics card from a pre-built system,
sometimes, they are locked and cannot be overclocked unless you use software to force
unlock them
In this case, you will void your warranty.
modern graphics cards are for the most part idiot proof
it is extraordinarily difficult to destroy your hardware there are many
failsafes to ensure continual operation. If you do try to hit too high
of a power target, the card will throttle back its clock speed by increments of
thirteen to prevent you from destroying it
If you do reach a temperature too high, again, the card will try to throttle itself down.
usually in increments of thirteen megahertz in a last-ditch effort to prevent you
from killing your card your computer will perform in emergency instant shut down
you probably have to actively try hard enough to fail if you do manage to
destroy your graphics card by attempting to mess around with the core voltage or
otherwise that i will get all my subscribers to sign a congratulatory
card and i will personally hand it to you
I am demonstrating this tutorial on an EVGA GTX 670 4 GB,
and I will also demonstrate it in SLI, but it works the same way
Just substitute your graphics card model in any of the searches I show.
First, you should look at your Graphics card product page to find its core
specifications, maximum operating temperature, and power requirements.
you should also check if your card is manufacturer overclocked to any extent
If it is, it will be designated sc or ftw
which means the manufacturer already set it to their determined max
clock
This is important and crucial to a later step
My gtx 670 is superclocked
has a maximum operating temperature of 97c but i never
intended to get anywhere close to that
and a power draw of 170 watts. I am positive my 750
watt psu in my pc will handle an sli overclock fine.
Next, download the software that you will use to perform your overclock
and conduct your overclock benchmarks
i like the user interface and the feedback of msi after burner and
msi combustor so i will use those two programs
their downlink is in the description of this video other programs to consider
Other programs to consider are precision x and uniengine heaven, and you are free to fool around with those
you want
then while waiting for installation to complete
I would do a google search to see what people have been setting power target
to and overclocking their cards to
so you can have an idea of what to expect
however
every graphics card is different even graphics card of the same model are
different and their overclock ability can vary
Now, In MSi afterburner, go to settings,
then check unlock voltage control
unlock voltage monitoring
and then ok
the application will restart
Next, adjust your power limit according to what your google search has
shown is safe
i will put mine and one hundred and twenty percent
and i'm gonna hit apply
If your gpu is not superclocked, then adjust the core clock
upwards
by an increment of 100mhz
If your gpu is sc, then
adjust by 50
i have a super clock pc and let's start with the small overclock of only
fifty megahertz
If it is ftw, then you won't get much benefit from any adjustment
you do yourself
because the manufacturers already overclocked it
then you're gonna hit apply
now we will go back settings and set our fan profile to automatically work harder
before our graphics card can hit its first throttling point.
you can use the points that i'm showing you on this graph or you can use
whatever points that you want
so when i have my temperature at fifty degrees i have my fan speed at fifty
percent if i had my temperature
at sixty five degrees then i have my fan speed at sixty-five
and it's really your personal preference
It really depends on what brand card you have, the cooling that they use, and what
fan noise you are comfortable with
The first throttling point on the GTX 670 is 70c.
Like mentioned previously the trade off for faster fan speed for
faster performance
save the settings
then click okay
so now we're back at the front of MSI after burner
and we're going to click user-defined settings on
there we go and we're going to hit apply
the cool thing about MSI afterburner is that there are profiles that you can save
your various overclock settings to
you can also manually set your fan speed
automatic speed monitoring will take a very small about point two percent of
your cpu resources but i wouldn't worry because most games don't get to the top
of your cpu then we will run MSI Kombustor
so this is the Kombustor page
you can set whatever preset you want so im going to set mine at 1080 or just
for the 3d tests you can run the presets
so im going to start with my presets
and hit begin
now what this is going to do is is its going to put a very tessellated 3D
object on the screen
and stretch your cpu as best as they can
you'll know what i'm talking about as soon as you hit the preset
For the sake of video time, I'm just going to continue with this tutorial.
if Kombustor is stable and it makes it to the end of the testing then you can make
then you make your own tweaks by adding 50mhz until your card runs too hot
then reducing by a few mhz until you do get a good balance of performance
and temperature
if you see some graphical artifacting but Kombustor hasn't crashed then you
are running too high of an overclock
graphical artifacts look exactly like a glitch in the animus
If you've played Assassin's creed before, you will know exactly what I'm talking about
To find a good overclock it is some trial and error.
this won't be as accurate as the longer methods of overclocking but it is a good
start you have already gained quite a bit of experience
you will notice that i haven't touched a memory offset
most people won't gain very much from memory overclock
it can certainly help with lots of anti aliasing running a game with a lot of
texture mods like Skyrim
or gaming at high resolutions like triple monitors, but for single screen
1080p
regular overclocking should be good enough
for SLI configuration cards
overclocking works the exact same way if you have cards from different
manufacturers or if one of your cards are already manufacturer overclock
both clocks will default to the lowest clock speed
i have SLI disabled at the moment but you do see some temperature readings and
some usage readings for both gpu's
in the MSI Afterburner grasp
as soon as I enable SLI in the Nvidia control panel
then in the Afterburner settings
Overclocking works in the same exact way
But testing in afterburner is one thing, you really have to start playing some games
to really see if you have a good overclock
go with the most graphically intense game you own
I'm playing Crysis 3 on very high everything, and you can see the MSI
Kombustor indicators showing the total usage up my cards and their temperatures
Crysis 3 is a good benchmark game
because it is the most graphically intensive game to date
if your game crashes reasses your overclock
if you can play the game for hours without crashing
then congratulations you have successfully overclocked your graphics card
Thanks for watching, guys. I really hope I was able to help you
let me know if you have any questions
Be sure to leave this video a like rating, and subscribe if you're new to my channel.
Enjoy overclocked gaming, and I'll see you next video.