275GTX overclock help

[McRipper]

I was wondering if somebody could answer a question for me? I just upgraded from a 9800gtx to a MSI N275gtx Twin Frozr(sweet!!) and I read that my 275gtx is a hell of an overclocker because of the twin fans. The most popular stable overclock I've seen for this card is 742/1600/1300 on air.

So I started very modestly with my overclock and found that 705/1575/1250 is not stable for me. That's overclocked from 666/1476/1161. The thing that I don't understand is, that at 705/1575/1250, it's not heat that causes the crash. I've checked hardware monitor to see what the temps were and it only reached 51C. I thought maybe it was the Crysis benchmark that just crashed, so I tried it again with the World in Conflict benchmark, and again with 3dmark06 and Vantage. Each time, same result and same low 50sC temps.

Did I just get a bad overclocking card? Am I being bottlenecked by something in my system(check my profile)? Does anybody have any ideas why it would crash? Honestly, stock is more than enough for me, but I'm a tinkerer and just wanted to see how much extra I could get out of the card. Any help would be much obliged.

Thanks,
McRipper

 

[OCGuy]

Have you tried just moving up the Core/Shaders and leaving the memory alone? I have found that if something is going to be finicky, it is going to be the RAM.

 

[McRipper]

Thanks for the reply.

I haven't. I was messing around with it last night and was going to try a combination of things and that was going to be one of them. I'll tinker with it again tonight and post my results. Thanks again.

McRipper

 

[McRipper]

Looks like I got a crap overclocker. The highest I could go was 700/1548/1250. I tried 715/1576/1250 but it crashed during Crysis benchmark. With the 700/1548/1250, there was zero difference between overclock and stock in the World in Conflict benchmark and Crysis benchmark. I'm just going to scrap overclocking on this card. I'm kinda bummed that it's not a good overclocker but the stock speeds are more than enough. I played Crysis last night @1680x1050, all settings High, and 4x AA and was getting 40 fps. It looked awesome. Thanks OCguy.

McRipper

 

[Woofmeister]

Make sure that before you do any serious overclocking attempts with the GTX 275 that you manually raise the fan speed to 100%. For me it makes a huge difference in getting a much higher stable overclock. Even though the automatic sensor on the cards will speed the fans up when the GPU reaches a critical heat threshold, the GTX 275s just seem to crave much lower temperatures when it comes time to overclock.

Edit Remember to overclock the core clock first, then the shaders, then memory.

 

[palladium]

Not sure if this applies to the 275, but the 260 and 280 are usually held back by the shader i.e. if you lower your shader clock you can usually push the core higher. I can get 720/1458 stable on my GTX 280, but once i up the shader to the next level ( 1512 - nV uses 54MHz crystals for shaders) I get artifacts from AtiTool . Fortunately, core clock seems to yield a greater fps bump compared to shader, so you might wanna try lowering the shader and get the core up.

 

[McRipper]

Make sure that before you do any serious overclocking attempts with the GTX 275 that you manually raise the fan speed to 100%. For me it makes a huge difference in getting a much higher stable overclock. Even though the automatic sensor on the cards will speed the fans up when the GPU reaches a critical heat threshold, the GTX 275s just seem to crave much lower temperatures when it comes time to overclock.

Yeah, I always do as well. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to make a difference. Thanks for the reply though.

 

[McRipper]

Not sure if this applies to the 275, but the 260 and 280 are usually held back by the shader i.e. if you lower your shader clock you can usually push the core higher. I can get 720/1458 stable on my GTX 280, but once i up the shader to the next level ( 1512 - nV uses 54MHz crystals for shaders) I get artifacts from AtiTool . Fortunately, core clock seems to yield a greater fps bump compared to shader, so you might wanna try lowering the shader and get the core up.

I'll try this. I have noticed that I can get pretty good increase on core(725) and memory(1265) without artifacts but once I start increasing shader, I get a yellow screen on AtiTool and have to reboot. I'll give this a try tonight and post my results. Thanks palladium!!

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: McRipper
The most popular stable overclock I've seen for this card is 742/1600/1300 on air.

Having your hopes set on something someone claimed to have attained on an internet forum is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Good job on what overclock you did get, because not all cards can do even that much. Did you get it on the $185AR deal?

 

[McRipper]

Having your hopes set on something someone claimed to have attained on an internet forum is just setting yourself up for disappointment. Good job on what overclock you did get, because not all cards can do even that much. Did you get it on the $185AR deal?

I know what you're saying, but I wasn't getting my hopes up. I was just using that as an example of what I've seen and that if that's a legitimate stable overclock, I was going to see where I could overclock my card. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to mess around with the card last night, but I will tonight.

And yes, I did get it with free shipping for $185 after the mail-in-rebate. Good thing too, because now it's back up to $249 without the free shipping.

Thanks for the reply.

 

[McRipper]

I got the core to 735 and the memory to 1250. I'm going to push it a little more tonight. 3dMark06 score went from 16392 to 16687. Seems to be the shaders that don't like being overclocked.

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: McRipper
I was wondering if somebody could answer a question for me? I just upgraded from a 9800gtx to a MSI N275gtx Twin Frozr(sweet!!) and I read that my 275gtx is a hell of an overclocker because of the twin fans. The most popular stable overclock I've seen for this card is 742/1600/1300 on air.

So I started very modestly with my overclock and found that 705/1575/1250 is not stable for me. That's overclocked from 666/1476/1161. The thing that I don't understand is, that at 705/1575/1250, it's not heat that causes the crash. I've checked hardware monitor to see what the temps were and it only reached 51C. I thought maybe it was the Crysis benchmark that just crashed, so I tried it again with the World in Conflict benchmark, and again with 3dmark06 and Vantage. Each time, same result and same low 50sC temps.

Did I just get a bad overclocking card? Am I being bottlenecked by something in my system(check my profile)? Does anybody have any ideas why it would crash? Honestly, stock is more than enough for me, but I'm a tinkerer and just wanted to see how much extra I could get out of the card. Any help would be much obliged.

Thanks,
McRipper

you make the classic "mistake" to assume there is overclocking rules/laws. The truth is, when it comes to overclocking we leave the realms of whats tested - and results can vary and there is no fixed set of numbers/rules which apply.

In other words: Its a trial and error thing, some cards OC better, some worse.

FIRST...i think you need to do better testing than running crysis and check for "crashes" since this is a very bad test, IMHO.

You should run furmark and check temps there and check for artifacts.

Are you sure the card was only 50 something WHILE runinng crysis? Whats the temps after 5 mins furmark?

As for my GTX OCing...my card is a "bad" overclocker also w/ C 713 - M 1242 - S 1512
expected AT LEAST 1600 especially on the shaders, but saw some artifacts in furmark once i get close to 1580...so i leave it be.

Besides, the card gets REALLY, REALLY hot in furmark....so for the sake of being "safe" i rather have a few mhz less.

>>
The most popular stable overclock I've seen for this card is 742/1600/1300 on air.
>>
which is of course nonsense, i might have seen the SAME article..and i can tell you that 1600 on the shaders and 1300 on the mem is already REALLY outstanding and hardly "a common overclock"

 

[flexy]

Originally posted by: McRipper
I got the core to 735 and the memory to 1250. I'm going to push it a little more tonight. 3dMark06 score went from 16392 to 16687. Seems to be the shaders that don't like being overclocked.

yep...there isn't really anything left in terms of "headroom" on S and M usually. Thats also the reason your card crashes, not because of temps but you are very close or exceeding healthy S frequency. In other words: Cards running at the edge already

 

[McRipper]

Originally posted by: flexy

Originally posted by: McRipper
I got the core to 735 and the memory to 1250. I'm going to push it a little more tonight. 3dMark06 score went from 16392 to 16687. Seems to be the shaders that don't like being overclocked.

yep...there isn't really anything left in terms of "headroom" on S and M usually. Thats also the reason your card crashes, not because of temps but you are very close or exceeding healthy S frequency. In other words: Cards running at the edge already

Thanks for the replies. I ran the Crysis benchmark after I thought I had a stable overclock. I did use Furmark to get my overclock and temps were sitting at 63C with no artifacts so that's when I ran the benchmarks and started having the problems. Like you said, I think shaders are pretty much at their stable level already. I had zero problems when I pushed just the core and memory. Not a big deal for me because stock is more than enough. It's been a good learning experience. Thanks for your insights. And thanks to everyone else for theirs as well.

McRipper

 

[flexy]

furmark and 63C...this is outstanding. Without fan speeds modified my GTX would easily reach 90 after a few minutes....i modified fan speeds in bios now, i also moved my card in the case to another slot for better airflow...but still getting 85C after 5 mins furmark. As long as its under 90 its good, but i am FAR from getting 63C....
(By the way "real" gaming temps are of course way below what furmark produces...still a hell of a "hot" card...)

Edit: Which makes it look like that that "twinfrozer" is really a good cooling solution - but at the same time makes it obvious that also the best cooling solution cannot magically get beyond hardware limits without any hard/volt mods.

For example if the mem just reaches its limit at about 1300 with its timings...the best cooling wont help either. But i think it might be interesting for people who do voltmods.

 

[McRipper]

Originally posted by: flexy
furmark and 63C...this is outstanding. Without fan speeds modified my GTX would easily reach 90 after a few minutes....i modified fan speeds in bios now, i also moved my card in the case to another slot for better airflow...but still getting 85C after 5 mins furmark. As long as its under 90 its good, but i am FAR from getting 63C....
(By the way "real" gaming temps are of course way below what furmark produces...still a hell of a "hot" card...)

Edit: Which makes it look like that that "twinfrozer" is really a good cooling solution - but at the same time makes it obvious that also the best cooling solution cannot magically get beyond hardware limits without any hard/volt mods.

For example if the mem just reaches its limit at about 1300 with its timings...the best cooling wont help either. But i think it might be interesting for people who do voltmods.

No question the "TwinFrozr" is an excellent cooling solution. It never goes over 55C when I'm gaming and that's on default fan speed which is 35% I believe. Crysis really gets the card cooking though so I tend to up the fans when I play Crysis.

Speaking of, I tried playing Crysis yesterday and was getting some really funny fps. I play on 1680x1050 settings high, DX9, and no AA. Until yesterday, I was getting very good fps in the 44-50 average range and never noticed a low minimum fps. When I played it yesterday, I was still getting good average fps in the 46 range but the minimum fps was 1. It constantly did this ever couple seconds and the game became unbearable to play. I tried lowering the resolution and the average would jump up to 55 fps but the minmum was still 1 sometimes 2 fps.

I tried uninstalling Crysis and reinstalling, I tried drive sweeper and it still does it. Anybody have any idea what's causing that? I have the card at stock speeds so I'm not overclocking when I'm running the game but I do have my CPU overclocked. It wasn't doing that when I played it over the weekend so I'm confused as to what's going on.