Food for thought

[filmore crashcart]

Found this thread at Guru3d. Of interest to me because this is exactly what happened to me. Only reason I'm posting this is because I feel there is too much of a cavaleir attitude that all gt's (especially BFG) can reach Ultra speeds right from the box - although I know a lot of them can. Of interest was what Madagent had to comment on this problem.
I know the more experienced members here take their overclocks up gradually so it is never an issue for them to have to go and lie to a store in order to return a video card they just toasted.
Anyway, for the novice, this thread has good advice. I would also be careful of what coolbits tells you on beta drivers.
My card now is just fine at stock speeds and that's all I care about.
If your interested: problems down the road on an overclock.

 

[eplebnista]

Thanks for the link!

 

[PowderBB3D]

Interesting read. Will keep this in mind when I overclock my GT (which is sitting unused in my room because I haven't made the new system yet).

 

[killedradiostar]

Originally posted by: filmore crashcart
My card now is just fine at stock speeds and that's all I care about.

 

[Genx87]

He has been using all sorts of different driver revisions and it locks for 5 seconds every 20-30 mins. I am guessing this is a system issue more than a GPU issue.

btw there is no such thing as burning in a CPU. These things are'nt motors where there are moving parts. The closest thing can be called electromigration. But that wont help overlock a chip. It will in fact cause it to perform worse and worse to the point of not performing at all.

 

[CRXican]

Not sure about the whole burning in thing because each card is tested before it leaves the factory. I can't remember how long I ran my GT at stock speeds but it wasn't long before I discoverd Coolbits and had it cranked up. However reading that article makes me realize that I really don't need to OC. When I get home from work I'll be setting my GT back to stock settings. I'll never know the difference.

 

[filmore crashcart]

btw there is no such thing as burning in a CPU. These things are'nt motors where there are moving parts

You know, that concept always confused me. I know about electromigration and that always seemed to be counter to the concept of what "burning in" is suppose to do. It would be nice to see one day a compiled list of common "computer legends" - something similar to "urban legends". The advantage to slowly taking a chip up in speed that I see is that you have more time and control in observing potential problems.

He has been using all sorts of different driver revisions and it locks for 5 seconds every 20-30 mins. I am guessing this is a system issue more than a GPU issue

Could be.... what interest me was that his experience was almost exactly like mine. But I did a complete reformat and install and the symptoms of decreased overclock tolerance stayed the same. I have disabled fastwrites, set my fsb to default (wasn't high to begin with and I have a nforce 3 with working agp lock), reformated, looked at the operation of my video card fan, checked temps,.... nothing made a difference. I started out being able to easily run at Ultra speeds and more, experimented with some beta drivers, and now, I can't overclock at all - even with a clean install of the new 61.77s.

Auto detect use to routinely report an optimal frequency of 421/1100 to 426/1200 on mine, now it reports 412/1080 - which it will produce artifacts at. Even if I could run it at 412/1080, what's the point? It won't increase frame rate or that Holy 3dmark 03 number. I now care more on preserving the life of my card, they're not easy to come by.

The symptoms to me (and I don't profess to have anymore knowledge on this then a basic physics course in college) seem to point out a case of accelerated electromigration that's decreased the potential of the chip - something I never thought was suppose to happen this quick.

I just think with all the current hubris on overclocking results that people need to keep in the back of their mind that these cards are still rare and hard to come by. If you burn it up and lie to get a replacement, it might take awhile to get one.

 

[JBT]

The people over ther are mostly idiots. There is no such thing as CPU burn in. There is something called settling thermal paste though which will allow for a couple degrees cooler temps but thats about it. I do agree to a point though. When I first OCed my GT it probably was a bit to high and would occasionally freeze for a few seconds in FC and 3dmark03. I backed the clocks down a bit and it seemed to be fixed. Though that also might have something to do with turing fast writes off I havn't singled it out yet as I have been busy working alot this week. If I single it out I will definaly post about my findings though.