How to go about OC my gtx 770

[steve wilson]

Hi,
I usually buy amd cards, but I decided to give a Nvidia one a try for a change. I have an MSI GTX 770 Twin Frozr and was wondering how I should go about OC it? Are there any good guides I can follow? Should I mess around with the voltage? If so how?

I don't know if it's relevant but I'm going to be playing Battlefield 4 at 1920x1080 on a 120hz monitor. I'm not expecting 120 fps... but would like to get the best I can.

Thanks for any help.

 

[amenx]

Download Evga Precision or MSI Afterburner. Slide the power and temperature targets to the max (to prevent throttling). Raise the core frequency by 30mhz at a time, then test with 3dmark or Heaven for stability. When you encounter instability, reduce the frequency. When you establish stability for the core, then do the same with the memory. No need to touch voltages. Good luck.

 

[Jaydip]

Amenx is spot on but I will leave the memory as is for a 770.

 

[wand3r3r]

Good advice above.

Just to add a couple details:
Instability can mean driver crashing, black screens, artifacts, and rarely BSODs.

Once you get to the limits (near crashing/instability speeds), back down a little bit, and test in other applications such as both of the benchmarks mentioned and demanding games such as Battlefield. Often it will be stable in one benchmark but not in another, so you have to find the sweet spot that is stable across the board which requires testing (or playing) games and dropping the settings a touch if you have issues. A lot of benchmark runs that people show their OC reaching aren't stable in other applications and therefore may skew your expectations. The 770 should have some headroom, the average is in the 12xx MHz iirc.

The 770 and almost all NVidia cards are voltage neutered by Nvidia. You can flash the BIOS with some hacked BIOSes which unlock voltage control, however it's do at your own risk.

 

[steve wilson]

Thanks for all the great advice guys. I'll give it a go when I get home tonight.

How risky is flashing the bios and messing with the voltages? I've flashed the bios of a graphics card once before many years ago and it worked out well. Can't even remember which model it was now. Something like a 4850 to 4870 type of flash.

 

[steve wilson]

One quick question about 3dmark... is there a specific test I want to use or just run all of them. Is the basic version enough or do I need the advanced version?

 

[Jaydip]

Just run the Firestrike or Heaven 4.0.Don't bother bios flashing with a 770, the rewards are not worth it most of the time.