OC without higher volt - any risk?

[Isbiten]

The topic says it all.
Are there any risks with overclocking your GPU if you are not giving it any more juice?
What is the worst thing that can happen?

 

[raghu78]

The topic says it all.
Are there any risks with overclocking your GPU if you are not giving it any more juice? What is the worst thing that can happen?

You can overclock at stock voltage in AMD CCC. Just max out power option in AMD Overdrive in the Performance tab in in AMD CCC. Also there is no problem with overclocking with slight voltage increase. The most important factor is GPU core and VRM temps under load. Monitor/ log both these using HWinfo32 when running stability tests to check if the overclock is stable. Heaven 3.0, 3D Mark 11, BF3, Crysis 2 are the apps used by many for stability testing. If your overclock is not stable you will get artifacts or crashes. So you can either lower clocks slightly or go for voltage tweaking. With Sapphire trixx you can easily hit 1.15 Ghz - 1.2 Ghz with slight voltage increase. Don't worry as long as temps are under control. GPU temps below 70c and VRM temps below 90c should be your goal. :thumbsup:

 

[peonyu]

The worst that can happen is your GPU wont be stable and it will crash under load, it wont damage the card though. Increasing volts will make your card stable at the expense of more heat to the GPU and VRM. A small increase in voltage for a large gain in mhz is completely worth it if you ask me..

As far as temps go, with decent cooling your GPU temp should be fine. The VRMs are what I would worry about [I had in the past 2 nvidia cards bite the dust due to vrm issues..]. On my setup now with a aftermarket gpu cooler [icy vision A], my load GPU temps peak at 80c but my vrms have hit at times 100c. With a AMD gpu, the vrms can tolerate up to 120c but id try to keep it at 90-100c max.

 

[philipma1957]

you can undervolt 5% and oc 5%

using msi afterburner on a lot of 7970 cards and on 7950 cards.

my xfx 7970's come with 1.049 stock volts and 925 clock.

you can drop volts .999 and boost clock to 940-960 and it will run. cuts heat back a bit.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Compared to stock it is worse but not exactly very risky per say unless you ignore the symptoms of an unstable oc.

 

[Isbiten]

Forgot to mention, ordered a Gigabyte 7950 WF, it comes at 900MHz but I would to crank out as much as possible without higher voltage.
Thanks for all the answers, it was exactly what I wanted to hear, that as long as I don't up the voltage the worst thing that can happen is that I get artifacts.

 

[blastingcap]

Unless the video card hardware was defective in the first place or your PSU can't handle the additional wattage, you will not physically damage the card or your system. However, you may crash programs and stuff like that.

 

[tweakboy]

You can only reach a certain GPU clock. That is the worst, or crashes.

Good news is you dont need to touch voltage to OC VRAM

 

[wand3r3r]

Was the 7950 default voltage 1.25v now? At least the hd 7970 ghz bios is 1.25v so you should be fine up to that 24/7. Either way, once you hit artifacts you can try bump the voltage slowly as most cards are well under 1.25v and see if the OC increases.

Once you crash a benchmark like heaven or 3dmark11 just reboot your computer and try again or back down a few MHz or add slightly more voltage. Don't try rerun the benchmarks after they crash once, you need a fresh reboot to clear everything.

Once you finally settle on a clock speed then you have to try some intensive games like bf3, etc. They will crash if your OC is unstable.

 

[peonyu]

You can only reach a certain GPU clock. That is the worst, or crashes.

Good news is you dont need to touch voltage to OC VRAM

True but VRAM is weird now, you can OC it to much without realizing it [no artifacts on the screen] and take a performance hit if you dont compare your fps to before it was overclocked. Error correction kicking in is not good.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Any OC can damage the card. Even if you dont increase the voltage. lifespan still gets reduced, degration still happens. And you can still get permanent damage in the form of artifacts etc.

There is so such thing as riskfree OC. Its simply a matter of how much.

 

[tweakboy]

Ya I got mine stable no artifacts for these games

 

[lehtv]

Was the 7950 default voltage 1.25v now? At least the hd 7970 ghz bios is 1.25v so you should be fine up to that 24/7. Either way, once you hit artifacts you can try bump the voltage slowly as most cards are well under 1.25v and see if the OC increases.

1.25V? Afterburner reports 1.050V at +20 power limit for my 7950 Vapor-X which uses a custom 7970 PCB, IIRC. But HWiNFO reports 1.188V, and GPU-Z reports under 1V. Any idea which program to believe?