Overclocking my GTX580SLI...(got lucky this time)

[solofly]

Real lucky and you'll see what I mean in a moment. Spent the whole day yesterday overclocking my cards, trying to find the limits and I did for the most part. I've reached a stable overclock of 900/2200(4400), stock voltage of course. Now I know for a fact the memory(or/and memory controller) is maxed out (another 2 or 3 mhz and artifacts). GPUs on the other hand due to heat factor (99C during Furmark) I wont know the limit until I'll do some cooling changes to my case (which I've been wanting to do for a long time - one day i will explain) but man that's a pretty good overclock to start with...

I have a question for you guys. How many MHz do you back off when you hit the wall? Just a number, just wondering....

 

[Keysplayr]

Usually back off 10MHz when I hit the wall. Just a little margin of safety for stability's sake.

 

[RavenSEAL]

25MHz here

 

[notty22]

I backed off about 20/25 on both core/memory with sli. I can run higher, but it would some times freeze in extreme tesselation in Heaven Benchmark. Imo thats a very good stability test. It stresses certain areas, harder than Furmark. Imo, mainly the memory.
my usualy o/c profile is 890/990

 

[tviceman]

Do you know what kind of max load temps you get with just 1 gtx580 in your setup? 99 sounds crazy high with the gtx580's improved cooling, even for an overclocked SLI setup.

 

[WelshBloke]

Does Fermi overclock in 'steps' like the older hardware.

I usually find the highest stable 'step' and stay there.

By 'steps' I mean the table below

I set my 8800gts to anything between 642 to 661 and it gives me an actual clock of 648.

 

[notty22]

No, that sounds like a clock generator limitation.
You can set to the 1mhz on both core and memory.
The voltage adjustment has increments.

 

[solofly]

Do you know what kind of max load temps you get with just 1 gtx580 in your setup? 99 sounds crazy high with the gtx580's improved cooling, even for an overclocked SLI setup.

For starters, the fan doesn't spin any higher than 85% but it's stable and that's all that matters.
And my case is one of the reasons also. Even tho it has excellent airflow it really wasn't desinged for air cooling at all. Air flows side to side (not front to back like most cases) and because of that expansion cards get very little fresh air (or air circulation period) and that's why I need to do a tiny mod...(add a fan)

 

[WelshBloke]

No, that sounds like a clock generator limitation.
You can set to the 1mhz on both core and memory.
The voltage adjustment has increments.

I can set small increments but it only gives real overclock as the table above.


Afterburner will show the small changes in the overclocking panel, but in the hardware monitoring panel it will show the real overclock. For example, it might show 660 MHz for the core in the overclocking panel but the hardware monitoring panel will still show 648 MHz.

It makes finding the highest stable overclock very fast when you know the table.

 

[tviceman]

For starters, the fan doesn't spin any higher than 85% but it's stable and that's all that matters.
And my case is one of the reasons also. Even tho it has excellent airflow it really wasn't desinged for air cooling at all. Air flows side to side (not front to back like most cases) and because of that expansion cards get very little fresh air (or air circulation period) and that's why I need to do a tiny mod...(add a fan)

With your crazy video card upgrades, you should consider getting a silverstone raven or antec 1200 case. Just sayin!

 

[happy medium]

Usually back off 10MHz when I hit the wall. Just a little margin of safety for stability's sake.

This^^^

 

[Arkadrel]

@solofly

How much do you score in vantage mark?
Monsterous pc you have.

 

[happy medium]

BenQ FP241W 24" and sli'd 580's , talk about overkill. Not that theres anything wrong with that.

 

[solofly]

Overkill right now but in January I'm upgrading to either a 27" 2560x1440 OR one of these...

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?s...nufacture=BenQ

And some glasses, and then I'll need it. I saw this guy with a Dell 2407 and an another 120hz monitor, together and I thought to myself I could do that too...

 

[solofly]

@solofly

How much do you score in vantage mark?

I don't know. I downloaded Futuremark Vantage last night for a very first time but I didn't spend much time on it. The few things I clicked told me I had to pay so I left it...

On 30th of this month I'm getting a free copy of Futuremark2011 and I can bench that one for you...

 

[tweakboy]

Wow you rich or something,, thats 1200 dollars on video cards WOW,,,, man Crysis finally will fly on SLI 580 GTX ,,,,,other then that its a over kill.

 

[RussianSensation]

I found this Bit-Tech GTX580 overclocking review very informative:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/11/20/nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-overclocking/1

"....testing the stability of the overclock each time with Kombustor until the board topped out at a mahoosive 915MHz GPU core frequency. With a sigh, we had to go back to Afterburner and start dialling back the overclock... Running a demanding game such as Just Cause 2 is a much sterner test of an overclock as it’ll stress not only the stream processors of the GPU, but its DX11-specific and memory units, plus the driver and the graphics card's memory chips. Eventually we settled on a 860MHz GPU core frequency..."

 

[RavenSEAL]

I found this Bit-Tech GTX580 overclocking review very informative:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/11/20/nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-overclocking/1

"....testing the stability of the overclock each time with Kombustor until the board topped out at a mahoosive 915MHz GPU core frequency. With a sigh, we had to go back to Afterburner and start dialling back the overclock... Running a demanding game such as Just Cause 2 is a much sterner test of an overclock as it’ll stress not only the stream processors of the GPU, but its DX11-specific and memory units, plus the driver and the graphics card's memory chips. Eventually we settled on a 860MHz GPU core frequency..."

Lol, why would you need to OC a GTX580 to play JC2?

 

[solofly]

I found this Bit-Tech GTX580 overclocking review very informative:
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2010/11/20/nvidia-geforce-gtx-580-overclocking/1

"....testing the stability of the overclock each time with Kombustor until the board topped out at a mahoosive 915MHz GPU core frequency. With a sigh, we had to go back to Afterburner and start dialling back the overclock... Running a demanding game such as Just Cause 2 is a much sterner test of an overclock as it’ll stress not only the stream processors of the GPU, but its DX11-specific and memory units, plus the driver and the graphics card's memory chips. Eventually we settled on a 860MHz GPU core frequency..."

No game has crashed yet and I have been playing all day long. I will pull back a bit regardless, was thinking about 875 and just leaving it there. That's over 100MHz over stock clock so...

Tweakboy, i'm not rich at all dude, just love gaming...(paid 1050 btw not 1200)

 

[apoppin]

I don't know. I downloaded Futuremark Vantage last night for a very first time but I didn't spend much time on it. The few things I clicked told me I had to pay so I left it...

On 30th of this month I'm getting a free copy of Futuremark2011 and I can bench that one for you...

You get one free Vantage run. Run the default settings (but disable the feature tests in Options).

My GTX 580 is only stable to just over 850 MHz; stock is 772 MHz. My Galaxy SOC GTX 480 can get the same 850 Mhz; stock is 700 MHz. So i am pretty happy with either of mine as my reference GTX 480 can only get 825 MHz.

 

[RussianSensation]

Lol, why would you need to OC a GTX580 to play JC2?

I don't think that was the point of the overclock. The conclusion was that JC2 was more demanding than MSI Kombustor. After running a videogame and not a synthetic tool, they started to have artifacts. That's why I was suggesting that solofly tests some games and not just rely on Furmark, etc.