Zotac GTX 460 1GB - Overclocking

[ArchAngel777]

So I decided to pickup a Zotac GTX 460 1GB (should arrive today) and am curious if anyone can point me to the latest and greatest software to modify the voltage and clock speed.

Also, I am the knida of guy who likes to flash the BIOS with the new stable clocks. I am thinking, that because nearly every one of these can hit 800Mhz, that I will test it for a few days with slightly higher clock and then BIOS flash it to the new speed. Call me old school, but I am not a fan of software overclocking, despite the fact that I am probably being silly about it.

So.... Since I am so far out of the loop (been 2 years since I have overclocked a video card) I am curious if someone can share some tips or websites to assist me with this!!!

Oh yeah, everyone who ever called me an ATI Fanboy, here is yet another nVidia card in my arsenal.

 

[Skurge]

MSI afterburner is pretty good.

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

I agree. Msi afterburner. Is that the external exhaust version? I have a gtx 460 external exhaust Evga superclock. They have higher temps than the reference version so that will probably affect your oc'ing potential.

 

[superccs]

MSI afterburner is pretty good.

This.

 

[drizek]

++

 

[toyota]

you picked up a gtx460 to replace your gtx280? that was barely an upgrade at all.

 

[ArchAngel777]

you picked up a gtx460 to replace your gtx280? that was barely an upgrade at all.

Oh, I would have normally agreed with you. But since I found this for $143 AR, shipped, sold my dad's GTX 260 for $70, that allowed me to upgrade both my machine and my fathers (he received my 280) for about $75. Two machines upgraded with an average increase of 30% performance each (260 to 280 - ~30%, and my 280 to 460 @ 800Mhz ~30%)

99% (just throwing that number out there, because I have never seen a 460 clock lower than this in any review) hit 800Mhz+ that is sizable increase over my GTX 280.

The GTX 280 stock was generally about 10% behind the 285. So, if I use the numbers from AT's review on the 460 FTW (850Mhz core) and and the 285, I come up with a decent increase in performance.

Take Crysis, for example, the 285 which scores 36.3 average FPS versus the 460 FTW which scores average 50.0 FPS which is a 38% performance increase at the resolution I play at.

If we take the Crysis Minimums it is 22.2 versus 33.6 which is a 52% increase!

Battleforge is ~30% faster. It looks like on some of the opengl based games the performance is only slightly better (15-20%).

For $75 bucks, I am pretty happy.

 

[ArchAngel777]

BTW, thanks for the MSI Afterburner recomendation. I am currently clocked at 850Mhz, 1700Mhz and 2000Mhz respectively.

 

[ArchAngel777]

It was stable all the way to 900Mhz until it hits around 75c. Since I don't particularly care for the fan noise, I opted to drop voltage down to 1.0 and run the unit at 822/1644/2000, which is where I have it set to auto load. So far it runs just great. Very pleased with this card. It is within 10% of a stock 560 and was only 143 AR shipped.