I aim to help you with overclocking your video cards.
I aim to help you with overclocking your video cards.
I will provide the temperature details. I own two Twin Frozr 980s.
Top GPU Temperatures:
- High: 80°C
- Low: 26°C
Bottom GPU Temperatures:
- High: 64°C
- Low: 24°C
I am using MSI Afterburner and wanted to know the best overclock settings and expected temperatures. I prefer not to raise the voltage, as I’ve heard it can harm video cards.
My setup is nearly identical, with an EVGA 980 FTW 2.0 that reaches 1444 before stability issues arise or power demands increase. It offers a solid performance improvement over its standard 1379 rating.
I don’t know much about MSI Afterburner, but my advice is to increase the core clock speed by 50mhz above the advertised maximum boost clock at stock voltage. Then perform a test run on the Heaven benchmark for around 30 minutes to warm up and inspect for any issues. If successful, reduce the voltage slightly (such as from 1.15v to 1.10v) and repeat the test. Continue adjusting until you encounter a crash, then apply the most stable setting. If you’re lucky, you might see a minor performance improvement and lower temperatures, which is close to the throttle limit for most NVIDIA cards (around 83°C). This usually happens because one card is restricting airflow or absorbing exhaust heat. As long as neither card is throttling, it should be a successful overclock.
If you aim for 100mhz higher, my experience suggests it’s unlikely unless you use water cooling. Also, avoid changing memory clocks—they tend to cause crashes and artifacts right away and offer minimal FPS gains unless you’re running at very high resolutions.
I don't know much about MSI Afterburner, but my advice is to raise the core clock speed by 50mhz above the advertised maximum boost clock at stock voltage. Then perform a test run on the Heaven benchmark for around 30 minutes to warm up and inspect for any issues. If it functions, reduce the voltage slightly (such as from 1.15v to 1.10v) and repeat the test. Continue adjusting until you encounter a crash, then use the most stable setting. If successful, you might see a minor performance improvement and lower temperatures, which is typical since most NVIDIA cards tend to throttle around 83°C due to airflow or exhaust constraints. As long as neither card is throttling, this could be a viable overclock.
If you're aiming for 100mhz higher, my experience suggests it's unlikely unless you use water cooling. Also, keep the memory clocks unchanged; they often cause crashes and artifacts right away and provide minimal FPS gains unless you're running at very high resolutions like 2K.
I also found that MSI Afterburner doesn't support lowering voltage—it only lets you increase it, which I prefer to avoid. I checked further, but it's strongly discouraged because dropping the voltage can make overclocking even more unstable. Is there any method to overclock without reducing voltage, or would increasing it be necessary?
You can simply keep the stock voltage. I only suggest reducing it to avoid damaging the hardware; the main risk is a crash, which you can fix by resetting the PC and adjusting the voltage again. The advantage of lower voltages includes better temperatures and more room for future overclocking. However, if your settings are fixed, try 25mhz for ten minutes, monitor the temperature, let it cool, then gradually increase back to 25mhz until you notice throttling, artifacts, or a crash. Keeping at stock voltage means you shouldn't risk damaging the card during this process.
I began at a core clock above 50 (raised power limiter to 110 for stability)
Then I increased to 175 (better it wouldn’t crash) which caused issues, so I adjusted down to 150+ core clock and it now runs smoothly without problems.
Top GPU temperature peak: 79°C
Bottom GPU temperature peak: 62°C
I let Heaven run for roughly an hour, and both the system and MSI Afterburner confirmed this. I adjusted my fan control to increase speed when temperatures rose. Top GPU temps climbed about 4°C. With different fan settings, the bottom GPU max temp dropped by 2°C.
The core clock reaches 1443. Sounds good?