Why some believe overclocking a GPU isn't worth it for new generation GPUs.
Why some believe overclocking a GPU isn't worth it for new generation GPUs.
I believe many cards face thermal limits, causing them to lose clocks even when set to standard levels. They generally perform better with lower voltages to stay cooler. Reducing clock speeds slightly could also assist, helping maintain a higher average clock during extended play.
I imagine that stronger cooling capabilities reduce the necessity for these adjustments, with liquid-cooled models showing the best results.
On modern Geforce cards, maintaining performance even on warmer days typically keeps them around 15-30mhz. Exceeding power limits often causes drops from 50-100mhz because the GPU core receives voltage similar to a CPU when auto-voltage is enabled—more than needed. Switching the cooler on the 1080Ti had minimal impact overall. It wasn’t until adjusting the voltage that keeping this card’s optimal boost of 1949mhz became significantly manageable. In Timespy, I managed to prevent it from falling into the 1860s during intense moments. The card consistently maintained 1949 throughout the session.
I've spent a lot of time pushing hardware to its limits.
With excellent case cooling and some fortunate silicon picks, you can squeeze a few hundred MHz from certain cards.
I tend to be pretty consistent with this approach.
My FE 3060TI typically reaches around 2030 boost on air at temperatures between 62-65°C. My 1070 SC performs similarly at 65-72°C also in air.
Gaming temperatures run cooler, and boosts on the FE can climb to 2100 and 2050 at those temps.
Not spectacular, but it works well with air cooling.
Quiet fans help a lot and make a small impact in games—just a few percent at most.
For benchmarking or serious tasks it really stands out.
My other rigs (960FTW4gig and 1060 6Gig gaming) also run Folding @home, so my setup is different from most people's.
Effective cooling is essential.
Overclocking with any software won't help much without good cooling.
https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/67653142
I understand this thread is relatively new, but I still think it's valid. People often say the performance improvement won't be significant most of the time. However, your OC can't upgrade your card tier, so occasionally overclocking might help smooth things out a bit.
Depends on the GPU though; my 5700xt was mostly limited by temperatures rather than power, while my 6800xt seems more balanced and I notice a slight drop in performance above 2500mhz, even with good temperatures. My Vega 64 was quite different—overclocking it to 1720mhz at stock speed made it slower than its stock 1630mhz, hitting power limits quickly, slowing Firestrike by 300-400 points, while temps stayed below 75°C. Running it stock at 1630mhz and under 0.95v gave me a huge gain of nearly 1,000 points in Firestrike with temps around 60°C. I’m not hitting power limits on any card, just different limits. So, getting the highest core clock isn’t always the best approach for every GPU.
The main problem, from my perspective: The voltage is fixed, both for AMD and Nvidia. It's at 1.05 volts and you can't exceed it. Unless you begin soldering your GPU, which few people would do. This is essentially bypassing the voltage restriction.