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Help, understanding overclocking


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#1 Murum

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Posted 22 April 2018 - 09:00 am

[INTRO]
 
As the topic title am trying to understand overclocking, through software(GPU) at first so i can draw the max potential of my hardware, what i want to achieve with this topic is to place any questions i come across and see if anyone else can enlighten me(obviously i tried searching various oc forums and the lot and found no satisfactory answer) you may want to tell me to simply do a thread on one of those forums instead of here, true i could and will eventually, but i see folks that have more than the average knowledge here so i'll pick your ears first and who know through it you and me may learn something more than what we know already.
 
The purpose to why am trying to understand overclocking is because down the line with a new PC rig that i will be building i'd like to safely gain the max performance i can out of it as such i want to use my current rig to learn.
 
With the introduction and the why's out of the way let me begin.
 
My questions for now mostly be on software overclocking a GPU
 
[What i will be using and the reason]
 
I will be using GPU tweak ii to do my OC, GPU-z/Open-Hardware Monitor for monitoring and Unigine Heaven/Valey/Superposition along with 3dmark/furmark(has issues) for benchmarking and stability testing
 
Reason am using gpu tweak and not afterburner is cause it came with my current gpu they pretty much use identical settings with the same options only difference i've seen so far is the 2d/3d app profiling system that afterburner has and gpu tweak does not, if am missing something and i should auto swap it due to a clear performance advantage over gpu tweak please tell me why i should.
 
[System Information]

The gpu i will be using is the Strix 1050ti 4gb on stock cooling, it's not a gpu that is even worth overclocking point known and understood again am trying to learn to overclock and not make a monster out of a 1050ti.
 
Am on Win7x64bit AFAICT i have no bottle-necking issues on this old rig from the cpu from what i can see on an old Phenom ii 965 BE 3.7ghz OC and as i understand it you can tell about bottle-necking when 1st,2nd core clocking are not clocking 100% usage under gpu usage, 8gb 1600mhz Ram CLK9 it's a very old rig nearing 7years old now and like i said in the process of building a new rig unfortunately am waiting for the new 2950x cpu and the next series xx80 ti so am making due with what i have.
 
Onward to helping me learn
 
[GPU's default values]
 
From gpu tweak

  • GPU boost clock 1392
  • GPU voltage 0
  • MemClock 7008(eff.1752mhz)
  • FanSpeed +0/0%
  • Power Target +0/100%
  • Temp Target +0/83c

[What i've done so far]



 


So far from what i read and understood this is what i've done with gpu tweak

  •     GPU boost clock 1392->1492(+100)
  •     GPU voltage 0
  •     MemClock 7008(eff.1752mhz)->7658(+600) eff 1902mhz
  •     FanSpeed +0/0% (used a custom fan curve 40c@30%rpm->75c@100%rpm)
  •     Power Target +0/100%->129%(+29)
  •     Temp Target +0/83c->+4/87c

This is my current starting oc profile it's not fine tuned but its a stable soft oc to start from to reach a final stable OC before i fine tune it, i've arived to this by the following mehodology
 
GPU Clock upward increments of +10 and then benchmarking using heaven/valey until i noticed on the sensor tab that the PerfCap reason started hitting the PWR reason dropped it by 10mhz after that and then proceeded to do the MemClock following the same principle by 100mhz increment then dropping by 50hz
once i hit the PWR reason again, then proceeded with a stability test on heaven/superposition for 30 minutes (as i've seen by that time i'd crash if i had any issue, i did an earlier clock upwards to +150hz on core and 1200hz on memory on 125% power target no voltage increase that crashed@28minutes in heaven.) then proceeded to game on the most GPU intensive game i had at the time(modded 4k skyrim...yes modded it's probably a better stability test than heaven/valey/furmark/3dmark for me) for about an hour with no issues.
 
From my understanding getting the PWR reason on the PerfCap reason indicates that the GPU is hitting the ceiling on the max power it can utilize for those clocks and thus would require more power/voltage for effective use of higher clock numbers, as such i came to the conclusion that if am hitting PWR reason there's no point clocking higher if it will throttle down and not give me the max benefit.

 

There is only so much you can clock your gpu by software without voltage changes even if your gpu can clock higher, again without a custom cooler either on the cpu of gpu i don't feel right doing voltage changes.
 
[Questions so far]

  • I dread upping Voltage on a GPU without having VRM sensors and an aftermarket cooler that i know would cool the VRM's of the gpu or a simple LM TIM mod on the VRM and i shouldn't do it otherwise correct?
  • Is my methodology correct and am i understanding the PWR reason in PerfCap Reason correctly?
  • Can someone help me understand the power target slider in afterburner/gpu tweak?
    From what i can tell it's modifying the threshold for downthrotling the card when it reaches either power or the temp set at, what i want to learn and understand is A) where can i safely place it at? B) how does it work? does it operate on a fixed power draw range from the card set by the bios? and the power target decides whats the max limit it can draw power from the fixed range?
    for example in most clocking guide's i've seen most recommend to just put it on max but their max is typically 110-125% mine is 200% which is what got me confused. On GPUz NvidiaBios it shows me that the power limits of the card are 52.5w min, 75w def, and 150w max is that the safety range the manufacturers determine that the card can operate on? and does the power target simply work as follows, anything above 100%(75w)->200%(150w)? or bellow 100% down to 67%(52.5w)
  • [EDIT 04/27/18 13:51pm] Continuing from Power Target Slider, what does it exactly mean to change the TDP of the hardware for example can you keep pumping voltage/watts to a piece of hardware as long as theres a sufficient cooling? and therefore clock it higher? does a hardware have a range of voltage/watts that once you reach that limit it will literally burn your hardware in a blaze of glory no matter the cooling?
  • [EDIT 04/27/18 13:56pm]Does the Boost clock for NVIDIA gpu's continue to clock indefinite as long as there is TDP headroom to work with?

[Notes] down the line in the future if i get more questions i will necro the thread by bump and update original post with the [EDIT xx/xx/xx time.xx:x] and then the new question above the note bracket

[EDIT 04/30/18 20:12pm] Swapped to using Superposition Benchmark from Unigine better stress test IMO and i can do finer tuning on the software benchmark.

[EDIT 05/02/18 23:06pm] I had a bad power supply cable that was giving me bad power to the card after swapping it i wasn't hitting the PWR limit on my methodology as easily which got me a new stable OC and probably the best and most stable i can get out of the card without voltage adjustements, methodology hasnt changed.


Edited by Murum, 03 May 2018 - 06:41 pm.

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#2 Murum

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Posted 26 April 2018 - 03:28 pm

[Questions so far]

  • I dread upping Voltage on a GPU without having VRM sensors and an aftermarket cooler that i know would cool the VRM's of the gpu or a simple LM TIM mod on the VRM and i shouldn't do it otherwise correct?
  • Is my methodology correct and am i understanding the PWR reason in PerfCap Reason correctly?
  • Can someone help me understand the power target slider in afterburner/gpu tweak?
    From what i can tell it's modifying the threshold for downthrotling the card when it reaches either power or the temp set at, what i want to learn and understand is A) where can i safely place it at? B) how does it work? does it operate on a fixed power draw range from the card set by the bios? and the power target decides whats the max limit it can draw power from the fixed range?
    for example in most clocking guide's i've seen most recommend to just put it on max but their max is typically 110-125% mine is 200% which is what got me confused. On GPUz NvidiaBios it shows me that the power limits of the card are 52.5w min, 75w def, and 150w max is that the safety range the manufacturers determine that the card can operate on? and does the power target simply work as follows, anything above 100%(75w)->200%(150w)? or bellow 100% down to 67%(52.5w)
  • Continuing from Power Target Slider, what does it exactly mean to change the TDP of the hardware for example can you keep pumping voltage/watts to a piece of hardware as long as theres a sufficient cooling? and therefore clock it higher? does a hardware have a range of voltage/watts that once you reach that limit it will literally burn your hardware in a blaze of glory no matter the cooling?

One of the replies i got on a different forum related to the questions i had if anyone was interested.
 

1) You will have no problems increasing the voltage cap on NVIDIA cards as there is both a soft and hard amperage limit in place. NVIDIA's Greenlight program (restricting cards from breaching certain power conditions) makes it extremely difficult to damage the GPU through software overclocking.

2) The Power Limit is induced when the card reaches the maximum TDP limit. By increasing the Power Target to the maximum value you allow the card to draw the maximum amount of current. Whether this limit is reached depends on thermal load, how demanding the application is and the core and voltage offset. Note the voltage offset slider simply unlocks higher voltage points along the GPU Boost Curve, which you can look at for yourself in the User Defined settings for Core offset in GPU Tweak.

3) See above, as long as temperatures are within spec, you can safely raise the Power Target. The limit works as you suggest in your post.

4) GPU Boost 3.0 works on GPU temperature and power conditions. As long as there is headroom, the card will boost higher than what the vendors specify until either condition is breached. Pascal has a voltage limit of 1.093v, which you will rarely see due to the limits in place. This includes even when the voltage slider is increased, as most cards will reach a power limit before being able to utilise this end of the spectrum.

I recommend using Futuremarks Firestrike stress test. This allows you to loop the test, but also monitors the boost clock for consistency. This test will tell you what your maximum potential overclock is before instability is found, but furthermore whether the card is able to maintain a consistent boost clock. If temperature conditions change drastically, you'll be able to see on the chart (as with GPU Tweak) at what temperature GPU Boost 3.0 is dropping the boost clock.

Hope this helps.


Edited by Murum, 27 April 2018 - 10:51 am.

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#3 Fozzies

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Posted 26 April 2018 - 10:22 pm

I have nothing constructive to add Murum, but im very interested in this subject, thanks for sharing your replies, please keep going :)


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#4 Murum

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Posted 27 April 2018 - 10:49 am

I have nothing constructive to add Murum, but im very interested in this subject, thanks for sharing your replies, please keep going :)


If the questions/answers i come across with this thread helps someone else it's all good. :)


Edited by Murum, 27 April 2018 - 11:43 am.

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