The fun of overclocking my 8800GTX

i currently have a very nice pc... it works really well.. and yet i am not happy (i am now)
i have this unnatural urge to push boundaries and more often than not break things.. anyways, i thought i would share my adventures with my gtx.

for reference my card is:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/119847

the programs i used were:
GpuZ
Rivatuner
Ati tool
3dMark06


so at stock my card runs at 576 core clock, and 900 memory clock.
first thing i did was to keep one clock speed constant at stock, and increase the other one to the maximum. to find the maximum i ran ati tool and used the "scan for artifacts" and checked for errors.
Rivatuner was used to keep an eye on temps, and my fan on my gfx card was always at 70% data cycle speed. 3d mark was used to give me some scores to see how the clock changes affect performance. it also gave me some real world graphics to look at to check for tearing etc..

576/900 : sm2 score=4492
sm3 score=4292
after raising the increments of the core clock at 5 mhz interval, i found its highest running stable was at 655mhz.

655/900 : sm2 score=4760
sm3 score=4463

thid was a big increase and i was quite happy.


i then went around to find the max memory clock. i put the core clock back at 576mhz.
the maximum memory clock i found that was stable was 1015Mhz.

576/1015 : sm2 score=4574
sm3 score=4434

i noticed that an increased core clock really helped my sm2 and sm3 score, however with increased memory clock it only significantly improved my sm3 score, and not my sm2 score much.


now i kinda knew that i couldn't run my card at both 655/1015 because it would be hideously unstable, but because core clock had more of an effect on performance, i decided to try and keep this is high as possible.

After much testing i chose the following speeds to run my gfx card at:

630 core clock / 990 memory clock.

this is a 54 mhz core clock increase from stock and an 90 mhz memory increase. i was quite happy with this as it seemed quite an overclock.
my 3d marks were as follows:

630/990 : sm2=4757
sm3=4548.



well let me know what you guys think. if u know of any other ways of finding the best core/memory clock to run at please inform me!

Nice post.
What program are you using to apply your overclock settings? ATi Tool has an on startup load profile (Overclock settings) for reference.

I found my max core/mem speeds to be pretty similar on my GTS (645/975), pretty big increase over my 540/720 stock speeds.

I think its best to find an "optimal" speed to run at when doing average things, I've personally only used those 645/975 speeds when benchmarking but average use I find an optimal overclock to be pretty useful (620/950).

As per my sig, I run my Palit 8800 GTX at 630/923 all the time. I have not been a lucky with my card as you.... and althought all are built around the same standard board from nVidia, they will each OC slightly differently.... that is part of the game.

There is no guaranteed OC level in any of our kit - we each get what we get.....

BTW I use ATITool and load the OC profile automatically at startup.

i used rivatuner to overclock my gtx, because ati tool doesnt work properly. i think it may be because im running 64-bit or because i have vista..

what OS are u using EtheAv8r?

update:

my gfx card seems now to be stable at 655/1015..

ran ati tool for 10 mins with no errors.

ran 3d marks and following results:

sm2=4852
sm3=4617