Safe settings for overclocking 8800 GTS OC?

[Jalida]

Can someone tell me what would be considered a good boost but yet safe settings to overclock my BFG 8800GTS OC to?

I've used ATITool 0.27 to OC it, and when I let ATITool find the max core it got flaky at about 637 with small yellow blocks showing up in the 3Dview and once it hit about 648 my screen would blank out to black and flash in and out everytime ATITool would up it a few more MHz. I finally got worried and powered off the computer since I couldnt abort the test at that point.

I've currently got it set to Core: 625.00MHz and Memory of 900MHz. The 3D View has been running for aproximately 30 minutes without any errors and the temp is showing up between 79c and 81c and usually sitting at 80c.

I wonder if these settings would be considered safe or if this card is known to be able to go higher then this or should even be lower then this. This card is utilizing the stock BFG cooling system.

Thanks,

[PrairieDawg]

Re: Safe settings for overclocking 8800 GTS OC?

No idea what that particular card can do but a bit of advice: When you see graphical glitches that is the time to stop overclocking and back off a bit. DO NOT continue untill the screen is blanking out to black and flashing in and out unless you want permanent damage and a reason to buy a new card.

[Jalida]

Re: Safe settings for overclocking 8800 GTS OC?

I've run 3dmark 06 with both the stock oc settings as supplied by the mfg 550/792 and at 625/900 and the score difference is miniscule.

At default settings the score for 3dmark 06 was 7554
when oc'd to 625/900 the score went up to 7692

This really doesn't seem like that big of a jump considering I raised the core by 125MHz and the memory 108MHz.

Your opinions?

Oh and according to ATITool, the temps never got above 75c during either of the tests using 3dmark 06

[Jalida]

Re: Safe settings for overclocking 8800 GTS OC?

No idea what that particular card can do but a bit of advice: When you see graphical glitches that is the time to stop overclocking and back off a bit. DO NOT continue untill the screen is blanking out to black and flashing in and out unless you want permanent damage and a reason to buy a new card.

Thanks for the info. I wasn't sure if the ATITools program was going to stop by itself once it detected the Max core speed or not. Apparently it didn't. So it's not like a tool that I can just leave running unattended and that will stop when it detects errors. Because even though I was getting those yellow blocks of errors in the 3D view, ATITools still showed No errors for xx:xx.xx sec.

Guess it was probably a good thing that I hit the reset button on the computer instead of let it continue to do that thinking that it was all part of the softwares testing phase.

Thanks again.

Oh when oc'd to what I have listed in the post above this one. I did notice a FPS bump in the most recent game that I play (Lord of the Rings Online) before OC'ing it I was getting 75-85 out in the wilds, and after Oc'ing it the FPS went up to about 85-99. Still doesn't seem like a big enough deal to bother OC'ing the card since to me anything above 60FPS in the games that I play is perfectly playable.

Still I may try a couple more notches above the 625/900 to see if I can break the 100FPS mark which would be nice just to be able to.

ATITool is running at 635/950 right now for tha past 10 minutes and the temps are only 80c so far with no abnormalities in the 3D View.

[casecutter]

Re: Safe settings for overclocking 8800 GTS OC?

What CPU and CPU speeds are you running? 8800's take alot of CPU power to show their most potential.

99.99% of the world cannot see more than 60FPS anyways. Anything higher is essentially wasted speed.

[Jalida]

Re: Safe settings for overclocking 8800 GTS OC?

I've got an AMD 64x2 4600+

Stock CPU speeds, not overclocked that I know of anyway.

[casecutter]

Re: Safe settings for overclocking 8800 GTS OC?

I have my CPU overclocked to 2.88GHz and running the video card stock I get just over 8600pts in 3D Mark 06.

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=1976552

Your score sounds just about right.