Overclocking and videocard life span.

Hello everyone.

I have a 7800go and as you have read in my previous post I have overclocked it from the "underclocked" (is this card really underclocked anyways?) dell's 250/658 to 312/821 (Got a very amazing and noticeable fps boost in all my games, specially when AA is activated.) and the temperatures has always been the same in both clock settings maxing @80c but only in FEAR.

I was wondering, even though the temperatures are the same as stock settings, does this still shorts the card lifespan? or am I wrong?

Does the lifespan of the card when overclocking depends on burning it with higher than normal temperatures or will they usually wear out even if it never reach high temperatures because of the OC?

Hope you guys can answer my newbie question .

 

Hi absolute, and welcome to the forum,

The heat is danger number one. Overclocking can be dangerous and lifespan could shorten. I just have never waited for so long! In my opinion reasonable overclocking up to 20% or so can be considered safe. That is my experience of course. Some people just touched the speeds and got their cards burnt. Latencies in my opinion cannot kill the card, memory overclocking only in extreme situations, GPU is more prone to the heat and can be damaged more easily.

And heat can be dangerous in a long run. The material wears off by heat. Its properties are becoming worse. I used to have a problem with a small airpocket on the thermal patch and x700 would go up to 110 degrees celsius. It works even now at 82-85 with fixed patch. And still can be overclocked to 415/435. So I guess that heat before didn't do any damage (at least for now).

Cheers,

 

Hi,

Yes, overclocking shortens lifespan. Off coarse, if your temperatures do not change, no danger is involved. However, are you sure about this? Have you tried checking temperatures under load? Not loaded, not much will change. Leak etc remains the same, dynamic losses are minimal.

On top off that, semiconductors have lifespans of decades. Cutting that in half isn't exactly a problem, as I don't assume you'll be tapping on the same laptop in 2016

 

Thanks for the great welcome everyone.

Yes, I have checked the temperatures and they still remain the same even on full load with stock and overclocked (With fear being the highest 80c reached). The thing with this card is that i'ts believed but not confirmed by dell though, to come underclocked by dell since nvidia site says that the stock clock of the 7800 go vanilla are 400/800 and it i9400 comes @ 250/658 (It's believed that this underclock is to preserve the battery life and to not compete with dells own XPS that comes with 6800 ultra). So maybe this is why it doesnt change the temperatures @ all in clock and oc settings?

 

Could be. My x700 came with underclocked memory to 300. The default was 350/300 and Ati says should be 350/350. Or 350/700 as you say. . The thing is that my ddr1 is capable of reaching 435 (870) and it is not supposed to., well I game on 410/420, or even 400/400. That gives me close to 3000 3dmark05.

Cheers,

 

So the only think to worry about in I9400 case is heat I think.
Am I right?
If I overclock 7800go to its reference settings and keep temperature on resonable level it must work fine?

I am curious why dell underclocked that card.
I think that the only reason was heat, however they might have equiped it in two head pipes as XPS and everything would be great.

 

I guess everything will work fine. Do it, test it thoroughly and then decide is it worth it. In my case it was.

Cheers,

 

It all depends on the hardware itself. Some people get lucky and keep overclocked cards for years, like the old XFX Geforce 4200ti, which was an awesome card, I had it overclocked and abused for years.

I had an aftermarket, third party copper cooler on it, but even still, it survived moving from a house to an apartment in a cardboard box covered by other computer parts and dust.

Sometimes people overclock and videocards just blow up, but that's pretty rare. If your card fails on you, you're the one to blame.

Lifespan varies, but I wouldn't say it reduces the life of it very much.

Cheers,
Mike