Should I OC my GPU? ( please read )

Hey guys!

Today, on 2:00PM, I can confirm that my OC to 748/865 is stable!

No artifacts, BSODs, or crashes. All stable. Doesn't get higher than 72 degrees

But, something odd is happening : Furmark always crashes when I reach 72C. Odd
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FIRST : Do I increase the clocks while running furmark, or not?

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EDIT : Ok guys!

My laptop just came from RMA, and it's working like a charm. Max temps are 72C compared to 95C. Way to go ASUS!

So, the retailer has said that they would replace the motherboard, therefore, the GPU, and apparently, they did. So, should I give another shot at the OC? maybe I got a new GPU that is more overclockable. Should I expect 5+ FPS gain from a non-extreme OC?

And 1 more question : if I start getting artifacts, and then turn down the clock speed, and still have artifacts, what should I do?

 

Unless you overvolt, or start hitting temps of 100C max, or over 90C sustained, you can't do permanent physical damage to your GPU. It can artifact or crash as much as it wants, if you turn the clocks back down, everything will be fine.

It's very unfortunate that you get artifacts already at 900 mem. The 5730 is memory limited, so increasing mem clocks will give you the most significant gain. Even so, 850 is better than nothing. Since that's the case, I don't see you gaining much of anything overclocking your GPU clocks over 750. Yes, even 50MHz makes a difference. You might get 1-2 fps on a new demanding game, or more on an older game. No way to know for sure until you try it out. Try 750/850, run a benchmark, monitor your temps, and see what you think.

 

Oh, so I can get kajillion artifacts and/or core clock related problems, and it still remains intact? Is there a chance of bricking it? If it breaks, can I RMA?

 

I wouldn't bother if I were you particularly with a mobile video card. I have had about 4 mobile video cards fail without overclocking and they were in laptops that I am sure had better cooling than yours M1730 and M17x.

The performance gains will also be minimal, people usually overclock GPU's to get high benchmark scores and don't game using overclocked GPU's or run them like that all the time.

Overclocking the processor is more likely to have an impact but I wouldn't recommend that either.

If I were you I'd just disable any unnecessary programs/services and run windows in barebones mode that is way more likely to improve your game performance than overclocking.

Ps your unlikely to get good performance in Metro 2033 at that resoultion. I have a M17x with 740Qm and 2x 5870's in crossfire and it struggles at that res. Even desktop Gtx 480's are pushed by that game.

 

metro 2033 is a poorly coded game, DX11 options has advanced DOF which i can't really see the difference, its a huge fps drop whenever i enable it, so i usually play without it and got 28 fps but still have some minor hiccups especially in a radiated area...

 

But I love eye candy And 25-30 FPS are fine to me

So you think there won't be 10fps increses in games such as Metro 2033 and Crysis, right?

 

Artifacts are always warning signs, even if you hit high 90s-100 °C. As for RMA, you should revert all your clocks to original stocks or you will be with high chances of the RMA not being accepted.

Also, you should ponder if the FPS increase is really worth in comparison with the risks of overclocking (to make it clear: do you see and feel an increase in framerates or you just measure some extra FPS?).

 

Well, if the increse goes from 30 to 40, I feel it. If only a couple fps (3-5), I won't see or feel.

 

hmm.... on my new Asus A42JA (i7 740QM, ATI 5730 2GB VRAM, 8GB RAM, Win7 64-bit), the max I can OC using MSI Afterburner is 675/1000 (default is 650/800). If I go any higher than 675 on the core clocks it crashes when gaming for some reason...

I'm not unhappy with my gaming performances though, I just sorta wish my card would let me OC further.

 

Lol, I can OC the core, but not the mem lol.

So, my bottom question is that will I have a difference of 10+ FPS? if not, I'm not OC'ing.

 

I OC my 5650 (which is basically the same thing as a 5730, but with lower stock clocks) to 770 Mhz core and 965 Mhz Memory when I am playing games; in BFBC2 it makes a noticeable difference up from the stock 550/800 clocks; I am sure at times it is a 10 FPS increase. As previously mentioned this card has pretty pathetic memory bandwidth, so a memory overclock will help the most. My card annoyingly can OC the core to nearly 800 which most others can't seem to do, but it artifacts above 970 for the memory while others can get over 1000. I also run my Y460 with the back panel taken off; that way the laptop cooler blows air directly on the heatpipes themselves. It lowers my CPU temperatures by 10C and my GPU a bit as well (I haven't really counted).

 

Well, apparently, to actually make a 10 FPS diff you needed an EXTREME OC. I think my OC won't reach my goals.
Thanks for all the help guys! Apparently, my temps when gaming reach 82C, so OC'ing isn't really safe

 

Though there is a risk to overclocking, if done reasonably, it is much lower than some here have been implying. However, you're not going to get anywhere near a 10fps gain either. Especially since your mem is so limited. Like I said earlier, you might get 1 or 2 fps out of a game like Metro or Crysis with your mem limitations. Whether or not that is worth it is up to you.

 

Nope, not worth lol. 1-2 are not noticeable.

Anyways, seeker, you have helped me a lot. I appreciate it cery much. +rep and a cookie

 

Laptops are generally very poor candidates for OCing as their cooling designs have very limited tolerances for anything beyond stock temperatures. Not only can the increased heat shorten the lifetime of the GPU itself, but it can also damage nearby components. You also want to consider that OCing tends to give diminishing returns as you increase frequency.

 

gamebooster 2 is a good program for getting more out of your games( link). You can get close to 10 fps increase using it, while you overclock with it enabled you will see the type of performance gains your looking for.

 

Yes, I heard about it, but users @ steam forums reported that it VAC banned them, while others reported that they weren't banned.

I am now definate that I won't OC for 2 reasons :

-Temps are already too high (80s C)
-The gain won't be as high as I want.

EDIT : What should I do to celebrate 300 posts?

 

Oh please. The bolded is so far from the truth, it should be criminal.

Gamebooster is a total farce. It's worthless.

 

The 10 FPS boost that he referred to were the usage of OC AND Gamebooster together

 

Even looked at from that perspective, it doesn't make it any more true.

 

OCing is only going to get you 1 or 2. Gamebooster would be lucky to get you 1. It's useless. If you want to boost Windows performance, disable unneeded start up programs, you don't want or need another program to do it for you.

 

Well in BFBC2 at least OCing my card results in significantly more than 2 fps at times; The one time I actually compared pre and post overclocking figures it was somewhere on the order of 10 FPS. Of course it was something like 45-55 or 55-65, so its really the percentage gain that matters.

80C is pretty hot, even when overclocked mine never goes much above 70 (if that).

 

You can get more than 1 or 2, much more, but he already starts getting artifacts at +50MHz vRAM. A 6% clock boost isn't going to get him much in demanding games like Metro.

 

Ah, I see... That is very odd that he can't break 850, while my 5650 can easily hit 970 without issue, and it should technically be less overclockable if they do their binning right. I see you can get your 5730 well over 1000, so it seems he must have a particularly un OC-able chip.

 

To get 10 fps increase in Crysis on all high would be...what...asking for a 25% fps boost (assuming avg framerate is ~30 to 35)?

You gotta put things in perspective. What +% core/mem clocks did you apply with the OCing limit? That's likely to translate more or less into ingame +% framerate boost.

 

Overclocking doesn't necessary affect your GPU immediately but will decrease its longevity in the long run.

 

You don't want or need? Aw come on, I don't know what gamebooster ever did to you for you to keep making negative comments about it, but I know for a fact that it's very helpful and convenient compared to manually disabling programs yourself through msconfig or task manager. It's simple, easy, and safe especially for the novice user who wouldn't even know what to disable. Oh wait, that could also be said about expert, long time computer users that I guarantee wouldn't know themselves what to turn off if not prompted to do so. Stop hating and let others give gamebooster a try so they can decide for themselves before you use fear to keep them away from a good program...

 

Long term computer users should know what's safe to be disabled without the need of such crap.

Ps, i tried the crap in question and the only services left to be disabled was ituneshelper .. Did that make any difference in gaming ? I think you know the answer

Also .. There's even guides online about which is safe to permanently disable IF services is too "difficult" to use.

@ OP , overclocking by 35mhz does help my gaming performances (stuttering etc)
..

 

So you're saying, it's better for him to manually disable startup programs each and everytime he wants to game, and then enable the programs again and reboot each time he wants to go back to default?

That's just foolishness, when you have a program that does both with a click of the mouse. It's nice to learn something and be able to do it manually when you need to, but you don't want to be inconvenienced with tedious steps and procedures when you have a FREE program that can do it with just a click.

@ the OP, ignore these guys and just try and give gamebooster a try, it's free and I'm sure you'll find it useful.

 

Why each and everytime ? you have to do it only once.

Why advertising something you don't even know whether it's working or not ?

 

If you have enough RAM (4 GB or more) then there's no need to disable other startup programs.

 

The question is actually the % increase in FPS from overclocking. For example, let's say your overclock gives 10% increse: if you play a old game, like Half-Life 2, and you have originally 100 FPS then effectively you'll have 110 with overclocking; but if you play a modern game, like BFBC2, and you have only 30 FPS, then you'll get 33 FPS.

 

Mmmm... I see. Thanks for the heads up.

According to my calculations, I will only have a 10% increase with my OC. ( 650+800=1450; 750+850=1600; 1600x100=160000; 160000:1450=~110% = meaning a 10% of improvement. ) 3 FPS ain't worth it lol.

 

3 FPS in a game running at 30 FPS makes a very noticeable difference, believe it or not. If it were something running at 40 FPS natively, on the other hand, it wouldn't be nearly as noticeable.

 

of course you should OC. you asking the question obviously means you have no business using a laptop. so go ahead and burn it baby.

 

really??? that's your contribution to the topic?

@Phistachio
the only way to tell if the OC is worth it to you is to try it. see what the difference is, if any, in FPS and temperature and make a decision then.

 

Troll somewhere else. This forum hates troll & useless posts users.

I thunk I have made my mind. With my calculations, the max gain is of 3 FPS. Not worth to risk it. Afterall, I already have 80C, so it's not quite safe.

Thanks all for the enormously awesome help!!!

 

ok Im telling you with my laptop in my sig, I play COD:BO regularly, and Im seeing anywhere between 10-15 fps boost with what I mentioned. Its not like you will see it right off the bat, its more you have more power under the hood for when things get bogged down like when there is alot of action. Sometimes when I have had my laptop going for days on end with out a reboot and have been using alot of intensive application's and decide I want to game, say in Black Ops when there is alot of action on the screen it will dip into the 30's, but when I have gamebooster and an overclock going it wont go below 45. You see the benefit more then just going in game and looking at your frames and drawing a conclusion.

With your temps, you do have an asus so you have to be carefull but raising your laptop up with some bumbers like these;

couple that with a ocilating fan and an open window you will have enough headroom to OC your machine.

Just keep an eye on your temps all the time, I never run a game or benchmarks with out HWMonitorPro going, you can even take readings over time of what your temps are in pro version.

 

Ok, at least now we have someone that's making sense.

Before GPUs came along, we had CPUs to run gaming software, and framerates were always an issue in every generation of computer gaming, that's the whole purpose they invented the GPU to help with computations.

Anyway megahertz or the clock speed of the CPU was very significant toward increasing framerates. Back in the day, an intel 486 running at 16mhz would attain maybe 10-15 frames per second on a first person simulation like Falcon 3.0. If you wanted smoother and higher framerates you'd purchase the next intel chip with a higher clock speed, say a 25 mhz 486.

But now we have GPUs to relieve the CPU from processing the graphics end of software, and the same principle applies. You get more power to process and generate a picture frame with higher clock speeds. So you'll definitley see a substantial increase of frames per second depending on how much you overclock the GPU.

 

@OP, you really should just download FRAPS, install a few of your favorite games, get an OC software, and do some comparison yourself. You might be surprised.

A simple test like that can save you days of worrying and thinking and number-crunching and theorizing. After all, the OC business is not nearly as simple as 1+1=2; lots of hardware/software/engineering/game engine factors affect it.

What I mean is, try it out and you might find that a 10% OC can boost framerates by 30%, or only 2%, and decide from there.

 

Alrighty, I will think about it I'm a theory man, so, all needs to make sense before I act or understand something

Meanwhile enjoy your +rep and a cookie by me, because you were very helpful

 

Here are some of my benchmarks in Black Op's. The first set is with no overclock or gamebooster and the second set is.


Non overclocked/no gamebooster nuketown map in black ops with 12-14 ppl;

BlackOpsMP
Frames: 45793 - Time: 830899ms - Avg: 55.113 - Min: 31 - Max: 91

pictures to go along with non overclock/nogamebooster



overclocked/gamebooster nuketown map in black ops with 12-14 ppl;

BlackOpsMP
Frames: 26825 - Time: 447814ms - Avg: 59.902 - Min: 38 - Max: 94

pictures to go along with overclock/gamebooster



What you want to look at the helps the most is the minimum frames, max frames really makes no diff cause there can be instances in game where your frames will jump when there is light texture or something. The minimum though is always working to stay above and keep things smooth. As you can see there is 7 frames gained here and it can be felt though out. It really feels like a new machine almost, in that range from 30-40 fps really adds some power to your game.

Also here is my oc gpu-z ss, it was from 550-800 default, to oc 700-850


Before anyone goes thinking its ok to overclock I do have more unsuccessful stories though. I had Alienware that came out in 04, it was one of the first machines with 128-bit memory that could drive any reasonable software that used graphics intensive stuff. It worked fine till one day I decided I wanted to push it more. It did always get scorching hot so that may be the reason why it happened but, Using catalyst control center back during drivers way back then, there was an option included to overclock that had this nifty little rotating space ship that would detect if your card was beginning to artifact cause of to high overclocks. I overclocked it and it didn't do anything so I decided it wasn't worth it, but seconds later the hole thing went berzerk. I don't remember what happened exactly that moment, but for a few years after it I would get textures in games that weren't right also video with green specs. I finally updated a driver for it after years and it went away most of it, 90%. Weird stuff just thought id share that.

 

If you're trying to make a point for Gamebooster's effectiveness, why did you also overclock the system when you enabled the program? We can't tell if the 7 FPS increase is due to the overclock or Gamebooster's prowess (actually we do know, but I at least am open to other possibilities).

 

Is there a way to ONLY increase the pixel and texel fillrate? I'm fine with the clocks, what I wanted was the fillrates. Is there a way?

 

lol...

The fillrate is directly related to the clocks. You fill more by having the clocks cycles in a shorter period.

 

^Pretty much this.

Gamebooster tested. Conclusion: Fail.

 

well gamebooster as a program, does what this forum tells all us PC gamers to do, which is to disable unneeded programs running in the background to have better gaming performance.

So going by the logic of people who say its a useless program, then manually disabling unneeded processes on your computer to save resources for gaming is also a waste of time and is a bogus "tweak".

Although the video doesn't even mention that gamebooster also has a feature to optimize your internet connection for better online gaming, as well as freeing up ram it also defragments it and your games, not to mention it has convenient tabs to check your computer speed, download latest drivers and essential game programs that have to do with gaming, tweak your game controllers, adjust your power settings and run disk cleanup. Oh, did I mention it defrags your ram and optimizes your internet connection? Yeah you don't need to be a computer hacker to know how to do that if you try gamebooster.

I for one run it each and everytime I game on my Toshiba X505 Q892 with i5 and GTX 460m and 4GB of Ram, and although I don't think my system needs it, I like knowing it has every ounce of resouce to use for the game I'm playing.

It's a great program that makes what you'd manually tweak alot more convenient and quick with just one click of your mouse button, instead of going the tedious route by manually opening up msconfig, navigating to the startup programs, figuring out what could be disabled, unticking those programs, rebooting, and then when you need those programs to be running again, redo all the steps just to enable it and put wear and tear on your HD by constantly rebooting your system.

 

You've clearly put your money where your mouth is by buying the program and using it. That's great.

But until I see numbers that show more than minute gains delivered by Gamebooster (and only Gamebooster, not some conspicious overclock), I remain unconvinced of the claims made by the developers and earlier posters in this thread.

 

It's free, and that's the catch! Gamebooster 2.2 is freeware.

There is a premium version that you need to pay for, but I've already provided the free code that'll enable you to use the system tweak which is the internet optimization feature.

Gamebooster is a settings tweak, so you won't see substantial performace increase if you already own a high end system like mine, but the point of the tweaks is that it frees up resources that would other wise be wasted on unnecessary programs.

It's the same results as manually disabling those programs yourself to free up memory, but without the tedious steps needed to do so. It gives you the convenience of just a click of the mouse to free up memory and change settings for your internet connection catering it toward gaming performance.

Anyway, getting back to the original subject, overclocking his video card would prove more beneficial, but at a much higher risk of damaging his system.

 

^ That. Still we haven't seen any convicing numbers that the program achieves its final goal: game boosting.