So some games just allow more overclocking than others? Crysis vs COD4 vs TF2

Ok so I've been going crazy overclocking my gpu as of late and was surprised by some of my results. It makes sense that a more demanding game compared to a less demanding game will use more of the overclock potential thus causing more heat and leading to artifacting and crashing etc.

So I was overclocking lately using the COD4 demo as a benchmark program to see how high my clocks could go. With my ddr2 8600 I was able to get a 575/510 on my gpu and it gave me fantastic results. I played the demo at 1680 x 1050, v-sync, everything max and 2 aa and the game looked great and it didn't artifact or crash. (THis was about the max, I think it might havee been lower on and higher in the other). Then I cranked up aa to 4 aa and the game is stuttering big time but still somewhat playable. I check my temps and they are in the low 90s. Whenever I tried overclocking past those freqs I noticed my gpu would artifact and lines everywhere, and that was usually was when my gpu went into the high 90s so I figured low 90s-95 was the max for my gpu.

Then I do crysis at those very same clocks and it crashes right from the get go as soon as I jump out of that plane for the 50th time. Eventually I realiaze that the gpus max for crysis is about 550/490. Now I understand that crysis is more demanding than cod4. HOWEVER, COD4 is a modern game which is still demanding in its own right especially at 1680 x 1050, everything max and 4 aa and v-sync enabled. Now crysis crashes around the same temperature of around high 90s.

I can reach no conclusion from this and thats why I'm askign you guys. Even though crysis is more demanding yes, COD4 is putting my gpu under max strain and thats why its stuttering so they should be about equal load for my gpu if they are both maxing it out. So why does one game get lower clocks than the other?

With TF2 I can go to a whopping 600/525 with 8 aa, v-sync, evrything max with very high textures and motion blur with great framerates and my gpu neer goes above 85. This makes sense to me because TF2 isn't as demanding as the other games and allthough I overclocked so much the temps don't go that high because the gpu isn't under its max capacity and thus essentially doesn't harness all of my gpus speed because it doesn't need to.

So it leaves me at a conundrum as why cod vs crysis does this.

 

I'm not a tech expert so I'm just gonna wing this.

Every game is different and they all use the GPU in different ways, some might be heavy on certain aspects of the GPU while others on different aspects.

So say a game is stable on 660 / 470, yet another game is stable at 600/510. It all has to do with how they utilize the GPU

The usage of the GPU depends on the engine, COD4 is on a different engine than Crysis, and both engines stress the GPU in different ways.



On a side note, when the game crashes for you do you have to restart the system. For me when I put the mem up high the game crashes and hangs, I always end up restarting

 

probably like what blackbird suggested and I'm gonna try crysis demo right now I just finished downloading it. Btw congratz on a better overclocking experience for you The Forerunner

 

I haven't really noticed any games being picky about over clocking but it does make since that some games are more gpu dependent that others and how they make use of shaders etc.

 

if it crashes any game its not stable period. Some engines are less picky about gpu errors. I can run 3dmark 06 at 600/1400/500 and get 4200 @ 1280X1024 but crysis will crash after a few mins. All games use 100% of the gpu all the time (unless you have a frame rate cap) the more demanding the game is the lower your fps and vice versa.

From what I can tell the 8600mGT does not get enough voltage, I'm going to look into a bios flash that will increase the voltage bc my temp is still fine (doesnt go above 60c)

 

I just tried running crysis and it's running silk smooth everything high except texture, shadow and shader set to medium on resolution 1280x768 on core 600 shader 1400 mem 500. I'm gonna use fraps to get some frame rate and screen shots btw anyone know how to bypass annoying intro in begining? I don't like sitting through 1min just watching the stupid EA logo everything else lol

 

Thx for the input guys. Well this is annoying now I have to keep a list of which game and what clocks for each game. What BB and gillian said makes sense, I didn't think about it that way mainly because no-one ever mentioned it, everyone is always just saying I overclock to such and such and don't mention diff games. I suppose thats me being picky trying to get the max overclock for each game instead of a stable overclock that will work for all games.

Crysis now I can run (Dx9) at 1280 x 1024 with everything high except shaders and shadows. Yes textures and pp is high. It is in the low 20s but if I turn pp to medium (hehe just realized P-P, damn I'm so immature) I get nice stable framerates.

yeah hirush for bypassing go to to the game folder in crysis folder then go to localized, then video and for the extensions for all those put an underscore before the sfd. (._sfd)
do that for all of them except the bg.

 

PP is that post processing?. Also thats great man if you can run it on those settings, by stable framerates what do ya mean.

Also I noticed in one of your posts you asked if anyone knew how to bypass going through the intro at the begging of the game (the plane scene)

Its easy, when you play the demo it saves checkpoints, instead of loading a new game everytime, just click on load and select any of the saved checkpoints.

 

yeah hirush for bypassing go to to the game folder in crysis folder then go to localized, then video and for the extensions for all those put an underscore before the sfd. (._sfd)
do that for all of them except the bg.

Excellent!

 

That was courtesy of tweakguides. the bypassing thing.

Yeah pp is post processing, we americans like to save as much time as possible.

Well stable I meant that my low is closer to my average. With pp on low was like 12-13 and average was around 20 so it would stutter. With it disabled I got an average of 25 and a low of 19-20.

 

so what settings are you using in game to achieve a smooth game play experience

thx

 

Is post processing what enables the motion blur in Crysis.

 

1280 x 1024.
Tex-High and eveyrthing else high except
Shaders, shadows, and post processing are all medium.

550/490 clocks.

Pp is mainly motion blur yes among other things. It smooths the game details out.

 

I think everyone has come to the concusion that shaders and shadows are the big killers in term of framerate. Work with those until you get a smooth framerate. Medium works for me on my 8600 gt

 

alright thanks

 

Thank you The Forerunner and everyone else I was able to bypass the annoying advertisement and logos.
I'm gonna put up some screen shot taken ingame in crysis performance thread.