Overclocking Limits

Alright so I'll soon have a GTX 970M 6GB coming to me. I've read how massively overclockable those cards are and already seen benchmarks which showcases how much potential they actually have.

I would rather want to push the card pretty far, but don't want to go to an actual limit where the card almost breaks.

So my question is, how far can I push the vcore, where you would say that it is still safe? I know when pushing the vcore to much you can break the card rather easy, so I want to stay within safe boundries. I am aware that I cannot ask for actual clockspeed, since it's all down to silicon lottery, but the vCore should be the same everywhere.

 

Go up in small steps. If the machine powers off all of a sudden and needs an EC reset to reboot then it's likely the VRMs shut down.

 

But if I keep going, the GPU might be at risk dying? I don't want to overvolt it, that way It will die before I can enjoy it.

 

Every overclock is a risk.

 

Well some OC is way less damaging than others. I'm kinda looking for a safezone. I mean it's insanely hard to kill a GPU with +0.01mv for instance.

 

If you go up in small increments you will never reach that point before it kicks itself off. If you are going this far with a chip then really it's down to you to take it careful and keep an eye on what's happening.

You are likely to run into temperature issues before VRM issues too anyway.

 

Alright, I'll start the journey on in 3-4 days when it's here 8)

 

Absolutely avoid "power virus" apps, like Furmark or GPU Caps Viewer. My 980M died when I wanted to check maximum power consumption for overclocked and overvolted card (1356MHz/+62,5mV). Under GTA V card worked about one year, with power consumption peak at 180W. 120 seconds of Furmark are sufficient to kill my 980M with same settings like in GTA

 

Yes, running those while over volted with a BIOS designed to unlock power limits without physically modding the card (adding in the VRM chips that are missing) would be silly.

 

The only apps i'd use to benchmark the card are valley, 3dmark and games liike witcher, tomb radier etc.

 

You might notice some CPU components to those tests being a bit lower.