For either one, you'll want to max out their allowances this is just a way for the graphics card to control how much power it consumes. Finally, I've found the absolute best stability test for graphics hardware is the most recent version of Futuremark's 3DMark.īoth AMD and NVIDIA have minor overclocking allowances built into their kit: AMD's is PowerTune, while NVIDIA has Boost (listed as Power Target in Precision X). With NVIDIA's cards, you'll have to download and install software my personal favorite is eVGA's Precision X, but if you can't get that, MSI's Afterburner will also work fine. On AMD's graphics cards, you just need to enable Overdrive in the Catalyst Control Center. Thankfully all of this can be done in Windows. When overclocking modern kit, you'll need software.
In my personal experience, I've found NVIDIA's graphics hardware to generally have more headroom to overclock than AMD's, but I also have a pair of GTX 580s that wouldn't budge an inch, so your mileage may vary. Some models are notoriously overclocker friendly, having a tremendous amount of performance headroom to play with, while others are pretty much pushed as far as they'll go out of the box. I also personally don't recommend raising voltage while consensus is easy enough to find for CPUs on what a "safe voltage" is for an individual model, GPUs are a little trickier and a lot more complex.įinally, as with CPUs, you're going to be dealing with a lottery when you overclock your graphics card. The overwhelming majority of graphics cards have thermally controlled fans that take monitoring heat out of the equation, though you'll be trading noise for performance. Unlike your processor, your graphics card actually has two different domains for you to overclock: the GPU itself, and the video memory. Overclocking graphics hardware is another formerly enthusiast-only habit that's starting to become more prevalent and popular, and why not? While some graphics cards have virtually nothing to offer, some models are notoriously overclocker friendly.Īt the same time, overclocking graphics hardware can be a little bit dicier than overclocking the CPU. Interestingly, though, if you want to get the most out of your games, the CPU may not actually be the best choice. In the last overclocking guide, we tackled what's arguably the biggest overclocking target: the CPU.
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