Video Card Maximum Usage

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Thread: Video Card Maximum Usage

  1. #1

    Video Card Maximum Usage

    My rig is a homebrew from 3.5 years ago- AMD Phenom II hex core, modest EVGA graphics card, etc. I can provide more details if needed. The card is an EVGA brand based on the Nvidia 550 ti GPU. Recently I downloaded and installed the overclocking utility. I honestly can't remember if that's an EVGA app or an Nvidia app. When I ran one of the tests the GPU temp hit about 140 degrees F. That's the highest I have ever seen for this card. I play Second Life on a regular basis. When I play that the GPU never exceeds 124 F. I am no expert on graphics cards but I would assume a higher GPU temp equals more performance. I would like to press the card to its fullest potential for SL. The EVGA utility allows me to nudge up GPU clock rate and memory clock rate. Whenever I do that the GPU temp stays low and I get freezes, messages thus "The driver has stopped responding" etc. So I want to set things to press the card to its maximum usage whenever I play games and not induce freezes. How can I do this? Thank you for your time.

  2. #2
    Great White Shark
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    Overclocking in general is trial and error. It's usually best to try and reduce your variables. For example, first, try slowly increasing the GPU clock in constant increments until you start to see artifacting (visual abberations in the graphics), instability, crashes, etc. Then back down to the last stable point you reached.

    You would then repeat the process with the memory clocks, slowly increasing, testing, increasing, testing until you see instability.

    A few extra notes as well.
    1. Research into SL specifically and find out if it responds better to GPU clock increases or memory clock increases. Different game engines prefer different hardware tweaks.
    2. This is a relatively long and boring process. You are going to be adjusting the GPU clock by a MHz or two, then testing for stability. A good stability test means load for at least 30 minutes and ensure it doesn't overheat or cause problems.

    Stability testing is also sort of subjective. Furmark and other utilities will push your card to it's extreme limit, but may not reflect the workload you plan on using.

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