Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

AMD Overdrive

QSatuQSatu Member UncommonPosts: 1,795

What does it do? There is something like this (I have hd 5770):

High performance GPU clock settings:

850[]------------------------960

If I move the slider to the right will I overclock my graphics card?

There is also a memory clock settings slider there too.

Comments

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,346
    Yes, it's a built in way to overclock your video card.  AMD doesn't promise that overclocking will actually be stable or safe, but they'll let you try it if you want.  AMD Overdrive doesn't really let you overclock all that far, though a 5770 didn't tend to have a ton of overclocking headroom, anyway.  You can get other utilities that will let you try to overclock your card further, but again, there's no guarantee that it will be stable or safe.
  • QSatuQSatu Member UncommonPosts: 1,795

    So is it safe to move both sliders like 3/4th to the right if I don't have problems with temperature? Or should I move only 1 of those sliders?

    And thank you for fast reply. You are very helpful. =]

  • QuizzicalQuizzical Member LegendaryPosts: 25,346

    Overclocking at all isn't completely safe.  But then, turning on the computer isn't completely safe, either.  It's a question of how much risk you're willing to take.  The larger the overclock, the more risk.

    I'm typically against overclocking video cards at all, as they tend not to have a ton of available performance sitting there that they're just not tapping for reasons of power consumption, the way a lot of processors do.  Lower bins of a given GPU chip may tend to have more overclocking headroom as, for example, if a Radeon HD 7870 is clocked at 1 GHz and a 7850 is clocked at 860 MHz, then it's pretty likely that a card of the latter can safely clock 900 MHz or 950 MHz or so, and likely even 1 GHz if the GCN cluster that couldn't handle that clock speed is disabled.

    But the Radeon HD 5770 is the top bin of the Juniper GPU chip.  If AMD thought 2/3 of their Juniper chips could safely run at 900 MHz, they'd likely have made that the stock speed rather than 850 MHz.

    Some video cards are limited by power delivery, and sometimes intentionally so, in order to keep you from overclocking a lower bin to match higher bin performance, rather than buying the higher bin.  For example, a GeForce GTX 570 had two 6-pin PCI-E power connectors, so it was only rated as being safe at 225 W.  And it could use around that under very heavy loads at stock speeds, so overclocking would run it out of the PCI Express specification (and was also dangerous for reference cards because Nvidia went cheap on power circuitry).

    A Radeon HD 5770 isn't limited by getting power from the power supply to the card: one 6-pin connector plus the PCI Express slot means it can pull 150 W, as compared to a TDP of 108 W.  But the power circuitry to convert the 12 V from the power supply to the ~1.15 V that the GPU chip wants may or may not be able to handle the additional power draw of overclocking, depending on which particular 5770 you have.

    It's not just the temperature, either.  Higher clock speeds mean a higher current draw, and hence more electromigration, which slowly damages chips.  At stock speeds, electromigration is generally little enough that it's not a meaningful factor in the useful lifetime of the part.  But that isn't necessarily the case if you overclock.

  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,412
    I think the main problem with overclocking the GPU is that you won't see much gains similar to CPUs back during Athlon and Pentium D.  You might overclock it 50 mhz, but does 50 mhz really make an impact with a 1/17th bump in speed?  Also video cards typically run hotter then the CPU stock.  There is just not alot of headroom there.  Finally, you might not be able to use some of the power savings options if you overclock your GPU too far.  Having your GPU on full blast all the time might be a bit frustrating.
  • MikehaMikeha Member EpicPosts: 9,196
    I also dont overclock GPU because the gain is not enough.
  • Loke666Loke666 Member EpicPosts: 21,441
    Originally posted by Mannish
    I also dont overclock GPU because the gain is not enough.

    It is with certain cards but it all depends on how the temperature and cooling of the computer, the type of card and the game you are playing.

    I done it with several cards and at best it will give you a 20% bost, at worst it will lower the lifetime of your card.

    The most risky but also very effective way to clock is to up the memory speed of the card, but that is something you only do if your heatsink is covering the cards memory, otherwise it will kill the card fast.

    I am not familiar with OPs specific card during clocking so I cant tell if it is worth it or not.

  • CleffyCleffy Member RarePosts: 6,412
    The last good overclocker gpus I can remember were the HD2900 and HD3870.  The HD3870 ran so cool and used so little power it had a nice amount of headroom.  It also used GDDR4 when at the time others used GDDR3.  In that time even though both underperformed verse nVidia, they were at the top of all the overclocking records and synthetic benchmarks, mainly because of how far you can overclock the chips.  This was mainly because the nVidia parts were running very hot so there was not much headroom.  I remember hearing how much the HD2900 XT sucked, yet there it was clocked at an insane level on 3DMark right in the top 10 spots.  Even though the HD4890 was the first chip I remember shipping over 900mhz core clock stock, I got my HD3870 from 777mhz to over 900 mhz because it ran 40c on load stock.  Only prob with the 3870 was it had a small frame buffer so you had to limit your frame buffer effects.
Sign In or Register to comment.