It's all being made possible by Razer , which stepped up to support this months-long project. Thanks, Razer! If you're looking to overclock a card you've already installed, then it's probably time to crack the case and clean up in there. Make sure cables are routed clear of fans and don't obstruct case airflow.
If the card itself has gotten dusty, carefully blow it clean with a can of compressed air. If you opt to remove the card for a full clean-up and overhaul, don't forget to release the locking tab at the forward edge of the slot that secures the card to the motherboard. While the case is open, it's also wise to check and make sure the current power supply is up to the task ahead.
Overclocked hardware pulls power beyond normal design specifications and if you're just squeaking by with watts to spare, you'll need to upgrade to handle the additional load or risk hard-to-pinpoint stability problems. But recent hardware generations have largely grown more power efficient, so anything but the bare minimum PSU is likely to give you plenty of headroom for an overclock.
In the unlikely event you do need a new, higher-rated PSU, take comfort in the fact that you'd be doing this for almost any serious upgrade or CPU overclock. After clean-up is done, update the graphics drivers to make sure all the latest bug fixes and stability enhancements are in place. Occasionally, motherboard firmware updates that further improve stability or performance are also available. Consider installing these as well, to give your system a fresh foundation for your overclocking adventures.
Good news: overclocking your graphics card is actually really easy, and you don't even need to leave Windows to do it! Manufacturer-specific overclocking software exists, but most veteran PC enthusiasts stick to a few trusted packages that have been around for a while and work on most graphics cards no matter who makes them. MSI's venerable Afterburner is the best place to start when it comes to overclocking your graphics card. In addition to a long history of stable releases, Afterburner is simple to use and provides a few extras including a built-in temperature graph along with voltage and real time clock speed monitoring tools.
Now it's time to test the hardware and see how well your card currently performs. Find a few reliable, easy to use gaming benchmarks to run before, during, and after overclocking, both for stability testing and performance measurement purposes. One synthetic and one or two real-world benchmarks should be plenty. Try to pick real-world benchmarks that use engines relevant to the games you like to play.
Our performance analysis articles on recent games can provide additional insight into what performance you should expect. We used the indispensable Unigine Heaven along with 3DMark's well known Fire Strike and Time Spy benchmarks to cover synthetic testing along with a host of real-world gaming counterparts.
Don't forget to record the results with screenshots, or write them down the old fashioned way. Nvidia's aggressive optimizations with the Pascal architecture onward resulted in a new form of auto-overclock turbo boost tech that uses a lot the of headroom previously exploited by casual overclocking right out of the box.
The bad news is that they also placed a hard cap on voltages, clock speeds, and other specifications key to performance enthusiasts, so the potential for quick, easy manual overclocks is more limited than it used to be.
Practically speaking, this means you can expect around a percent boost from an overclock. The good news is all these safeguards make the process painless and reasonably safe. Although your mileage may vary, it's unlikely you'll brick your graphics card under these circumstances. Nevertheless, overclocking always includes risks, so keep that in mind before deciding to go forward. With your card cleaned up and ready for overclocking, you can typically max out the voltage and power limits on most graphics cards.
Your card might be getting older and unable to run modern games at the same level as before. You might simply want to squeeze in a few extra frames to gain a competitive edge in online games. Table of Contents Show. Before understanding overclocking, you should be aware of exactly how the graphics card functions. The process of overclocking calls for the user to manually change these clocks and attempt to make their hardware run faster.
Other key components include having a good PSU and proper cooling in place in order to maintain the stability of the GPU because overclocking can disturb that balance.
In the days when the concept of overclocking was still new, there was a certain mystique surrounding it. Many PC users might have been puzzled if they witnessed it. In fact, you might not even need to open your PC case. As mentioned earlier, the entire overclocking process has evolved and can now be done without ever needing to access BIOS.
One of the key components to overclocking is benchmarking. When you think about it, it makes sense that you would need a benchmarking tool to compare the state before the overclocking process and after it. Although, for the most part, MSI Afterburner would be a suitable tool for this job, we recommend using something else such as 3DMark or Unigine Heaven. In fact, ideally, you should use both. This will allow you to have insights from multiple perspectives.
Next, run Heaven Benchmark 4. Go through the 26 scenes and wait for your test results. You should notice your score improves slightly from last time.
As you can see from the image below, our first test improved our average frames and test score slightly. You should also see an improvement, and you may notice a degree increase in temperature during the test. This is just the beginning.
The next steps will involve you pushing your graphics card to the limit. Follow the steps below to overclock your graphics card to its full potential.
Simply open MSI Afterburner again and lower the clock speed by This will be your optimal clock speed. You can now automatically load up these settings each time you want to have better performance while playing your favorite games. The final test is to try out your new overclocked graphics card in your favorite games. Some games may not work as well with overclocked settings, so if you notice graphical glitches or your game crashes, simply click the reset button to go back to default settings.
Thanks for reading our in-depth guide on how to overclock your graphics card. We hope this guide has been useful. Have any questions? Ollie stumbled upon writing online whilst participating in a mobile network forum back in
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