Overclocking GPU - How useful?

[Refracty]

Hi,

I will buy a GTX 460 soon. I know that the GTX 460 in general has good overclocking abilities because there is not much heat emmission compared to a gtx 480.
So you could probably make a 470 out of an 460 (in terms of speed) in general.
But how useful is it for Octane. The cuda cores will be the same (correct me if I am wrong) just the frequency is higher. That will probably increase the spead a little bit but would you recommend overclocking for using Octane (with GTX 460) ?

Refracty

[trinity]

Hi,

I will buy a GTX 460 soon. I know that the GTX 460 in general has good overclocking abilities because there is not much heat emmission compared to a gtx 480.
So you could probably make a 470 out of an 460 (in terms of speed) in general.
But how useful is it for Octane. The cuda cores will be the same (correct me if I am wrong) just the frequency is higher. That will probably increase the spead a little bit but would you recommend overclocking for using Octane (with GTX 460) ?

Refracty

Hi Refracty,

Have a look at this past forum discussion, it's got some good info regarding overclocking the gtx 460 and gtx 470

http://www.refractivesoftware.com/forum ... ing#p40392

Trinity

[radiance]

Hi,

I'd like to say that overclocking GPUs is not really worth it, furthermore, i recommend not to overclock.
The marginal speed gain is not worth damaging your GPU or making it's life shorter.

Radiance

PS: I'll say it again FYI: We can't be held responsible for any damages to your hardware or projects that may arise from overclocking your GPU with any information posted by the users of this forum.

[Refracty]

Thanks for the link Trinity.

OK Radiance, thanks for the advice. So if I would have to choose between (not overclocked) 460 2GB and 470 1,2GB where should I go? At the moment 2GB sounds great for larger scenes but I hope that the GB-Limit will not be important in the near future.

[steveps3]

the increase in performance is actually quite noticeable and as long as you don't turn your GPU into molten metal, the reduction in life expectancy is marginal.

[Qtoken]

Overclocking the GPU for a video game is one thing, since more areas of the GPU are generally used.

When overclocking with general processing applications, Localized hotspots can develop within the most heavily used areas of the GPU. The overclock can cause these hotspots to quickly reach critical levels before the thermal sensors can trigger safe shutdown / slowdown of the processing. Overclocking with a GPU for general processing more likely to cause strange effects and instability, be very careful with overclocks, without the ECC of the Tesla cards you could end up with alot stranger effects than "fireflies".


Thankfully the 460 is of a newer design than the 470 and 480 and overclocks well. I was able to overlock my GTX470 without any problem, but I didn't leave it there. I'd rather be patient with a quality render than risk the crash half way though.

[Jaberwocky]

Yes but i use a Gigabyte GTX 460. it runs at 715Mhz.That is a factory overclocked card (675mhz is the nvidea standard).Other cards can be had that are factory overclocks up to 800 Mhz.So i am running a overclock card from the manufacturer.Therefore the rule does not necessarliy apply.

The general feeling around the forums is that the 460 was underclocked because it would otherwise have outperformed the GTX470 at a cheaper price on launch and Nvidia would not then have been able to get shot of the 470 stocks.

800Mhz overclock is i think a safe margin as the cards run cool and also a few factory overclock cards are coming out with that frequency as standard (See the Gainward GLH cards for example).I am not suggesting that you do a death run at 875mhz with overvolt though as you probably would be chancing it though.

Anyway that's my personal view on the subject.

[Qtoken]

Yes, the 460 was redesigned, trimming the core down to 1.96Billion Transistors from the GTX470/480's 3Billion - That alone should improve the ability to achieve far higher clock rate than the GTX480.