GeForce 260 GTX / 280 GTX Overclocking Thread

[dejanh]

Sort of off topic but an important question nonetheless...

What is the minimum CPU needed to completly remove the bottleneck of two GTX 260 cards in SLI clocked to 769/1538/1281?

I know I am getting bottleneck on my system as the Vantage GPU scores tend to be too low compared to a lot of people. The best score I managed for GPU in SLI was ~15600. A lot of people scored much higher than this (up to ~19000) with much lower clocks on the cards...

I'm sure my X2 5000BE @ 3.2GHz on an old nForce 570 SLI board cannot be enough, can it? If yes, then what the heck is causing my scores to be so low?

[janjan]

hi people

i have zotac 8800 gt amp! sli on my system and i think of selling them to buy the new GTX 260.
Is my sli 8800 gt way better than gtx260 or are they almost equal to each other
does anybody have a tangible test result or something convincing me expect the ones in >tomshardware<
what do you think?

and also what about the gtx260 sli performance lol

[WeldZilla]

Since loading the latest 177.98 drivers I can now game at 756/1536/1236. With no problems at all I am idling at 32C and after 1 1/2 hrs. of Free-for-all fun on COD4

my temps were only at 43C. It does not matter what I play or test I just don't have any heat issues. This new bios is very stable for me and my card.

dejanh to not bottle neck your sli you would probably need to get a wolfdale up around 5000 to 5500mhz. Or a quad around 4500mhz depending on what you were running

janjan it Depends on the rest of your system. My single cards scores may well whack your sli scores. But you haven't posted anything to go by.

Suffice it to say you have a pretty good set up in those cards but, the 260GTX is a wow card. It is up to you!!


WZ

[BuBBle.D]

Just recieved my GTX280 and boy is it a bad overclocker. Most probably the worst one on the planet. 670mhz on the core gives me heavy duty artifacts in AtiTool. Have tried furmark at 700mhz core and it does not crash but from time to time black squares appear and dissapear for a milisecond.
Its frustrating, should have gone with a 4870X2.

[Mango31]

Hehe yeah, it's in a loop with a 3.8 GHz E8500 (mobo won't take above FSB400...). PA 120.3 and MCP 655, room temp was about 27 C. With FurMark i can push it to 57 C at 1920x1200, 2x AA. That's pretty good to say the least. I'll look for the 3DMark06 score again (didn't make a screen shot).

[cantankerous]

Just recieved my GTX280 and boy is it a bad overclocker. Most probably the worst one on the planet. 670mhz on the core gives me heavy duty artifacts in AtiTool. Have tried furmark at 700mhz core and it does not crash but from time to time black squares appear and dissapear for a milisecond.
Its frustrating, should have gone with a 4870X2.

I had the same thing in Furmark when I overclocked my GTX 260 a little too far. It would run without crashes, but if I sat there and watched it long enough I would get black checkerboards flashing on the screen now and then for a split second, then it was gone. It is definitely a sign of the core being too high as once I backed off it was all gravy again.

[BuBBle.D]

I just recieved an info that going above 1400MHZ on the shaders makes the card so darn unstable. Havent tried it yet cos im at work. Can anyone confirm this?

@cantankerous: yes checkerboards at me too, not squares. Im not native English/American.

[Kondik]

Well I'm something in the middle with my GTX 208 , Freqs are in the SIG , those are stable on solid temps with stock cooling, will try more when the new GTX280 Thermalright cooler comes out. The only thing I'm afraid of are the VRM's temps ./... the core his around 75 max but VRM's are 95 that's bad ...

[Mango31]

I just recieved an info that going above 1400MHZ on the shaders makes the card so darn unstable. Havent tried it yet cos im at work. Can anyone confirm this?

@cantankerous: yes checkerboards at me too, not squares. Im not native English/American.

My 1566 on the shaders is perfectly stable so far. I can run FurMark at 1920 resolution for hours. Looks like those newer 280 GTX are quiet... different.

[laragirl83]

I have a Zotac GTX260.
Now running at 650/2200/1400MHz, no swaet, rock solid, done a lot Furmark, ran Vantage and 3dmark06 twice, no errors!
Guess I could go a little higher...

[dejanh]

I guess it's time to post my clocks as well...swapped out my 2 GTX 260s in SLI for a $420 GTX 280 SC It's nice to just work with a single card. SLI is finicky sometimes and heat is a problem with no water cooling.

After about 30 minutes of work I am running 708/1539/1328 on the stock cooler at 75% (still reasonably quiet in my Antec 900 or I'm deaf ). 170GB/s memory bandwidth. Temps are 64.0/56.3/52.8 +/- 1 Celsius

Not bad for a first try. I will update as I push the max Screens to come later.

Here is the first screen...

[Kondik]

*a silent voice whispers to dejanh* Use the Fur Mark ... Uuuuuse the furmark

[laragirl83]

Is is worth to use "Link Clocks"?
I use to OC nvidia cards having this option off, so I can set core and shader independently...

[BenchZowner]

Nope.
The link clocks just keeps the ratio steady for "amateurs" ( ROFL ).
It's better to max out everything ( possible ) ( there are some limitations on the GTX 260 & GTX 280 ).
[ reminds me that I have to update the GeForce 8, 9 and GTX series overclocking & BIOS flashing guide ]

[Kondik]

Nope.
The link clocks just keeps the ratio steady for "amateurs" ( ROFL ).
It's better to max out everything ( possible ) ( there are some limitations on the GTX 260 & GTX 280 ).
[ reminds me that I have to update the GeForce 8, 9 and GTX series overclocking & BIOS flashing guide ]

*pokes him*

Ey buddy I allready gave a proper burial to your GTX 280 you killed.
If you update it I'll end up serving a funeral for a dead VGA a lot often.
And my schedule can be full very soon

[dejanh]

*a silent voice whispers to dejanh* Use the Fur Mark ... Uuuuuse the furmark

Lol, no need. I already killed it

The card started whistling and artifacting, even at stock speeds. I think it was a dud right from the get-go. Temps never went over 64.0/56.3/52.8 but it died. It whistled right when I put it into my system, then it went away, and then it came back and never stopped. Finally, it started artifacting massively. It's back in the shop now getting tested but I have a feeling I will be getting rid of this all together and waiting for the 55nm parts. They are supposed to be out late October

I may just pick up some piece of junk in the meantime to play with

[WeldZilla]

That whistling is a lot of the time capacitors that are a bit voltage starved. What PSU have you dejahn?? And how are it's rails.

I have pushed mine a little harder this afternoon but now it is evening and off to the movies!!

Here are my latest clocks




http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=9419498

As you can see by the clocks it was a good afternoon....Come on winter!!!!

WZ

[laragirl83]

I got that whistling as well, when 3D apps are running, worst was under Crysis, but as soon as I turned VSync ON, whistling was gone....

[laragirl83]

Here I go...

[dejanh]

That whistling is a lot of the time capacitors that are a bit voltage starved. What PSU have you dejahn?? And how are it's rails.

I have pushed mine a little harder this afternoon but now it is evening and off to the movies!!

Here are my latest clocks




http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=9419498

As you can see by the clocks it was a good afternoon....Come on winter!!!!

WZ

Um pulling from some of my EE days whistling/whining caps are a sign of leaky or in general somewhat faulty caps. Not always, but in a lot of cases. It has nothing to do with being voltage starved

But just for reference the PSU is a 1KW PSU with 100A distributed over 4 12V rails. More than enough to easily power two of these, not one

The card was no good BTW. I took it back to the shop after testing it myself and they to found it artifacting at stock speeds and whistling under any load. Now I'm waiting I think until October 22nd (speculatively).

Now, a general question to any of you that have a DX10 machine running with GTX 260/280...if you run the first Vantage test (Jane Nash) do you get any artifacts at all in that scene? My GTX 260s gave artifacts in that scene but nothing under ATITool and same with the GTX 280. I typically got them in the following places:

1. At the beginning of the bench when the guy is entering the cave around the corner with sun rays breaking through where there should be none (below the rock just as he makes the corner)
2. After the guy enters the back of the cave the camera pans across the scene and you can see the top of that building in the cave, and in its top corner there are flashing bits.
3. Finally when the guy is walking on the lower platform a few seconds later his uniform texture is all corrupted.

I'm sure there are others, but this is what I noticed so far. This happens every time, without a difference and at least in both 177.92 and 177.98. I have not tried other drivers unfortunately. Anyways, it was very strange so I'd thought I'd share.

[TurboDiv]

I got an EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 today. So I am guessing around 700 mhz on the core and 1100 on the memory is acceptable expectation ? I am still enjoying it at STOCK but soon I shall torture that baby. It is scoring 60% more 3d marks @ stock than my old 8800GTS 640mb overclocked.

[dejanh]

I got an EVGA GTX 260 Core 216 today. So I am guessing around 700 mhz on the core and 1100 on the memory is acceptable expectation ? I am still enjoying it at STOCK but soon I shall torture that baby. It is scoring 60% more 3d marks @ stock than my old 8800GTS 640mb overclocked.

Don't take too long to post results I am really curious what those can do...

[TurboDiv]

Dejan the card does @ stock on my machine:




Than I decided to do a mild overclock:



I tried the overclock above with shader clock of 1566 but i got some artifacts, so around 1500 on the shaders is the maximum for stability. Tomorow i will do another test. This is not with tweaks and it was a first run directly to those clocks...

ps; I did an additional tests about the shader clocks and EVGA precision lets me set either 1458, 1512 or 1566. 1566 is not stable and so i put it down to 1512 and it seems to be rock solid. The score also went up to P11940 with shaders at 1512.

[dejanh]

Dejan the card does @ stock on my machine:




Than I decided to do a mild overclock:



I tried the overclock above with shader clock of 1566 but i got some artifacts, so around 1500 on the shaders is the maximum for stability. Tomorow i will do another test. This is not with tweaks and it was a first run directly to those clocks...

ps; I did an additional tests about the shader clocks and EVGA precision lets me set either 1458, 1512 or 1566. 1566 is not stable and so i put it down to 1512 and it seems to be rock solid. The score also went up to P11940 with shaders at 1512.

It's a good idea to run Vantage on High...takes out the CPU out of the equation better. I find P to be kind of pointless nowadays as almost nobody games at 1280x1024. The OC seems alright so far, but core should be able to go higher, or at least I hope it does. 700+ should be very possible. Try RivaTuner to OC for finer adjustment. I sort of found the shader cap for several GTX 260s to be around 1530-1540. Core about 750-770. Memory is a crapshoot. It varies wildly from card to card. One of my GTXs did 1328 on memory, the other could not do more than 1256.

[largon]

I hope they fix G200 lackluster OC'ing ability in coming revisions & process'.
It's pretty sad that a slightly OC'ed G92 can easily beat the shader performance of a stock G200-100 (GTX260) and a voltmodded G92 matches G200-100 watercooled/vmodded.