Overclocking your graphics card can improve performance from 5% up to 15% (or more) depending on your specific card model. Of course, as with any overclock, you should be careful not to run your GPU on unsafe settings.But if you have one of best graphics card If you’re looking for a little more performance, we’ll cover overclocking and how to determine “safe” settings.
Before overclocking, it’s important to measure a baseline of your graphics card’s performance. After all, we want to see how fast our PC runs after tuning. If it doesn’t improve performance, you’ll want to know.check out our guide How to test graphics card performanceyou should also check the temperature and clock speed of your graphics card.
Once you have baseline inventory performance data, it’s time to start overclocking.There are various utilities, but here mainly MSI Afterburner, is one of the most popular and commonly used GPU overclocking tools. The same basic process can be used by other utilities, including: EVGA Precision X1, Asus GPU Tweaks (opens in new tab), and other graphics card vendor utilities. You can also overclock AMD and Nvidia GPUs using AMD’s drivers or his Nvidia’s GeForce Experience built-in utility.
Note that overclocking is highly dependent on the “silicon lottery”. I have a “HappyGPUs RTX 4090 X-Factor-Wow” model card (fake story if you don’t know the name) he has one he has 20% core he overclocks and his 25% memory he overclocks Just because you managed a doesn’t mean it. every day HappyGPUs RTX 4090 XFW cards reach the same clock.Case in point: Despite all RTX 4090 cards (opens in new tab) As you can see, it seems to use Micron 21Gbps GDDR6X memory (opens in new tab) (chip labeled “D8BZC”), we’ve seen maximum stable memory overclocks ranging from 22.6Gbps to 25Gbps.
Overclocking with MSI Afterburner
This is the main interface of MSI Afterburner with v3 skin. You’ll see sliders for Core Voltage, Power Limit, Core Clock, Memory Clock, and Fan Speed. By default, afterburner Lock out voltage regulation. If you want to play with it, go to settings and check the box for “unlock voltage control”. You can try setting it to Reference Design, Standard MSI, Extended MSI, or Third Party. Some cards only allow voltage regulation in the correct mode, some may not allow it at all.
One of the overclocking options is to use an automatic OC scanner tool. Press Ctrl+F and then click[OC スキャナー]Click the button and leave it there. This should make overclocking easier, but as with most auto-tuning utilities, your mileage may vary. If not, you might go the manual route.The OC scanner can take 20 minutes to run, and in most cases you’ll be able to overclock it yourself quickly and easily.
My approach is to launch a graphically intense game or benchmark that runs in windows. Then run the game at 1920×1080 or 2560×1440 (depending on which GPU you have) and get to a place where everything is fine. From there, switch over to Afterburner and try some tweaks. Note that you’ll need a game or test that doesn’t stop rendering when you leave focus (so it won’t work if the menu appears when you press Alt+Tab).
There are four key points when overclocking your graphics card: GPU core clock, memory clock, GPU voltage and fan speed. (In some cases, you can also adjust the memory voltage.) First find the maximum “stable” core clock, then the maximum “stable” memory clock. optimal performance.
Note that “stable” is in quotes. Even if the first test seems to work fine, there are often exceptions where some games or applications crash and others crash. In that case, you’ll have to go back and tweak your settings and see if you can find something that will allow the game to run properly. with ray tracing and DLSS) will likely require additional tweaks and lower clocks.
In this tutorial, we’ll find a suitable overclock for the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition card using Cyberpunk 2077 running in a window of 2560×1440 with RT-Ultra settings and DLSS quality mode. This ticks all the boxes for demanding games that are likely to push your GPU to its limits. It also includes benchmarks that allow you to see what your performance will be after tuning.
We started with overclocking the GPU cores. After loading the game and applying the right settings, I maxed out the power limit and set the fan speed to 80% to keep the GPU and memory cool. So far, I’ve applied a 100 MHz offset to the GPU cores without issue. This is true in most cases — unless you get at least a 100 MHz core overclock, you probably don’t need to worry about going any further with your particular graphics card.
With that first performance boost, I then tried a 150 MHz core overclock…and Cyberpunk 2077 crashed almost immediately. After restarting the game, I tried maxing out the core voltage, but it still crashed. In other words, a 150 MHz offset will not work. Split the difference down to 125 MHz and it crashed too. After maxing out the core voltage at +100 it seemed pretty stable, but it too crashed after a few minutes.
Ultimately, +100 MHz on GPU cores looks like the best you could get with this card, but the increased power limit means it’s running significantly faster than stock. Note — the GPU clock is rolling around stock 1755 MHz vs. our overclocked 1905 MHz. Even with the 0 MHz GPU overclock, our tests showed an average clock of 1875 MHz, so a big part of that is due to the increased power limit.
Then I tackled memory overclocking. I set the GPU core clock back to +0 MHz, but left the power limit at max (114% for this card). We started with a +750 MHz offset for GDDR6X memory, as it usually has a lot of headroom. This gives an effective memory clock of 21 Gbps. After running the game for a few minutes, I determined it was working fine. +1000 MHz (21.5Gbps) seemed stable as well as +1250 MHz (22Gbps), but +1500 MHz immediately crashed the system, forcing a system reboot. Did I mention that overclocking can be a trial and error process?
After some additional tweaking and testing, we combined the GPU and VRAM overclocking to end up with +100 MHz on the GPU core and +1000 MHz on the GDDR6X memory. Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs have “error detection and retry” features on memory that sometimes obscure the boundaries of flaky overclocking.
GPU overclocking performance
What did the above do for performance? Here’s how stock, GPU cores only, VRAM only, and GPU and VRAM overclocks worked in 4K RT-Ultra with built-in DLSS quality: is shown. Cyberpunk 2077 standard. We also tested a second game. Borderlands 3at 4K and Badass settings using the same 4 GPU settings.
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If that feels overwhelming, we’ll forgive you. Ultimately, our maximum GPU overclocking gave the RTX 3090 an 8.6% performance boost. Borderlands 3 and 8.5% Cyberpunk 2077Most of these gains were due to overclocking the GPU cores, which increased performance by 7.3%. Borderlands 3 7.5% Cyberpunk 2077On the other hand, just overclocking the VRAM yielded a 2.1% performance boost. BL3 6.0% CP77.
Actual profit may vary many, depending on the graphics card. For example the RTX 3090 isn’t known to be short on memory bandwidth most of the time, but the reference model will definitely hit power limits when it’s stock, so overclocking the cores will make his VRAM was more important than overclocking. Nonetheless, the results shown above are nothing out of the ordinary with overclocking your graphics card, and typically yield around a 5-10% increase in performance.
AMD and Nvidia ‘built-in’ overclocking
You can use other tools to overclock your GPU, but if you don’t want to bother with MSI Afterburner, you should use the built-in tools provided by AMD and Nvidia. Nvidia offers an autotuning tool that allows you to specify voltage and power limits, temperature goals, and fan speed goals. Then just let the driver overclock the GPU cores, but not the VRAM.
AMD’s overclocking tools built into Radeon Settings are much more useful. You can specify voltages, clock speeds, fan speeds, memory speeds, etc. and do whatever you want. You can also ask the driver to overclock his VRAM or GPU, but not both. Alternatively, you can let your GPU automatically undervoltage. This will result in slightly lower performance, but also tends to lower temperatures and power usage.Basically, you don’t requirement Another GPU overclocking utility. MSI Afterburner Closer and easier to use.
One of the great benefits of AMD’s overclocking tools is the ability to specify OC profiles per game. One game isn’t that intense and can clock high. Or maybe you have a game that needs extra power to provide a smoother gameplay experience. It can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be, but in the end it’s often a matter of trial and error.
Conclusion: GPU Overclocking
Do you need to overclock your graphics card? If you’re being cocky and have to ask, you can probably say that you should leave it alone enough. The reality is AMD and Nvidia and their graphics card partners are , tend to culling chips to push performance almost to the limit. Overclocking increases power usage and often heats up your graphics card. But perhaps worse than that is the fact that overclocking usually only improves performance by 5-10%.
or Might be so Even if you don’t run a lot of benchmarks, it’s noticeable to some people. In practice, you usually don’t have enough headroom to do the hassle. You can try the automatic tuning option for AMD and Nvidia drivers. This should give you at least half of what you get with manual tuning. Plus, it’s just a flip of a switch rather than something that requires a lot of trial and error.
As someone who has done a lot of overclocking over the years, I can say that one of my worst feelings is when my previously “stable” overclock suddenly crashes in the middle of a game. In that case, you’re in the enviable position of wondering if the game is buggy, if your overclock has been pushed too far, or if there’s something else wrong with your PC. I’ve spent countless hours on , but I don’t think GPU overclocking is particularly important these days.
You don’t have to agree with me, though. Perhaps your particular hardware will perform significantly better after tuning. Keep an eye on your GPU and VRAM temperatures and remember to clean your PC regularly to keep it running smoothly. Also, don’t go into GPU overclocking expecting a 20% or more performance boost. Unless you use liquid nitrogen, those days are long gone.
