evga precision x how to overclock your gtx 970

#Evga precision x how to overclock your gtx 970 software
#Evga precision x how to overclock your gtx 970 download
#Evga precision x how to overclock your gtx 970 windows

Core speed is where you'll get the most performance improvement. Nvidia's Ampere GPU's also don't offer a ton of room for improvement when it comes to memory clocking. (Image credit: Future) Overclocking GPU memory That should keep your GPU as frosty as practically possible, and you can tune the fan speeds later. For the initial overclocking, you can also set a static fan speed with a noise level you find acceptable, like 80 percent. Depending on your card, you may be okay with maxing out fan speed, or you might want to aim for 40-50 percent fan speed on some blower cards. By default most graphics cards are tuned to run reasonably quiet, but that can lead to uncomfortably high temperatures when overclocking. We recommend modifying your fan speed as well. Keep an eye on temperatures and clockspeeds when testing. They are power-hungry cards, so increasing the power limit will tax your PSU. For Ampere cards, increasing the voltage doesn't seem to have much of an impact. With your card cleaned up and ready for overclocking, you can typically max out the voltage and power limits on most graphics cards. Nevertheless, overclocking always includes risks, so keep that in mind before deciding to go forward. Although your mileage may vary, it's unlikely you'll brick your graphics card under these circumstances. The good news is all these safeguards make the process painless and reasonably safe.

Practically speaking, this means you can expect around a 10-15 percent boost from an overclock. It's fairly common to see people argue for undervolting your Nvidia GPU to get a cooler card and slightly better performance. The cards have hard power limits that cause them to drop voltage and therefore clock speeds. Nvidia's Ampere architecture, found in the 30-series cards, doesn't offer a ton of room for overclocking. Don't forget to record the results with screenshots, or write them down the old fashioned way. Games with built-in benchmarks are the easiest for this purpose, such as Hitman, Horizon Zero Dawn, Metro Exodus, and F1 2021. 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. Our performance analysis articles on recent games can provide additional insight into what performance you should expect. Try to pick real-world benchmarks that use engines relevant to the games you like to play. One synthetic and one or two real-world benchmarks should be plenty. Find a few reliable, easy to use gaming benchmarks to run before, during, and after overclocking, both for stability testing and performance measurement purposes. Now it's time to test the hardware and see how well your card currently performs.

Games with built-in benchmarks (Price varies).

3DMark (opens in new tab) if you want a very thorough benchmark ($30).

Unigine Heaven (opens in new tab) for benchmarking (Free).

MSI Afterburner (opens in new tab) for overclocking (Free).

#Evga precision x how to overclock your gtx 970 download

Here's what we recommend you download for this process: EVGA's Precision is another excellent graphics card overclocking suite, if MSI's Afterburner leaves you cold. 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. MSI's venerable Afterburner is the best place to start when it comes to overclocking your graphics card.

#Evga precision x how to overclock your gtx 970 software

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.

#Evga precision x how to overclock your gtx 970 windows

Good news: overclocking your graphics card is actually really easy, and you don't even need to leave Windows to do it! While the motherboard BIOS is where most CPU overclocking takes place, graphics cards are tweaked via desktop software. (Image credit: UL Benchmarks) (opens in new tab) The software you'll need