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How to Overclock Your Graphics Card | PCMag
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1. Home
2. How-To
3. Components
4. Graphics Cards
HOW TO OVERCLOCK YOUR GRAPHICS CARD
If you're willing to tinker a bit, you can push your graphics card a bit farther
than its out-of-the-box specs by overclocking it. Here's how to overclock your
GPU.
By Whitson Gordon
Updated July 21, 2020
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Your graphics card is the heart and soul of your gaming PC—the biggest
determinant of the graphical fidelity and performance you see on screen. If
you're willing to tinker a bit, you can push your graphics card even further
than its out-of-the-box specs by overclocking it.
Overclocking your video card is similar to overclocking your CPU, albeit a bit
more straightforward: you'll slowly bump up your graphics card's core frequency,
testing it for stability with a benchmarking tool each time you push it a little
farther (all while keeping it from getting too hot).
If you have one of Nvidia's latest RTX cards, the software we recommend in this
guide may have the new "Nvidia Scanner" auto-overclocking feature that can
bypass a lot of this process. We've used it before and it's pretty decent for a
one-click affair, though if you’re willing to put in a bit more time, a manual
overclock will net you bigger gains in speed.
For this guide, I overclocked an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti and an AMD Radeon RX
580. Here's how to do it.
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WHAT YOU NEED TO OVERCLOCK
Just about any graphics card can be overclocked, although you'll have better
luck with a well-cooled card in a spacious case. If your card has a sub-par
heatsink, or is cramped inside a tiny Mini-ITX build, you'll have less headroom,
and overclocking may not be worth your time. As far as software goes, though,
you'll only need a few programs:
An overclocking tool: There are multiple overclocking tools out there, most of
which come from different video card manufacturers. We'll be using MSI
Afterburner(Opens in a new window) for this guide, but if you don't like
Afterburner's interface, you can try EVGA Precision(Opens in a new window), Asus
GPU Tweak(Opens in a new window), or AMD WattMan(Opens in a new window). All
except WattMan will work on any card, regardless of manufacturer. The settings
we'll use should be identical across programs; the interfaces may just look a
little different than our screenshots below.
A benchmarking tool: To stress test your card, you'll need to run a benchmarking
tool that pushes it to the absolute max. I like to use both Unigine
Superposition(Opens in a new window) and Unigine Heaven(Opens in a new
window)—the former is newer and stresses recent cards a bit more heavily, while
the latter is slightly older but lets you run an infinitely long stress test
without paying. It's good to have a few different stress tests, so we'll use
both in this guide.
GPU-Z: While this isn't strictly required, I like to use GPU-Z(Opens in a new
window) to ensure my clock and voltage changes have actually taken place as I'm
stress testing.
Once you've got all three of those installed, it's time to start overclocking.
STEP 1: BENCHMARK YOUR STOCK SETTINGS
Before you start, it's a good idea to benchmark your system, so you can ensure
it is stable at its out-of-the-box clock speeds. This will also give you an idea
of how much performance you gained when all is said and done, which is a nice
bonus.
Fire up Superposition and choose an option from the Preset menu. Try to choose
something around or above the settings at which you'd run most games. You want
Superposition to push your graphics card to 100 percent, without running at a
dismally low frame rate—1080p High or Extreme probably isn't a bad choice for
most modern cards. Be sure to disable Vsync, since you don't want your frame
rate locked to your monitor's refresh rate.
Then, click the big black Run button. It'll play through a series of scenes,
which will take about five minutes. You'll see performance information in the
corner, including clock speed, frame rate, and temperature.
If you're using a more recent card, you may notice your clock speed fluctuating
over the course of the benchmark. Modern AMD and Nvidia cards adjust the boost
clock based on the card's temperature and power usage, essentially
self-overclocking to a certain degree if they see there is extra headroom.
However, manually overclocking your card can push these boost clocks even
higher, pushing performance further than your card’s built-in limits. So don't
worry about this too much if you’re a beginner—just know that your clock speeds
will fluctuate, and that's okay.
In addition, watch your temperatures as the benchmark runs. You won't
necessarily see them get super high on this first pass, but they'll increase as
you start overclocking and you don't want it to get too hot. Some auto-boosting
cards will gracefully back themselves down from their maximum boost clocks, so I
recommend overclocking with your fans at 100% to eliminate temperature as a
variable during the process (you can always turn them back down later).
Older cards aren’t quite as smart about throttling down, and you’ll want to
overclock with whatever fan control you plan on using long-term, and avoiding
overclocks that cause your temperature to reach higher than the mid-80s.
Once the benchmark is finished, you'll see a final scorecard. Write down the
minimum, maximum, and average frame rates from that scorecard, as well as the
benchmark score if you so desire—and keep an eye on your temperatures as the
benchmark runs.
STEP 2: INCREASE YOUR CORE CLOCK AND RE-BENCHMARK
Ready to start pushing? Open MSI Afterburner (or your overclocking tool of
choice), and push the Power Limit slider all the way up. Set the Temperature
Limit slider to whatever you want (the maximum is usually okay, though if you're
particularly cautious, you can move it a little lower).
Then, boost your Core Clock by about 10MHz. Click the Apply button, and run
Superposition again. Don't forget to keep an eye on those temperatures, and
ensure there aren't any artifacts (weird lines, boxes, or static that flash on
the screen) as the benchmark runs. Once it's done, write down your frame rates
and bump up the Core by 10MHz again. Keep repeating this process, boosting and
benchmarking, until you run into issues.
At a certain point, the benchmark will fail—either it will crash, or you'll see
artifacts flash across the screen as it runs. When that happens, reboot your PC.
(This is important: after a crash, Superposition will ignore your set clock
speeds and return to stock until you reboot.)
If you want, you can stop here: return to your last stable clock speed and move
down to Step 4. But if you're willing to push it a little farther, there are a
few other things you can do.
STEP 3: INCREASE YOUR VOLTAGE AND MEMORY CLOCK (OPTIONAL)
If your temperatures are still within the safe range, you may be able to push
your card a bit farther by increasing the voltage. This can allow for higher
stable clock speeds, depending on the card.
To do this, open Afterburner's settings and, under the General tab, check the
Unlock Voltage Control and Unlock Voltage Monitoring boxes. Set the voltage
control drop-down to Third Party, and click OK. A new slider should show up in
Afterburner's main window: Voltage.
If this slider measures voltage in mV, then you can increase the voltage
supplied to the card. If, like on many new Nvidia cards, it shows a percent
value, I recommend leaving this alone, as it won’t actually increase the amount
of voltage you can access.
For cards that support it, bump this up by 10mV or so, and run your benchmark
again. If you don't experience crashes, you can try increasing the Core Clock
further. Push the voltage up a bit more every time your Core Clock becomes
unstable.
This is where you want to pay especially close attention to those temperatures,
since increasing the voltage can produce more heat. Research your card to
determine its maximum safe voltage to ensure you don't damage your hardware.
Once you've reached a stable Core Clock, you can also increase your Memory Clock
in much the same way. Push it up by 100MHz or so, run your benchmark, and repeat
the process like you did with Core Clock.
Overclocking your memory too far may not always produce artifacts or
crashes—sometimes, it’ll just decrease performance due to your memory’s error
correction. Watch for crashes and a decrease in frames per second, and stop
increasing the Memory Clock when that happens.
STEP 4: RUN A FINAL STRESS TEST AND PLAY SOME GAMES
Once you've found reasonably stable settings, it's time to test your card for a
bit longer. Fire up Heaven and dial in your graphics settings—since it's a bit
older, you'll probably want to set them as high as you can to ensure it is
maxing out your card. Click the Run button to start the stress test.
Unlike Superposition, which only allows you to run one benchmark at a time in
the free version, Heaven will run indefinitely, until it crashes or you quit the
program. Let it run for a few hours, checking in on your temperatures to make
sure they're safe. You should also watch out for any signs of a crash or
artifacts. If it does crash, you may have to dial back your clocks just a tad to
make sure they're super stable.
Finally, fire up your favorite games and play for a bit! GPU overclocks can be
finicky, and sometimes a benchmark will remain stable even if a certain game
crashes. You can also use an in-game benchmark—Metro Exodus is a great choice,
especially if you have an RTX card, since you can crank ray tracing up, turn
DLSS off, and really stress your card to the max.
After a bit of time and tweaking, you should find the ideal settings for your
rig, and you can enjoy a small boost in performance.
RESULTS AND FINAL WORDS
In the end, I received a similar performance boost in both the GTX 1080 Ti and
RX 580. At lower graphics settings with high frame rates (in the hundreds), I
saw an increase of 7 to 11fps, on average—not bad if you're using a high refresh
rate monitor.
At high graphics settings and lower frame rates (30-60fps), I got 3 to 5 more
frames per second. That may not seem to make a huge difference, but if you're
using a 60Hz monitor with Vsync turned on, dropping below 60fps at all can cut
your frame rate in half, due to the way Vsync works.
That means a few frames can actually be the difference between running at 60fps
and 30fps in certain high-fidelity scenes, which is nothing to sneeze at. Your
mileage may vary, as this will differ from rig to rig—especially if your CPU is
bottlenecking the system.
This isn't the end, either. From here, you can adjust Afterburner's fan curve to
customize your cooling, play with Nvidia's GPU Boost curve for more fine-grained
overclocking, or modify your card's hardware or BIOS to push it even further.
Enjoy the ride!
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Table of Contents Table of Contents Return to The Top What You Need to Overclock
Step 1: Benchmark Your Stock Settings Step 2: Increase Your Core Clock and
Re-Benchmark Step 3: Increase Your Voltage and Memory Clock (Optional) Step 4:
Run a Final Stress Test and Play Some Games Results and Final Words
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ABOUT WHITSON GORDON
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Whitson Gordon is a writer, gamer, and tech nerd who has been building PCs for
10 years. He eats potato chips with chopsticks so he doesn't get grease on his
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