I though it was time to give overclocking a crack, so I looked up how to overclock my "Asus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti " and found like 3 Direct CUII tutes. I'd appreciate any help on the following questions:
<ul>
<li>Does the brand of the card matter? Like, I can't follow an X branded GTX 650 Ti tutorial?</li>
<li>Direct CUII is factory overclocked but isn't it slightly superior with hardware?</li>
<li>If the above questions fail to find an answer, could someone tell me how to overclock my card (default settings: GPU Clock 928MHz, GPU Voltage 1075 mV, memory Clock 5400 MHz</li>
</ul>
I've got Unigine, Asus GPU tweak and spare cooling power. Thanks :D
The method of overclocking is nearly the same with every card, regardless of brand, or chip manufacturer. Bump clock/adjust settings, test, repeat. Different GPU models may have some different quirks, such as boost speeds, so if you can a guide on the same GPU model, that would be good, but brands are largely irrelevant for the purpose of overclocking. The different coolers and technologies implemented (such as digi VRM, vapor heatpipes, etc) may affect how much you can overclock, but it seldom requires a change in overclocking methodology. However, not all cards are equal, and even identical cards may overclock differently, so luck is a key component in any overclocking.
So, to answer your questions specifically:
Brand is irrelevant. It's nice to have one for the same GPU to help with GPU specific issues (ie, use a 650-Ti guide if you have a 650-Ti), but a general guide will cover the basics and get the job done. Here is a nice generic guide to get you started: http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/705791.aspx
I'm not sure I'm understanding the question. How can a piece of hardware be slightly superior to another piece of similar hardware with hardware? I'm sure I answered the intended question in the paragraph above.
Use a piece an overclocking utility. MSI Afterburner is the go-to for general GPU overclocking, as it has all the necessary features, and works with most GPUs, regardless of vendor, but there are vendor-specific options available, such as ASUS GPU Tweak. HIS has iTurbo, EVGA has one (can't remember the name), and I'm sure other vendors have their own. If you're new, I'd just use MSI Afterburner for the sake of convienence, since it already monitors data such as load and temps, and is bundled with Kombuster, which is a stress test utility, needed to test the OC stability.
Unigine is OK, but Furmark is much better, since it put an unrealistically stressful load to see how the card will perform on worst case scenario. MSI Kombuster is based on Furmark.
Thanks for the <strong>awesome</strong> reply man! I appreciate it. I will get overclocking :D. When you 'test' a card are you seeing how much you can get away with, without the program/card crashing or are you looking to see how it runs under load?
Testing is more for the behavior of the overclock, rather than the performance. Performance increase is just assumed. You're going to be watching for temps, artifacts, and driver crashes. If you want, you can run Unigine before and after, especially when OCing memory, to gauge performance increase, but only after you've determined the OC is stable with either Kombuster, or Furmark. Run each test for 15-30 minutes. The longer you run it, the better.
You want to keep temps under 75c ideally, but you can push cards around 80c. My 5830 ran about 83c.
Artifacts, if you don't already know, are visual abnormalities. This can be visual spikes, color distortion, "snowflakes" (white dotes on textures), etc. If your card starts to artifact, it's a little unstable.
If the overclock causes a driver crash, it's outright unstable, and unusable.
If during the test, temps are acceptable, all pictures rendered look normal (without artifacts), and drivers didn't crash, then you may proceed to overclock further. You may keep going until these conditions aren't met. Then, you may either:
dial down the clock speed, double-check stability, and be happy
turn up voltage
turn up fan speed (since temperature adversely affects stability).
Awesome! Thanks again. One last problem, I'm getting all values (expect the fan speed) in relative formats, when they should be the finite numbers. I've scoured the options for to toggle but can't find it anywhere. Do you know how to change it?
No, I don't know how to change it. But I have the same problem on my GTX 650. I've also learned that the clock core clock speed only jumps by 13MHz increments. So if you only bump the core by 10 MHz, it will actually remain at stock speed, until you choose bump by 13 or more.