Best overclocking current gen cards?

[Yossarian22]

Red or green, it doesn't really matter.

I'm just curious of which of the new crop of cards can get a good overclock, even if you have to go hardcore by flashing BIOSes and doing voltage increases. In my opinion, that's what being an enthusiast has always been about and I've been out of the loop for quite some time, favoring my laptops, although I do have a external graphics card attached to my T410, but looking for something with a little umph.

So, not particularly in the market for a new card, I've just been looking and nobody has been doing any hardcore overclocking that I've read about with this current crop of cards.

The R7 250x & R7 260x looks like a good candidates on the red side, but I'm not sure if they overclock well.

What cards have good headroom and are of good value?

I'd appreciate any input. Feel free to share thoughts and photos of overclocks!

 

[pandora's box]

On the Nvidia side I would say the 780 and 780 Ti. Base clock is 875 Mhz, People hit 1200Mhz with ease.

 

[cortexodus]

On the Nvidia side I would say the 780 and 780 Ti. Base clock is 875 Mhz, People hit 1200Mhz with ease.

Yea I hit 1306 with my 780 but I've gone back to completely stock since the Galaxy vendor weirdness. I can't risk an RMA being a nightmare. It still does 1124MHz on its own OOB settings, so I'm not complainin'

 

[Liger88]

On the Nvidia side I would say the 780 and 780 Ti. Base clock is 875 Mhz, People hit 1200Mhz with ease.

Would second this. For the price and stock performance I'd give a leg up 10x over for the 780 over the 780 Ti. My EVGA 780 SC already pre-overclocked nicely was able to do another +100 (1188Mhz Boost 24/7 F@H) on the GPU Clock and has been running fine ever since then. Pretty sure I could take it even higher without much of a problem. Really impressed the hell out of me.

 

[2wiced]

My 780s reached 1380-1400 on the cores with high voltages on water. Stock both can do 1200. I don't have them overclocked at the moment lol. So if budget allows a single overclocked 780 equaled the performance of my old 670 Sli rig. So I recommend that.

Don't know in lower price ranges. Does the 750ti seem to be good? I have not read about it

 

[mi7chy]

They're both built on TSMC 28nm so they have similar potential and limitation. You're more likely to have better luck with the lower to mid range cards that have more headroom for OC than high end cards that are already near the ceiling. The sweet spot is probably the 265 and 270.

 

[Yossarian22]

For you guys saying stuff about the higher end Kepler cards (780, 780 Ti) that are 28nm, you think the same logic would apply for GTX 660 and GTX 760?

How about the red cards? I'm kinda disappointed AMD did a lot of rebadging but I suppose it cannot be helped. I honestly haven't really kept up with x86 hardware in awhile.

I'm interested in Nvidia/Green because it would do very well as an external video card for my T410, given the Nvidia Optimus frame buffer trick with external mPCIe...

But I'm just interested in all cards out there presently.


P.S: Regarding the 780 series, do they have controllable voltage regulators to give a voltage boost or only on specific cards?

 

[Unknown-One]

P.S: Regarding the 780 series, do they have controllable voltage regulators to give a voltage boost or only on specific cards?

All 780's have some level of voltage control. Reference-model GTX 780 stock Nvidia BIOS lets you go up to 1.2v (which is +38 mV over stock).

 

[cortexodus]

For you guys saying stuff about the higher end Kepler cards (780, 780 Ti) that are 28nm, you think the same logic would apply for GTX 660 and GTX 760?

How about the red cards? I'm kinda disappointed AMD did a lot of rebadging but I suppose it cannot be helped. I honestly haven't really kept up with x86 hardware in awhile.

I probably would not even consider a 6 series card at this point in the game unless it was a fabulous deal and you're driving 1080p, but I'm not an authority on the subject by any stretch.

Insofar as the AMD cards are concerned, regardless of any confusion inherent in re-badging, there is a lot of good stuff if you're able to somehow circumvent the current pricing inflation. However, I don't think the R9-290(x)'s are really considered among the "best overclockers". Putting them on water does make for a better situation.

 

[hcforde]

This is really a multi part question. You might be able to get a low end card that is good at overclocking but will not be inthe FPS area thatyou want for the games that you wish to play. What is your goal? What is your budget? What kind of games do you wish to play?

You started off in the R250/260 range and it immediately went to 780. HUGE difference!!!

 

[Sodapopjones]

You're going to have to pry my 290 from my cold dead hands, it may be a shitty XFX card but I don't think I'm going back anytime soon.

However, from your initial post, it sounds like you should be shopping 750Ti or 265X... Of those 2, I would go 750Ti, just because of all the issues I had with my 7850.

 

[hcforde]

You're going to have to pry my 290 from my cold dead hands, it may be a shitty XFX card but I don't think I'm going back anytime soon.

However, from your initial post, it sounds like you should be shopping 750Ti or 265X... Of those 2, I would go 750Ti, just because of all the issues I had with my 7850.

LOL!, Don't get 2 of them. You will be spoiled forever.

 

[Yossarian22]

This is really a multi part question. You might be able to get a low end card that is good at overclocking but will not be inthe FPS area thatyou want for the games that you wish to play. What is your goal? What is your budget? What kind of games do you wish to play?

My goal is quite strange but ARMA 3, X3: Albion Prelude with settings medium to high... keep reading, but I've had a few drinks but should be easy enough to follow.

It was a feeler-type post, a hypothetical of sorts.

1. I was wondering how binning in regards to GPUs were still relevant with the newer generation
2. If overclocking was relevant, on the CPU side, it seems to be all most all but dead compared to the old FX days and even the C2D days with 45nm process node
3. Trying to show & convince someone I know you can build a rig same price as a console and have it last longer and perform better
4. Planning out an external card for my laptop's "dock" (see DIY ViDock)

You started off in the R250/260 range and it immediately went to 780. HUGE difference!!!

I didn't go to GTX 780, I asked what cards had headroom for overclocking, people mentioned some things in that regard.

You're going to have to pry my 290 from my cold dead hands, it may be a shitty XFX card but I don't think I'm going back anytime soon.

However, from your initial post, it sounds like you should be shopping 750Ti or 265X... Of those 2, I would go 750Ti, just because of all the issues I had with my 7850.

The R9 290? It seems to be an excellent card. What issues did you have with your HD 7850?

I probably would not even consider a 6 series card at this point in the game unless it was a fabulous deal and you're driving 1080p, but I'm not an authority on the subject by any stretch.

6 series as in Nvidia GTX 660? For $165 (amazon), seems to be a serious upper-mainstream kind of card. Unless you were referring to the HD 6xxx cards. I've been a bit out of the x86 loop in a lot of regards, hence the post.

Insofar as the AMD cards are concerned, regardless of any confusion inherent in re-badging, there is a lot of good stuff if you're able to somehow circumvent the current pricing inflation....good choices...Putting them on water does make for a better situation.

Yeah, my understanding is that the Radeon R7 260X is an overclocked HD 7790 with some extra minor features. The GTX 750 Ti comes close or equal in performance but costs more (at MSRP, keeping up with inflated prices due to cryptocurrency mining has been difficult) but has the advantage of being very low TDP being Maxwell based @ 28nm (60W TDP IIRC) and requiring no aux power connector.

-----

I'm not particularly in the market for anything per se, I'm planning on minimizing my entire collection of computers and potentially getting rid of my desktop.

I have a Thinkpad T410 (Core i5 560m, Nvidia Optimus based NVS 3100M), externally connected Nvidia GTS 450
Also just acquired a Thinkpad X61s (not upgraded as of now);
Desktop consists of E8400 Wolfdale with tower cooler, 4096MB RAM, HD 4770 (the 40nm test node HD 4850) and with various disks in an Antec Three-Hundred.

I was curious if any cards had any overclocking potential because I have two options on minimizing my setup for gaming purposes:

1. External video card (must be Nvidia) on T410 with but with a portable monitor / Occulus Rift
2. New desktop in a smaller form factor using some custom cooked up software I'd write to have "cloud gaming" but over LAN (like OnLive, but a custom solution of my own)

Both are plausible and quite possible. The first involves manipulating the way Nvidia Optimus works (that's why in the first case it needs to be an Nvidia card, it has to do with how images are forwarded to the frame buffer. You may have heard of this solution, there is a commercial product called a ViDock, in this case, I'd be doing a DIY ViDock. The second case is possible, I write code for a living, I just have not worked with encoding and decoding audio and video before, so a custom solution would be quite interesting.

Seems over complicated? Yeah, maybe. I just want a very minimal setup and perhaps something portable. This thread was just to see what cards of the current crop have any overclocking potential/headroom, because if I do my DIY ViDock, I'll have a video card in a custom enclosure (remember, has to be Nvidia for performance reasons) but doing a watercooled type thing isn't out of the question, but I do wonder how much I can squeeze anyway over 1x mPCIe w/ Nvidia Optimus enhancement (the framebuffer trick the chipset employs).

Also a bit drunk, but I think I've stated everything pretty clearly. I appreciate input and I would appreciate any more input, ideas, opinions, etc... That's why I love [H]ardOCP and [H]ardForum.

Oh, and some more information regarding the whole DIY ViDock / External desktop video card attached to laptops:

Notebook Review "Let's Figure Out How to Do a DIY ViDock / eGPU"
Benchmarks of eGPU / DIY ViDock implementations

I have no reference for my own implementation of OnLive (as right now, it is just a thought), but I'd be doing it over LAN and it's gonna... gonna get quite technical and it is a bit out of scope for this thread but if I do get source and everything to work, I'd probably make it GPL and/or copyleft.

Again, thoughts, opinions, replies, all appreciated. Time for another drink