• Welcome to TechPowerUp Forums, Guest! Please check out our forum guidelines for info related to our community.

Is VRAM overclocking safe?

S

someonee

New Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2020
Messages
2 (0.00/day)
Hi everyone,

Is VRAM overclocking safe without overvoltage for pascal series? I have GTX 1050.

Thanks.
 
99% yes

though its debatable if its worth the effort at all because your card is a potato and didnt have much performance to begin with.

Overclocking vram aint gonna make a lot of difference.
 
Nothing is 100% safe. Ymmv (Your milage may vary).
 
someonee said:
Hi everyone,

Is VRAM overclocking safe without overvoltage for pascal series? I have GTX 1050.

Thanks.
Click to expand...
I had a 1050 ti for 2.5 years and I overclocked it Since the first day I got it. It helped me getting to 60 FPS back then.

now I sold it and it hadn’t any issue
the key for me was finding core clocks and memory clocks where it was stable and push them back a little just to be sure they weren’t dangerous.

now if you for example use msi afterburner it can only go into safe limits, because it reads data from vbios.

for example if your card has a power limit that can be set to 105% , afterburner will only display that you can increase it to that number.

if you plan to overclock memory you can test it with a bounce of vmemory intensive games.

overclock is not an exact science so you can overclock it a lot, only a little or it can overclock at all in the worst case scenario. If your temps are fine and it doesn’t produce any artefact you can stay with that frequency, just remember (as a basic rule) if you want to oc also the core clock, you have to test them until it is stable once a time.
first focus on memory, find the limit and step back just a little, then reset to default and try with the core.
then test them together
 
Safe oc for vram on nvidia cards is usually 1ghz (as has been my experience with many generations of nvidia cards), so in msi afterburner you set +500mhz to get that 1ghz.

If your card has samsung ram you can usually get 1.2-1.4ghz but this varies with the card model. You will get more fps by oc'ing vram but not a lot, performance gains aren't massive usually 5-15% but it's worth it imo.

I have 2 1070's both oc'd and I run these clocks all the time. Previous cards I've owned/used recently include 780ti's, 760, 750ti, 660, 640, all but the 660 took an extra 1ghz like it was nothing and were tested with games and benchmarks. Micron ram doesn't like anything over the extra 1ghz, I have tested going beyond the 1ghz range with a bunch of cards with the same result, go too high and you get artifacting but an extra 1ghz has never caused artifacting on me and is what I would consider the stable maximum for nvidia gpu's.

gpun.png
 
Last edited:
Usually its safe when done correctly but like said before it wont help you much.
 
Some cards gain significant performance and a VRAM overclock is often a requirement, especially on Nvidia cards, to get mileage out of your core OC.

So, use them in tandem and balance your power/heat around that. First VRAM, then look at the headroom you've got to push the core; this is especially true for Pascal btw, not so sure about Turing (no experience with).

My GTX 1080 has been running +500 (1ghz) on the VRAM since day one.
 
I'm running +2ghz 14ghz->16ghz.15992mhz to be more precise.
for my 1080 and 1080Ti only +900mhz/+850 was max before I saw negative returns
you should always test performance in real time,too high oc on memory brings performance down
 
On Nvidia cards I use MSI AB.
I simply set the temperature to the highest acceptable limit, create a better fan curve and raise the core until it boosts to it's Hard limits and then I do the same to the memory.
My core speed as it comes is set at 1607mhz...I have it set +215 (core) and that's enough for it to boost to 2113ghz
I've only been able to raise the memory speeds to +300?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
jmcslob said:
On Nvidia cards I use MSI AB.
I simply set the temperature to the highest acceptable limit, create a better fan curve and raise the core until it boosts to it's Hard limits and then I do the same to the memory.
My core speed as it comes is set at 1607mhz...I have it set +215 (core) and that's enough for it to boost to 2113ghz
I've only been able to raise the memory does to +300?
Click to expand...
ddr5
 
I did test +1000 and i can't see any artifacts in games. But if i test with MSI Kombustor artifact scanner (FURMARK-MSI (GL) mod) it's give me many errors but i still can't see any artifacts. I start seeing fullscreen artifacts after 5 minutes when testing so i tested +800 for half hours and i don't get any error and artifacts with MSI Kombustor or games. I have hynix VRAM. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes :/
 
someonee said:
I did test +1000 and i can't see any artifacts in games. But if i test with MSI Kombustor artifact scanner (FURMARK-MSI (GL) mod) it's give me many errors but i still can't see any artifacts. I start seeing fullscreen artifacts after 5 minutes when testing so i tested +800 for half hours and i don't get any error and artifacts with MSI Kombustor or games. I have hynix VRAM. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes :/
Click to expand...
Now you know 800 is stable, try 850 or 50mhz increase every time, scan for artefacts or errors and get to the max stable limit you can get

WatEagle said:
Now you know 800 is stable, try 850 or 50mhz increase every time, scan for artefacts or errors and get to the max stable limit you can get
Click to expand...
For example with my strix 1050 to I could get 750 mhz stable on ram, or even +1000 mhz but I think it wasn't that stable so I stepped back. For the core I was able to push it to 1987mhz, setting the power limit to the max and also the voltage(it actually does nothing to the GPU, only hard mod can rise it)
 
jmcslob said:
Yeah...ikr... Every other Pascal seems to be able to do it.
Click to expand...

The GPU has to budget its power between GDDR5 and an almost similar shader count versus a 1080 that can make do with more efficient GDDR5X and is also often better binned. Its really an odd one out.
 
YMMV, increasing voltage can cause deterioration
 
jmcslob said:
Yeah...ikr... Every other Pascal seems to be able to do it.
Click to expand...

My GTX1070 did +825 on the vram but the core wouldn't OC well.
 
better leave it on default settings :)
 
Vayra86 said:
The GPU has to budget its power between GDDR5 and an almost similar shader count versus a 1080 that can make do with more efficient GDDR5X and is also often better binned. Its really an odd one out.
Click to expand...
I stand corrected...
I do get +500 on the memory and +215 on the core (2124 boost)
Apparently memory speeds are what was holding this card back since my numbers are up...specifically my bottom number is up. (2560x1440)
Been watching my fps in CoD MW and I was dipping as low as 42fps but usually not less than 55~fps and now I'm not seeing anything below 67fps....All settings max except tessellation is set to "near"
Except during really intense battle I've been at roughly 108fps+.
I honestly don't think I'm at my max speeds...all I did was increase the fan speeds +3% starting at 38c....
The noise level is that of an Xbone X across the room
The cool thing is I can now play with RTX on and get between 32-71fps avg-43fps ...no great but playable...even though I don't
This was actually enough of a boost to hold off another year to upgrade....I'm going to upgrade my monitor though...75hz is not enough

So yeah OP...maybe some risk but so worth it.
 
Overclock it until you get artifacts or crashes and call it a day.
 
increasing voltage on any 10xx and 20xx cards that i had/installed, didnt help with anything,
worst case it caused AB to flag "power limit",
but was not (flagged) when no added voltage was used (all other settings same).

dont expect identical numbers compared to what others/reviews show.
i have had vram going +800 when 5-600 was common (for that chip), and others only doing +500ish,
when reviews got 8-900 mhz.

usually you want to oc vram first, do a quick test by jumping in 50/100 mhz steps (depending on series/model),
verify with 3dmark11 (especially the (single) submarine/ocean floor scene shows artifact/black areas missing graphics, if clocks are too high.
increase clocks until graphic errors show, dial it back by 25 mhz and run bench again.
once you got something that is doing a run without any problems, take it down another 25-50 mhz to make sure its really stable.

now max out power and temp sliders in AB (not voltage), and save as profile.
run the oc scanner with vram/power/temp set like that, if you dont want to deal with it manually,
numbers you get a very close to what (manual) max clocks are anyway.
 
Fry178 said:
increasing voltage on any 10xx and 20xx cards that i had/installed, didnt help with anything,
Click to expand...

That's because you can't really increase the voltage, the maximum voltage will still be the same, it'll just try to stay closer to that value compared to stock.
 
i should have said, it most of the time gets you worse perf, compared to running the same clocks etc, without added V.
even a moderate/safe oc thru the oc scanner that doesnt trigger any limiter flags, will then trigger power limit,
yet no noticeable (perf) improvement in any bench i did.
 
jmcslob said:
Yeah...ikr... Every other Pascal seems to be able to do it.
Click to expand...
My 1070ti with Micron VRAM can only do about +350MHz on it before things get unstable. At first I thought +400 worked OK, but the card would TDR 1-2 times/month.
I'll have to assume very few actually care about rock solid stability. Most people that OC do it the fast&dirty way after settings they've seen on the web, with close to 0 stresstesting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top