GeForce GTX Titan GPU Boost 2 0 Overclocking Guide Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,424 words · ~7 min read
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this is my titan test bench and this is the titan overclocking guide
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overclocking titan is very different from previous generation GeForce
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products due to the way that GPU boost 2
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is implemented compared to GPU boost 1. so first let's show you the test bench
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really quickly here we've got 16 gigs of mushkin copperhead memory it's kind of
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hiding here don't worry too much about it a 4.4 gigahertz 3770k processor under
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an h100 we've also got a maximus 5 formula motherboard from ASUS GeForce
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gtx titan of course we'll need one of those and our benchmark of choice
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although it's not we're not really using it for benchmarking purposes is crisis
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too so we're using this as our stability test and we're using evga precision as
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the overclocking utility now GPU boost 2
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differs from GPU boost 1 in one primary
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way instead of relying on okay GPU
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voltage GPU clock speed and the power
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target for the board itself GPU boost 2
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relies on the clock speed the
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voltage and the temperature of the GPU because
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what kills video cards in the long term what kills a processor in the long term
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is voltage and temperatures over time so
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if NVIDIA knows that oh okay well that end user is controlling the temperature
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they don't have to account for it being sort of a worst case scenario so
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what we see here in evga precision if we can actually open it there we go is the
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configuration that i'm using now this graphics card right here is supposed to
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deliver uh sort of a an 867 megahertz
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boost clock however without changing anything because we're in a relatively
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cool room this GPU was running at nearly one gigahertz before we even changed the
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offset that's because the temperatures were under control so i'm going to come
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in here i'm going to show you how i would overclock a titan
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or any video card using GPU boost too because you can change your fan speed
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curve okay so come in and have a look at what we can do to the fan curve so i
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would start with the fan curve and i'd say okay
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i am willing to accept the noise level of a 70 fan as a worst case scenario so
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i'd take that 70 percent and i'd put that up near the temperature target that
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i'm gonna set the fan speed is very related to the temperature target so i
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go okay yeah the temperature target's going to be 80
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degrees or 85 or 90 degrees and i'm willing to tolerate this fan speed okay
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now you know that that's your worst case scenario that is how your fan is going
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to ramp up so that's going to determine your maximum so then what you do
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is you go in and you go okay well voltage wise i would just crank it up
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because it doesn't really matter because
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the GPU will change its voltage
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as much as it wants to but it won't go too far because the temperature is going
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to hold it back before it's going to apply more voltage to itself so it'll
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actually keep voltage under control on its own so i just kind of crank that up
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then the next step is i would start to play around with the power target so
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power target i just turn up to the max and you can link or unlink the temp
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target in the power target set a temperature target you're comfortable
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with this is where some of that customization comes in so i could set a
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fan curve that goes okay i want to keep the fan speed low and i'm okay with
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higher temperatures i understand that that's going to make the GPU clock
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itself down and lower its voltage sometimes but that's that's a compromise
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that i'm comfortable with or you can go okay temperature target
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70 degrees fan speed set a very
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aggressive curve and that way you can actually keep those temperatures low and
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the GPU will fight to stay there again by sort of ramping up voltage and
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ramping up frequency as much as it can but then backing off if that temperature
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starts to go up so playing around with the power target and the temperature
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target as well as the fan curves and the voltage is all somewhat related once
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you've set those up the way that you want them so in my case i set a fan
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curve that had it ramping up to i think i have a temperature target of 90
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degrees i'm willing to tolerate that and i played around with the fan speeds
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manually and i said okay you know what 65
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is about as loud as i can tolerate so i set that curve and then i made it much
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more aggressive so it's a very gradual ramp up until
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then and then once we hit that 90 degrees i'm going to say okay fan go
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ahead and go crazy to bring yourself back down here if that's what it takes
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then what you start to do is play around with the GPU clock offset make sure
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you're monitoring because you could set a GPU clock offset of 300 megahertz but
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at the end of the day if the voltage if the temperature is
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being exceeded or it needs too much voltage to get there it sees the power
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targets or whatever other limiting factors come into play your GPU
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might not actually be clocking itself up that high so you need to make sure that
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you're popping out of your application that you're using to test your overclock
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and making sure that it's actually even running at a higher frequency so you
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turn those up until you either run into stability issues or you notice that the
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GPU is not clocking any higher then you have some options you can turn up your
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fan curve so you can have it be more aggressive and that might allow you to
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attain that higher frequency or you can go you can turn up your voltage
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um if if the temperatures were already under control you can go okay let the
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GPU have more voltage or you can go okay i guess that's enough for me this is the
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compromise that i'm willing to accept once you're done with your GPU clock
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offset and you say okay this is this is where i've settled in it's either you
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know got to back it off for stability or those other factors then you start with
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your memory clock offset so the consistent performance that we were able
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to get out of our titan on an air-cooled test bench and this is all great news
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for overclockers because they can just throw a water block on it set the
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voltage to max set the frequency to max and let the card basically overclock
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itself anyway what we were able to do on an air-cooled test bench was a
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consistent clock speed on the GPU of about 1.16 gigahertz in a 3d application which
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is running right now it's running at around around 95 to 100 percent board
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power when the game's actually running when we've been in it for a while and a
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memory clock of 3.348 gigahertz so that
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is at double data rate almost six point
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actually it's about 6.7 gigahertz on the memory and then 1.16 gigahertz on the
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GPU so the performance of this is absolutely outstanding and even in a
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game like crysis 3 which we're running at extremely high settings so you can
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see right here using evga precision monitoring i can see what everything's
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running at what my memory usage is we're running at around 140 FPS in crisis 2
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which is just outstanding so i hope this has been helpful for you guys and good
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luck with your overclocking endeavors whether it's on a titan or some other
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video card that supports GPU boost too don't forget to subscribe to Linus tech
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