how hard should i push my 8800gts 320

this is my first overclock and i have a few questions. im running my 8800gts 320 at 621mhz core and 972mhz memory. it seems to benchmark fine and peaks at 69c. should i stop here? how much more room do i have left before things start to go bad? my processor is a 6750 running at 3.2ghz at stock voltage. should i back off the video settings and bump up the cpu a little? thanks.

Depends on how far you want to go. Generally those who want to push it as far as it will go, will push it until they see minor artifacting, and then dial it back some and benchmark it for many hours to prove it's stability. 69c is very cool for those speeds, are you sure that's on full load? Keep in mind that after you close the benchmark, your GPU temp will drop IMMEDIATELY. Before you can even get to the temp monitor after ending the benchmark, it's probably dropped quite a bit (5-15c). Get your hands on ATI Tool and pop open the spinning 3D image, and watch your temps rise until it reaches peak.

Keep an eye out for artifacts. If you see anything funky dial it back and benchmark it agin. My rule of thumb is that if I can game for 3 hours straight without any issues whatsoever, then it's stable. Other people will bench for shorter or longer. Just be careful and conservative. IMO that is a darn good OC you have right now. Whether or not you can go higher, I dunno. I'm not comlpetely familiar with these cards yet. I'm sure others will chime in and help you more than I can. Good luck.

be happy with that speed...You now have one of the fastest GPUs in existence. Don't get greedy and kill it.

my 8800gts 640mb doesnt like much above 621 / 999 ... and it seems like many others have found that their GTS's top out round there too.

Personally, I'd say push it until it artifacts, then bring it down a bit. You'll never know how fast your card will go until you try . As long as you arnt playing with the voltages, it will be hard to actually fry the card, so keep pushing higher.

Question: what are artifacts exactly? what do they look like????

Pixels that don't match. They look like "dead" pixels.

You probably won't notice one until there's tons of them on the screen. It's best to use ATITool or ATI Tray Tools and make the program find them for you

im pretty sure its 69 under full load. i turned on the log in rivatuner and ran a couple benchmarks in 3dmark06. the temp peaked at 69 a few times. its average temp was closer to 67. as far as speed goes, im pretty happy with it. my 3dmark score was ~8800 when i started and ~10600 after tinkering with it for a few minutes. thanks for the replies.

Mad2112,
What's you GPU revision? A2? A3?
(Look it up in Rivatuner main window)


620MHz is fine for A2, but A3 should do close to 700MHz.

I'm running mine at 612/1008 w/o any problems. I flashed my bios so it will always run those speeds. Also, use Rivatuner to crank your fan to 100% constant. My idle temps in a cool room are 45-50C, load temps are in the low 60's.

I just built my new system with an 8800GTS. These cards actually do run very cool, so my foot is in my mouth about the temps in my last comments. ATI Tool just cranked my 8800GTS to 663 Core, and it won't go a click above 64c. Wow that is frustrating (and impressive!). It really does make you wanna go higher. I'll crank the memory next and let you know how far it goes and what temps I reach.

PS: This card is AMAZING!! I just had to say it. This is my first card since a 6800xt.

Drive it like you stole it comes to mind

what temps under load are ok/"safe" then?

mine does 650/1620/1944 ram doesnt like much over 972 but the core on this is crazy I am gonna keep pushing. Initially I just flashed it to KO but the overclocker in me took over as usual. not bad for $210 shipped huh ?

BTW its very rare you will break a gfx card by pushing the clocks on it, if it dies then there ws something wrong with it that would have gone wrong anyway. If your just clocking with a 3rd party program and not messing with voltages, it basically will do it or it wont. I have never broke a gfx card overclocking.