To OC or not to OC...

Hello,

So I have an 8700M GT with 512MB. I was wondering if I should OC my GPU. Is it worth it? Are there any cons?

 

The biggest enemy of laptops is heat; and thats the major downside of overclocking with laptops. The cooling systems usually can't handle the higher TDP, so I think its wise to avoid overclocking, especially with a system thats already powerful (such as yours).

 

I dont think 1-3fps increase out of say 50fps you usually get is worth the overclock. Overclocking is basically forcing more power into the card, and if too much is put it, the transistors go pop. When one transistor dies, there goes your card and you are looking at $400-600 for a new graphics card.
In short, if even if you have good cooling, overclocking is not good for the components and will shorten their life.

K-TRON

 

So OCing my card won't give that much more performance?

 

I also OC'ed my 8700M GT and I reached the score of 63xx points in 3DMark06.

That's pretty nice, but the 128-bits bandwith is a huge bottleneck. I replaced the cooling pasta with Arctic Silver 5, most of the games I can play smooth

 

My laptop already came with the Arctic Silver 5 Thermal Compound. So does that mean that I'm set with the cooling?

 

That's correct, my original cooling pasta was dried out (is that correct English?) and the fan was blowing like a airplane.

The best way is to overclock the speeds 30Mhz each time. It's the way to find the highest speeds which are possible.

 

I love pasta on my notebook!...LOL. Thanks for the advice.

 

Does anyone else have any opinions?

 

I tried to overclock my gateway FX but ntune crashed. I think as long as you don't make huge jumps with your clock settings and watch HWmonitor like a hawk, you'll be fine. Also make sure to benchmark so you can see how hot your gpu really gets.

Where are you from? I was born close to Dnepropetrovsk.

 

at the moment.. with NVIDIA reporting that many of thier GPUs are having problems due to some unknown problem,,
i would not take the chance of OCing the GPU

 

Bah............

In all seriousness though, I'm in one of the hottest parts of the world right now (at least it sure feels that way) and I'm running a significant OC on my 8700M-GT with no issues. The key is being smart about it. Keep an eye on your temps, use Rivatuner and try different drivers. What I did was take it up in small steps, once it started showing artifacts I backed it down two steps back in my testing and left it there. Don't rely on 3DMark06 to show you your maximum though............I showed no issues there but showed artifacting in WIC and Crysis........so each time I made a change, I loaded one of those and played it for a few minutes to check stability. (WIC actually seems to be more sensitive as I could go higher in Crysis than I could with it)

 

yeah, but your gpu is probably getting over 50C, so it is not good for the chip. My gpu (quadrofx2500)never runs over 53C even under full load and it has failed within the first 2 months of using it. You never know when the graphics card is going to burn out. Overclocking teh card is going to decrease the cards service life, as you are running it over the 100% mark for something stupid like gaming.
You will see, it is very similar to power plants. You can run them over 100% usage and you will see that brown outs and decreased life span of the power plant occur. If the gpu burns out tomorrow, I am sure you will see it as a defective card, cause you do not believe overclcokcing is bad. Forcing more current through the same chip is never a good idea. Once one part fails, the entire card is dead. Keep forcing the speed higher, and you will have a dead notebook, but dont come crying to us when you have to diagnose why your laptop failed.
Overclocking is never worth the consequences. I am sure you can live without the additional 2 fps you get from overclocking.

K-TRON

 

Boy I sure am glad you know me well enough to accuse me of being the type of person that would attempt to blame my failures on someone or something else. I'm actually surprised to see such an arrogant and condescending tone in your post considering that you seemed helpful in most of them.....at least I know better than to ask you any questions now huh?

I believe that overclocking is as good or as bad as you make it......but then I don't have a ton of experience with it either. I can tell you that, to this point, I'm having ZERO issues with my 8700M-GT while it's OC'd. Yes my temps tend to hover at 48 degrees while idling and go as high as 69 degrees when playing WIC. My gain is more along the lines of 12 FPS or so based on the benchmark in the game itself for what it's worth.

If the computer breaks, I'll replace it.......not that difficult of a concept when you think about it. I do however thank you for your concern.

 

Sorry, I didnt mean to be condoning towards you, i am just very against overclocking since I know that on the electrical level, forcing more current into something is never a good thing.

K-TRON

 

No worries, I'm a firm believer in to each his own........I most certainly don't profess to be an expert by any stretch of the imagination......just passing on my own experiences to this point. FWIW, everything, and I do mean everything, that I've done to this laptop has been achieved thanks to the things I've learned on this board from people a heck of a lot more informed about computers in general and laptops in particular than I'll ever be.

 

Thanks for all the replies. This is not a place for arguments, but instead for people to share their opinions. K-Tron, I know that your argument was intended to prevent any damages. Slim, thanks for sharing your experience as well; I hope your card keeps performing at its best. I think I'll just leave my GPU as is because it seems like too much trouble to OC it, and since I don't have the money to replace the card, I'd rather not take any risks.

 

I got like 12fps boost in Crysis when Ocd

 

On which settings do you play?

 

The 8700m GT is an incredible overclocker as it is usually placed in cooling above and beyond its needs.

My laptop is almost a year old, and shows not one sign of problems at a consistent +25%-ish overclock. Note I do not exceed 69C on the GPU at any time even after hours upon hours of heavy gaming or benchmarking while overclocked.

Overclocking DOES reduce the life of your GPU... but silicon is quite resistent to heat and more than likely this silicon's lifespan is WAY longer than the typical lifespan of a laptop.

Even overclocking, (provided you monitor heat) your GPU will probably outlive your other components easily.

Trust me... or rather the pile of laptop components a few feet from my desk... the first thing to go in ANY laptop that is taken care of reasonably is the power coupling. The CPUs and GPUs usually only go when the user is extremely stupid. (woohoo! I got a 50%+ overclock to work and didn't bother to monitor heat and my fans died without me noticing...)

Is it worth it?

yes, IMHO... a 25% overclock usually results in a 15-20% increase in performance and for me not even a 5% difference in heat.


The sheer truth of the matter is... the people who usually overclock and monitor their heat actually have the laptops last LONGER than those who don't. Why? Because those people notice when their fans are not working as well or their laptop gets warmer than usuall because they are looking for it.

one more thing to consider... if overclocking was as dangerous as some posters here seem to think it is, why does nvidia offer tools on their site to do just that?

 

Overclocking isn't 100% safe as has been said. But think of it this way. Most chips be it CPU or GPU out there are the same chip just speed binned for working at a particular speed at a particular voltage with no issues.

And if the demand for a low end part is higher they use the higher binned chips for the lower part. To an extent that's kind of what overclocking things is doing.

I've been overclocking desktops sometimes to extremes for many years now and have ones that are 8 years old and still running fine. Though I make sure my temps are good and always use stock voltages. As has been said, the biggest problem with laptops and overclocking will be heat. If my graphics chip didn't get so hot, I'd see what I could do, but the temps worry me enough without trying to get it to run any faster.

 

These are really good points. So far, besides Crysis, I am pleased with the performance of my notebook when it comes to games. But if it starts to show significant limitations, then I might go ahead and OC. Thanks again for all the contributions. You guys are great!

 

ive bought a 8800gt EVGA gpu for my pc and it comes factory overclocked from 600mhz to 675 mhz, aswell as the mem bandwidth increased. AND it comes with a ten year warrenty, so it cant be that bad, most people upgrade there graphics cards before the lifespan is decreased so much that its un-usable, and ive never seen one become un-usable when the temp is normal, i think that as long as you keep the temperatures down it should be alright.
But as your talking about laptops, i know that they are more prone to over heating so its up to you whether u want to overclock. If u install ntune and use the monitor to look at your gpu temp, the slightly overclock it with riva tuner and see what the temperature difference is. leave nvmonitor running so it can draw a graph and then look at the graph after you have finnished playing, GPU's should never go above 127 degress, however i would keep it below 90(thats for a pc gpu anyway). in a laptop overclocking the gpu i should imagine would have a knock on affect and might heat up other components, try looking at ur CPU temp and see if that goes up.
GOOD LUCK!