Gtx 1080 overclocking: The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 & GTX 1070 Founders Editions Review: Kicking Off the FinFET Generation

2 марта, 2023

Guide: Overclocking the ROG Strix GTX 1080 | ROG

One of the lucky owners of an ROG Strix GTX 1080? Find out how to get the most out of it by reading Chino’s guide, it’s a must read by our long-time ROG forum guru. Thanks Chino!

 

Owners of the new Strix GTX 1080 can attest that it’s an amazing graphics card with a respectable level of performance. But have you ever wondered to yourself if you’re getting the most out of it? The Strix GTX 1080 performs extremely well with boost clocks exceeding the 2GHz barrier. But I can bet that not many users are running their graphics card at peak performance much less know that there is still some gas in the tank. That’s the thing about performance. It’s so addictive. Having lots of it simply makes us want more of it. If you’re reading this guide, you’re probably curious to know how much extra performance you’re losing out on your Strix GTX 1080. Without further ado, let’s begin.

Overclocking Preparation

Squeezing very last drop of performance from your Strix GTX 1080 requires having the correct tools. Essentially you only need two programs to overclock your graphics card: one to make the real-time changes and monitor the graphics card’s vitals and the other to test the overclock’s stability.

To overclock our Strix GTX 1080, we will be using GPU Tweak II, ASUS’ own in-house overclocking utility. It’s good at what it does and there are certain functions that were developed specifically for ASUS graphics cards which are not available in other utilities.

When it comes to testing for stability, each user swears by a different program. In my case, I like using the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark since it puts an insanely, high graphical load on the graphics card. What I have noticed is that if my overclock is stable in Heaven 4.0, it’s pretty much stable in the more demanding games. As always nothing is written in stone, so feel free to use the program of your choice for stability testing. 

Testing The Strix GTX 1080 At Stock Settings

Although many users tend to overlook this part, I’m a firm believer that one should always test the graphics card at stock before overclocking it. You will obtain important insight about your Strix GTX 1080 like what kind of performance you’re getting at stock and more importantly, the thermal conditions that the graphics card is in.

Let’s start by running Unigine Heaven and GPU Tweak II. Make sure you have the Monitor window up for GPU Tweak II. Now proceed to select the Extreme preset for Heaven and let it do its thing. Once the program starts, press the F9 key to initiate the benchmark function.

If your graphics card manages to finish the benchmark run, then you’re on the right track. While the Strix GTX 1080 is guaranteed to reach a frequency of 1936MHz on paper, we all know that it has no problem boosting beyond that number. My particular sample boosts to 2050MHz in real-world usage. However, your mileage will vary.

The next parameter that we need to analyze is the GPU Temperature. So scroll down the Monitor window to find that information. GPU Temperature is one of the two factors that can hinder your overclocking experience. It’s important to keep the GPU’s temperature below 80C at all times or the graphics card will start to throttle. In my case, my card gets around 70C which leaves me with some good headroom for overclocking. 

Overclocking the GPU Clock

ASUS has hidden some of the more advanced options in GPU Tweak II. We will need to enable these options before we can start going crazy with the Strix GTX 1080. 

Once you’re on the home screen, click the Professional Mode icon on the bottom right to switch over to a more advanced interface. Then click the cog icon on the upper right of the program to gain access to the program’s options. Scroll down and tick the Overclocking range enhancement option. Click Apply and you will be taken back to the home screen.

There are a few settings that we must change to ensure that the thermals and power usage won’t limit us from finding our maximum overclock for our Strix GTX 1080.

  • Increase the GPU Voltage (%) to 100% for maximum voltage frequency.

  • Increase the Fan Speed (%) to 100% as well so that temperatures won’t be a problem.

  • Increase the Power Target (%) to 120% to allocate more power to the graphics card and increase its TDP.

  • Increase the GPU Temp Target (C) to 92C to allow for higher throttle temperature.

Let’s concentrate on overclocking the GPU Clock first. So for now we will be tweaking the GPU Boost Clock (MHz) option. Increase the GPU clock by 15MHz then run the Heaven 4.0 benchmark. Then repeat until you run into instability.

Instability usually shows itself in form of:

  • NVIDIA driver crashes

  • Application crashes

  • Visual artifacts

  • System lock ups


If you fall victim to any of these symptoms, restart your system and start decreasing the GPU Boost Clock by 1MHz to 5MHz, depending on your patience, until you are able to complete the benchmark.

My Strix GTX 1080, in particular, has a maximum GPU Boost Clock of 2152MHz. That’s a good 100MHz increase which isn’t too shabby at all. But we’re not finished yet. We still need to overclock the Memory Clock to get us even more performance.

 

Overclocking The Memory Clock

So we took care of the Core and we’re one step closer to our final overclock. Now we’ll be working with the Memory Clock (MHz) option.

Since the memory is a lot more forgiving so we can get away with using bigger increments. I use increments of 100MHz. Basically repeat the same process as we used to overclock the GPU Clock. When instability starts to appear, start decreasing your Memory Clock by 10MHz until you find your stable overclock.


By now you should have your maximum stable overclock for your Strix GTX 1080. I managed to get my sample to 2152MHz on the core and 11460MHz on the memory. 

If you thought that this is the end of the line. Then you’re wrong. Remember that no stress test can substitute real word usage. So I would recommend that you test your overclock in different games as well. If you experience instability, you know what to do.

 

Tuning The Fan Curve

During the entire overclocking process we’ve kept the Fan Speed at 100% so that high temperatures wouldn’t be an issue. While that might give us the lowest temperatures, it’s also impractical to be running our fans at full throttle during daily usage. Besides it’s highly unlikely that our graphics card will be taxed at 100% all the time. 

Change the Fan Speed (%) option from 100% back to Auto. The fan curve programmed into the Strix GTX 1080 will now dictate how fast the fan will spin. In most situations, this is more than sufficient. Now is the time to fire up some of your favorite games for real world testing.

After gaming for a few, my Strix GTX 1080 got as hot as 74C. If your temperatures are too high for your taste, you can use a more aggressive fan curve for sure.

Start by changing the Fan Speed (%) option from Auto to User Define. Then click the cog icon on the right to open the fan curve window. 

By default, this is how the fan curve looks like for the Strix GTX 1080. Basically the fans will start spinning when the GPU temperature hits 55C and they will continue to increase in speed in a linear fashion. 

To add points to the graph, just left click on the part of the line where you want to add the point. Then just move the point up or down. Unfortunately, there’s no magic setting for this part of the guide. The perfect fan curve to achieve a balance between cooling and silence will vary from user to user depending on the ambient temperature and the case that houses the Strix GTX 1080. You will just have to experiment and see which works the best for you. Once you’re satisfied, click the Save button to finish up.

 

Applying The Finishing Touches

Now that we’ve finished overclocking our Strix GTX 1080 and tweaking the fan curve, the last step is to save our hard work to a profile.  

Go to the home screen and locate the plus icon that’s below the Profile section on the left side. Click it and the program will prompt you to provide a name for the profile. Once you’ve chosen a suitable name, hit the Enter key and the profile will be saved.

Navigate back to the program options and tick the following options:

  • Automatically start GPU Tweak II when I log on to Windows

  • Minimize GPU Tweak II when it starts

  • Apply settings each time GPU Tweak II starts

That’s all, folks! I hope this guide was of use to you. If you have any feedback, feel free to drop it in this thread.

How Well Does the GeForce GTX 1080 Overclock?

How Well Does the GeForce GTX 1080 Overclock? — GameSpot

By
Jimmy Thang
on

If you’ve read our GeForce GTX 1080 review (and we suggest you read that before delving into this article), then you know Nvidia’s new flagship graphics card is a beast. We also knew it was overclockable from our preliminary test, but properly overclocking a GPU can take hours, if not days, to do properly. Now that we’ve had more time with the card, we’ve been able to get a better read on how well the GPU will overclock.

It is worth mentioning that all GPUs overclock differently, even GPUs within the same SKU. Why is this? Well, when you’re manufacturing GPUs at the nanometer level, imperfections with transistors and yields tend to occur, which leads to some chips being more power-efficient than others. Thus, our overclocks are indicative of our particular GTX 1080, but it should at least give you a good reference point for the card’s overclocking capabilities.

Methodology

For our PC, we’re using the same system we used in our GTX 1080 review, which is a rig equipped with Intel’s six-core 5930K CPU coupled with 16GB of DDR4 RAM. To give you a wide array of comparative data, we’re also using the same suite of maxed-out benchmarks from the review and are again testing them at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K.

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Overclockability

With a pre-release version of EVGA Precision (provided by Nvidia), there’s a way to overclock the card using a new automated method that Pascal allows for, but we couldn’t get it to reliably run. To be fair, the feature is in a really early state. Regardless, the old tried and true method of manually tweaking the voltage, clocks, and fan speed still work here, so we just did that.

After several hours of tweaking coupled with an overnight stability test using Unigine Valley, we settled on a clock and memory offset of 225MHz and 500MHz, respectively. We were able to push up the memory clocks to 600Mhz, but noticed that performance actually regressed here. We suspect that this is due to the card’s error-correction techniques, which can increase overhead and latency. For fan speed, we revved it up to the max to mitigate any thermal bottlenecks, which was a loud 4,003rpm in our case. We also set the power target to 120% and gave it an additional 20% overvoltage boost in case the GPU needed a little more juice.

With the methodology explained, let’s get onto the benchmarks. We’ll begin at 1080p and move up to 4K and VR.

BioShock Infinite 1080p

While two GTX 980s are five percent faster than a stock-clocked GTX 1080 here, with our overclocks giving the Pascal card a five percent boost, it evens out the playing field for the GTX 1080.

Metro Last Light 1080p

While the five-performance boost in BioShock Infinite in the last slide wasn’t mind-blowing, we saw a much bigger 11

percent gain from our overclocks in our Last Light test here. With an average FPS of 89.6, it managed to barely outperform the pair of 980s.

Shadow of Mordor 1080p

Shadow of Mordor is another game at 1080p that saw a big performance boost from our overclocks. With its 10 percent gain, it garnered a 154 average FPS, which is high enough to allow you to fully take advantage of the game using a super fast 144Hz 1080p monitor.

Tomb Raider 1080p

With a healthy eight percent gain, our overclocked GTX 1080 steals the lead from the pair of 980s in our 1080p Tomb Raider test with a very high 184.9 FPS average.

Unigine Valley 1080p

Unigine Valley represents the GTX 1080’s most minimal performance gains at 1080p. Considering the card is still able to enjoy a five percent boost here, that’s not bad. It still is bested by the dual 980s, however.

3DMark 11

We ran 3DMark 11 under the Extreme settings, which renders multiple scenes at 1080p. The overclocked GTX 1080 was able to see a big 10 percent performance boost here, which allows it to overtake the pair of 980s with a score of 10495.

BioShock Infinite 1440p

With a three percent improvement, this is the smallest increase in performance for our overclocked GTX 1080 out of all of our tests. Regardless, it’s still just enough to help the GTX 1080 barely beat the pair of 980s.

Metro Last Light Redux 1440p

While BioShock Infinite at 1440p represented the smallest performance gains for our overclocked GTX 1080, the card is able to get its biggest boost out of all of our tests with Last Light here via a 12 percent gain. It’s enough of a performance jump to put it on equal footing with the pair of 980s.

Shadow of Mordor 1440p

The GTX 1080 already was ahead of the pack here with an average 105.6 average FPS, but with the eight percent nudge, it lifts performance above 115 average FPS.

Tomb Raider 1440p

Against the stock GTX 1080, the pair of 980s was barely able to edge out the Pascal card, but with the added nine percent boost from our overclocks, the GTX 1080 clearly pulls ahead with a seven percent lead.

Unigine Valley 1440p

The dual 980s were able to handily outperform the stock GTX 1080, but with the added 10 percent overclock, they’re statistically tied here.

BioShock Infinite 4K

The stock GTX 1080 was already the fastest graphics card in our lineup here, and with a decent six percent boost, it runs at nearly 70 average FPS maxed out at 4K.

Metro Last Light Redux 4K

With a big eleven percent performance boost, our overclocks put the GTX 1080 on parity with the dual 980s. With an average FPS of 21.6, however, it’s still not playable, and it reminds us that there’s definitely room for added GPU performance at the high-end of the spectrum.

Shadow of Mordor 4K

With a 59 average FPS, the GTX 1080 at stock clocks can’t quite seem to crack the 60FPS average holy grail figure, at least not maxed-out at 4K. With the nine percent performance boost from our overclocks, the card is able to pass that threshold with a 65 average FPS.

Tomb Raider 4K

Similar to Shadow of Mordor, our stock GTX 1080 was a little shy of reaching the coveted 60 average FPS mark, but with the big 10 percent boost from our overclocks, the card is able to turn the corner and garner a 62. 2 average FPS.

SteamVR

The GTX 1080 was already the best graphics card for VR, but with our overclocks giving the GPU an additional nine percent boost, it only further cements the card’s dominance over the competition.

Conclusion

Nvidia claimed that the GTX 1080 was highly overclockable. Considering our overclocks gave us a performance boost between 3-12 percent in our suite of tests and the card’s core clocks would be slightly shy of reaching 2.1GHz, we’d say that’s a pretty accurate statement. While the GTX 1080 at stock speeds traded blows with the dual 980s in many of our benchmarks, with our overclocks, it managed to tie or handily beat the SLI setup in all but two of our 16 tests. That’s impressive when you consider its biggest loss amounts to a two-percent deficit.

Having said that, we want to taper expectations here. Graphically-intensive benchmarks like Metro Last Light Redux, which had the overclocked GTX struggling with a 21.6 average FPS, show us that there is room for more GPU performance growth, most notably at 4K. To smoothly play the most graphically-demanding games maxed out at 4K, you’ll still need an SLI solution at this point.

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    ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Extreme+ Overclocked Overclocked

    3DNews Technologies and IT market. ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Extreme+ graphics card news: raz…


    04/27/2017 [10:13],

    Ivan Grudtsyn

    NVIDIA’s initiative to increase the memory frequencies of the GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (from 8000 MHz to 9000 MHz) and GeForce GTX 1080 (from 10,000 MHz to 11,000 MHz) has put some of the company’s AIB partners in an uncomfortable position. So, the Hong Kong vendor ZOTAC last year squeezed almost all the juice out of the GTX 1080 by increasing the factory frequencies of the AMP Extreme adapter from the recommended NVIDIA 1607-1733/1250(10,000) MHz to its own 1771-1911/1350(10800) MHz. And when the call came from Santa Clara to raise the bar even higher, ZOTAC must have grabbed their heads. Having assessed the possible risks, the manufacturer decided to endow the new AMP Extreme + model with a frequency formula of 1771–1911/1400 (11 200) MHz. Thus, only the nominal mode of operation of memory chips was increased, and even then by a modest 50 (400) MHz, or by 3.7%.

    New ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Extreme+ (model code ZT-P10800I-10P)

    .2 GHz, and the AMP Extreme+ version, on the contrary, promises to be more promising in this regard (the stable operation of chips below 11.2 GHz in AMP Extreme+ is a reason to contact a service center). The actual core frequency in games in both cases must be above 2 GHz. nine0007

    Judging by the identical photos and dimensions of the video cards (325 × 148 mm, three expansion slots), ZOTAC did not plan to improve the GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Extreme+ power system. This should not be a problem, since ten (8 + 2) power phases and two 8-pin PCI-E Power connectors are already enough for an accelerator not on the most powerful NVIDIA chip.

    PCB ZOTAC GeForce GTX 1080 AMP Extreme (2016), photo techpowerup.com

    Recall that all GeForce GTX 1080 models use the GP104 graphics chip. It includes 2560 Pascal stream processors and a 256-bit memory bus that communicates with 8 GB of GDDR5 VRAM. nine0007

    The pre-installed IceStorm cooler consists of a copper base, six copper heatpipes, two thick sections of aluminum fins, and three 92mm dual impeller fans. The decorative casing is equipped with Spectra RGB lighting elements.

    DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort (3 ports) are responsible for image output.

    How much the manufacturer will ask for the AMP Extreme + model is still a mystery. Note that the «regular» AMP Extreme card costs in the Russian market from 43 990 rub.

    Source:


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