Underclocking

[Mazo]

Can anybody elaborate on what could happen from underclocking a GPU? Apart from the obvious temperature drop and performance drop. Reason being I'm going to be leaving my PC on a lot overnight for a while and whilst waiting for my NV Silencer 5 to arrive I need to keep the temps of my passively cooled card down. Is there any concequences for severely underclocking such as the card breaking? Cheers.

 

[NoPeace]

GPU's are sensitive to min clocking. Underclocking can cause more problems then overclocking like lockups, artifects, BSoDs, etc.

I would advise not doing it. I've done it on both an nVidia 7900 GTX and an ATI x1900 XTX and in both cases bad stuff happened.

NoPeace - out

 

[username1]

^ You'd have to underclock quite a bit to lose it like that.

It'll also last longer from the lower temperatures.

 

[Sardaukar]

Correct on both of those views.


Its got an average set of speeds, and a minimum, if you start dropping below the minimum you will start seeing things that arent gettin gprocessed fast enough (ripping, artifacts) and naturally, an FPS drop. You are probably better off pulling the side of yoru case off so more air gets pulled in and out, and making sure you dont have any graphicly intensive anythign running.. just drop it to a screensaver and hop off.

 

[Mazo]

Well, you see my GPU is currently passive cooled (What the hell were Gigabyte thinking? I don't want a card running at 80C). Due to my PC having 7 80mm fans it tends to be rather noisy so at night I simply unplug them and leave the pc going with just the CPU fan and the 2 fans in the power supply. No games or any thing run overnight, just the windows desktop and downloads running in the background.

What would be the estimated margin for underclocking? I currently have it set to:
325Mhz Core -> 250Mhz Core
450Mhz Memory -> 250Mhz Memory

 

[deadly2003]

do what i did try and find a really crappy old dell and have that as ur downloader
keeps ur main comp free and uses less power.

 

[jpbaloga]

agreed.i use a laptop for downloads but my laptop sleeps/hibernate when i pull down the "monitor"

 

[Mazo]

Yeah, that's also one other thing I'm doing - but at the moment I have downloads on this PC that need finishing. After that I'm using my old server PC (Gutted Dell PC) and using that to download.

 

[NoPeace]

^ You'd have to underclock quite a bit to lose it like that.

It'll also last longer from the lower temperatures.

With the x1900XTX. If you drop it 1mhz below the default XT speeds you get instability.

Well, you see my GPU is currently passive cooled (What the hell were Gigabyte thinking? I don't want a card running at 80C). Due to my PC having 7 80mm fans it tends to be rather noisy so at night I simply unplug them and leave the pc going with just the CPU fan and the 2 fans in the power supply. No games or any thing run overnight, just the windows desktop and downloads running in the background.

What would be the estimated margin for underclocking? I currently have it set to:
325Mhz Core -> 250Mhz Core
450Mhz Memory -> 250Mhz Memory

What is wrong with 80c on passive? My damn 8800s run that hot with a powerful fan. And forget my old ATI cards. My x1900XTX ran about 84c and my old x850XT used to get up to 86c.

And you don't need to drop the memory speed. The memory wont make anything get much hotter. Hell lots of chips actually doesn't even get cooled with a heat sink. Look at water cooled setups and the bottom chips on the 7800GTX cards.

NoPeace - out

 

[Sardaukar]

What is wrong with 80c on passive? My damn 8800s run that hot with a powerful fan. And forget my old ATI cards. My x1900XTX ran about 84c and my old x850XT used to get up to 86c.

And you don't need to drop the memory speed. The memory wont make anything get much hotter. Hell lots of chips actually doesn't even get cooled with a heat sink. Look at water cooled setups and the bottom chips on the 7800GTX cards.
NoPeace - out

Holy cow O.O

You must have some pretty crappy ambient cooling out where you live My current 8800 runs idle at 55c and about 63-65 under load.. completely air cooled.


Just waiting on next week when I get my new piano in, then I will unleash teh details of my next mod I will document and post up.. pretty much, new exhaust fans, new lighting effects, and some other fun stuff Oh yeah, a new case as well to do it all on - Seeing if I can maximize the air cooling to as best as it can get

 

[Mazo]

Holy cow O.O

You must have some pretty crappy ambient cooling out where you live My current 8800 runs idle at 55c and about 63-65 under load.. completely air cooled.


Just waiting on next week when I get my new piano in, then I will unleash teh details of my next mod I will document and post up.. pretty much, new exhaust fans, new lighting effects, and some other fun stuff Oh yeah, a new case as well to do it all on - Seeing if I can maximize the air cooling to as best as it can get

Hello thread hijacking >_>

Back on track, 80C is too much for my liking as my room basically becomes a sauna running components that hot with a CRT aswell. The memory is cooled by the heatsink also so that's been underclocked to lower temps just that little bit extra. Does anybody actually know what the guidelines are for a Gigabyte GeForce 6800? Cheers.

 

[username1]

Huge 120mm fan blowing across the (no-longer passive) heatsink, it's going to move more air than an 80mm and be quieter in the process.

 

[Mazo]

Huge 120mm fan blowing across the (no-longer passive) heatsink, it's going to move more air than an 80mm and be quieter in the process.

Read the thread. I have a NV Silencer 5 on order and I'm waiting for it to come through, but in the meantime I need to know how far I can safely underclock the card.