# Is VRAM overclocking safe?



## someonee (Jan 28, 2020)

Hi everyone,

Is VRAM overclocking safe without overvoltage for pascal series? I have GTX 1050.

Thanks.


----------



## FreedomEclipse (Jan 28, 2020)

99% yes

though its debatable if its worth the effort  at all because your card is a potato and didnt have much performance to begin with.

Overclocking vram aint gonna make a lot of difference.


----------



## moproblems99 (Jan 28, 2020)

Nothing is 100% safe.  Ymmv  (Your milage may vary).


----------



## WatEagle (Jan 28, 2020)

someonee said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> Is VRAM overclocking safe without overvoltage for pascal series? I have GTX 1050.
> 
> Thanks.


I had a 1050 ti for 2.5 years and I overclocked it Since the first day I got it. It helped me getting to 60 FPS back then.

now I sold it and it hadn’t any issue
the key for me was finding core clocks and memory clocks where it was stable and push them back a little just to be sure they weren’t dangerous.

now if you for example use msi afterburner it can only go into safe limits, because it reads data from vbios.

for example if your card has a power limit that can be set to 105% , afterburner will only display that you can increase it to that number.

if you plan to overclock memory you can test it with a bounce of vmemory intensive games.

overclock is not an exact science so you can overclock it a lot, only a little or it can overclock at all in the worst case scenario. If your temps are fine and it doesn’t produce any artefact you can stay with that frequency, just remember (as a basic rule) if you want to oc also the core clock, you have to test them until it is stable once a time.
first focus on memory, find the limit and step back just a little, then reset to default and try with the core.
then test them together


----------



## oobymach (Jan 29, 2020)

Safe oc for vram on nvidia cards is usually 1ghz (as has been my experience with many generations of nvidia cards), so in msi afterburner you set +500mhz to get that 1ghz.

If your card has samsung ram you can usually get 1.2-1.4ghz but this varies with the card model. You will get more fps by oc'ing vram but not a lot, performance gains aren't massive usually 5-15% but it's worth it imo.

I have 2 1070's both oc'd and I run these clocks all the time. Previous cards I've owned/used recently include 780ti's, 760, 750ti, 660, 640, all but the 660 took an extra 1ghz like it was nothing and were tested with games and benchmarks. Micron ram doesn't like anything over the extra 1ghz, I have tested going beyond the 1ghz range with a bunch of cards with the same result, go too high and you get artifacting but an extra 1ghz has never caused artifacting on me and is what I would consider the stable maximum for nvidia gpu's.


----------



## Countryside (Jan 29, 2020)

Usually its safe when done correctly but like said before it wont help you much.


----------



## Vayra86 (Jan 29, 2020)

Some cards gain significant performance and a VRAM overclock is often a requirement, especially on Nvidia cards, to get mileage out of your core OC.

So, use them in tandem and balance your power/heat around that. First VRAM, then look at the headroom you've got to push the core; this is especially true for Pascal btw, not so sure about Turing (no experience with).

My GTX 1080 has been running +500 (1ghz) on the VRAM since day one.


----------



## cucker tarlson (Jan 29, 2020)

I'm running +2ghz 14ghz->16ghz.15992mhz to be more precise.
for my 1080 and 1080Ti only +900mhz/+850 was max before I saw negative returns
you should always test performance in real time,too high oc on memory brings performance down


----------



## Deleted member 67555 (Jan 29, 2020)

On Nvidia cards I use MSI AB.
I simply set the temperature to the highest acceptable limit, create a  better fan curve and raise the core until it boosts to it's Hard limits and then I do the same to the memory.
My core speed as it comes is set at 1607mhz...I have it set +215 (core) and that's enough for it to boost to 2113ghz
I've only been able to raise the memory speeds to +300?


----------



## cucker tarlson (Jan 29, 2020)

jmcslob said:


> On Nvidia cards I use MSI AB.
> I simply set the temperature to the highest acceptable limit, create a  better fan curve and raise the core until it boosts to it's Hard limits and then I do the same to the memory.
> My core speed as it comes is set at 1607mhz...I have it set +215 (core) and that's enough for it to boost to 2113ghz
> I've only been able to raise the memory does to +300?


ddr5


----------



## Deleted member 67555 (Jan 29, 2020)

cucker tarlson said:


> ddr5


Yeah...ikr... Every other Pascal seems to be able to do it.


----------



## someonee (Jan 29, 2020)

I did test +1000 and i can't see any artifacts in games. But if i test with MSI Kombustor artifact scanner (FURMARK-MSI (GL) mod) it's give me many errors but i still can't see any artifacts. I start seeing fullscreen artifacts after 5 minutes when testing so i tested +800 for half hours and i don't get any error and artifacts with MSI Kombustor or games. I have hynix VRAM. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes :/


----------



## WatEagle (Jan 29, 2020)

someonee said:


> I did test +1000 and i can't see any artifacts in games. But if i test with MSI Kombustor artifact scanner (FURMARK-MSI (GL) mod) it's give me many errors but i still can't see any artifacts. I start seeing fullscreen artifacts after 5 minutes when testing so i tested +800 for half hours and i don't get any error and artifacts with MSI Kombustor or games. I have hynix VRAM. Sorry for any grammatical mistakes :/


Now you know 800 is stable, try 850 or 50mhz increase every time, scan for artefacts or errors and get to the max stable limit you can get



WatEagle said:


> Now you know 800 is stable, try 850 or 50mhz increase every time, scan for artefacts or errors and get to the max stable limit you can get


For example with my strix 1050 to I could get 750 mhz stable on ram, or even +1000 mhz but I think it wasn't that stable so I stepped back. For the core I was able to push it to 1987mhz, setting the power limit to the max and also the voltage(it actually does nothing to the GPU, only hard mod can rise it)


----------



## Vayra86 (Jan 29, 2020)

jmcslob said:


> Yeah...ikr... Every other Pascal seems to be able to do it.



The GPU has to budget its power between GDDR5 and an almost similar shader count versus a 1080 that can make do with more efficient GDDR5X and is also often better binned. Its really an odd one out.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Jan 29, 2020)

YMMV, increasing voltage can cause deterioration


----------



## P4-630 (Jan 29, 2020)

jmcslob said:


> Yeah...ikr... Every other Pascal seems to be able to do it.



My GTX1070 did +825 on the vram but the core wouldn't OC well.


----------



## eidairaman1 (Jan 29, 2020)

P4-630 said:


> My GTX1070 did +825 on the vram but the core wouldn't OC well.



To get any oc is a treat lol


----------



## King Banakon (Feb 1, 2020)

better leave it on default settings


----------



## Deleted member 67555 (Feb 2, 2020)

Vayra86 said:


> The GPU has to budget its power between GDDR5 and an almost similar shader count versus a 1080 that can make do with more efficient GDDR5X and is also often better binned. Its really an odd one out.


I stand corrected...
I do get +500 on the memory and +215 on the core (2124 boost)
Apparently memory speeds are what was holding this card back since my numbers are up...specifically my bottom number is up. (2560x1440)
Been watching my fps in CoD MW and I was dipping as low as 42fps but usually not less than 55~fps and now I'm not seeing anything below 67fps....All settings max except tessellation is set to "near"
Except during really intense battle I've been at roughly 108fps+.
I honestly don't think I'm at my max speeds...all I did was increase the fan speeds +3% starting at 38c....
The noise level is that of an Xbone X across the room
The cool thing is I can now play with RTX on and get between 32-71fps avg-43fps ...no great but playable...even though I don't
This was actually enough of a boost to hold off another year to upgrade....I'm going to upgrade my monitor though...75hz is not enough

So yeah OP...maybe some risk but so worth it.


----------



## blued (Feb 2, 2020)

someonee said:


> Hi everyone,
> 
> Is VRAM overclocking safe without overvoltage for pascal series? I have GTX 1050.
> 
> Thanks.


As long as you dont over-volt you are safe.


----------



## Vya Domus (Feb 2, 2020)

Overclock it until you get artifacts or crashes and call it a day.


----------



## Fry178 (Feb 2, 2020)

increasing voltage on any 10xx and 20xx cards that i had/installed, didnt help with anything,
worst case it caused AB to flag "power limit",
but was not (flagged) when no added voltage was used (all other settings same).

dont expect identical numbers compared to what others/reviews show.
i have had vram going +800 when 5-600 was common (for that chip), and others only doing +500ish,
when reviews got 8-900 mhz.

usually you want to oc vram first, do a quick test by jumping in 50/100 mhz steps (depending on series/model),
verify with 3dmark11 (especially the (single) submarine/ocean floor scene shows artifact/black areas missing graphics, if clocks are too high.
increase clocks until graphic errors show, dial it back by 25 mhz and run bench again.
once you got something that is doing a run without any problems, take it down another 25-50 mhz to make sure its really stable.

now max out power and temp sliders in AB (not voltage), and save as profile.
run the oc scanner with vram/power/temp set like that, if you dont want to deal with it manually,
numbers you get a very close to what (manual) max clocks are anyway.


----------



## Vya Domus (Feb 2, 2020)

Fry178 said:


> increasing voltage on any 10xx and 20xx cards that i had/installed, didnt help with anything,



That's because you can't really increase the voltage, the maximum voltage will still be the same, it'll just try to stay closer to that value compared to stock.


----------



## Fry178 (Feb 2, 2020)

i should have said, it most of the time gets you worse perf, compared to running the same clocks etc, without added V.
even a moderate/safe oc thru the oc scanner that doesnt trigger any limiter flags, will then trigger power limit,
yet no noticeable (perf) improvement in any bench i did.


----------



## toyo (Feb 3, 2020)

jmcslob said:


> Yeah...ikr... Every other Pascal seems to be able to do it.


My 1070ti with Micron VRAM can only do about +350MHz on it before things get unstable. At first I thought +400 worked OK, but the card would TDR 1-2 times/month.
I'll have to assume very few actually care about rock solid stability. Most people that OC do it the fast&dirty way after settings they've seen on the web, with close to 0 stresstesting.


----------



## Deleted member 67555 (Feb 3, 2020)

toyo said:


> My 1070ti with Micron VRAM can only do about +350MHz on it before things get unstable. At first I thought +400 worked OK, but the card would TDR 1-2 times/month.
> I'll have to assume very few actually care about rock solid stability. Most people that OC do it the fast&dirty way after settings they've seen on the web, with close to 0 stresstesting.


Yeah I know what you mean for the longest time 300mhz is all I could do until I made an extremely aggressive fan curve after 45c and it's good...
I used to care more about the noise but I use headphones now so it doesn't matter.
Triple fan cooler is nice for the silence and does a fantastic job keeping the temps down.
At 2124/2500 the GPU is at a constant 72c but it holds there... Thinking of going even more aggressive with the fan curve.


----------



## Fry178 (Feb 3, 2020)

@toyo
yeah, same sec i read it, i guessed it was a GB card.
havent seen anything in their lineup since 700 series that would get close to others
when it comes to oc vram. usually because of hynix/micron ram.
nothing bad, but most the time the samsung chips semm to clock the highest.

@jmcslob
just switch to water.
boost clocks start to get lowered passing 54*C, 2080 on water is faster than 2080S thats aircooled.
the LC clocks higher out of the box, than what i get as max boost on the air cooled card.

and its silent, and with cpu under water lowering all other temps (pc) to basically below 50*C as well, incl vrms


----------

