Successfully overclocked my 250 GTS

[elite]

As I recently posted, I bought an inno3D 250 GTS video card.

It was a vast improvement from my previous yucky 8500 GT. I wanted to test its maximum performance. After alot of tests for stability, I got the maximum stable clocks.

Default Clock - Overclocked
Core clock : 700 -> 792 MHz +92
Shader clock : 1728 -> 1890 MHz +162
Memory clock : 1000 -> 1242 MHz +242

On default clocks - On overclocked
Pixel Fillrate : 11.2 -> 12.7 GPixel/s +1.5
Texture Fillrate : 45.0 -> 50.7 GTexel +5.7
Memory Bandwidth : 64.0 -> 79.5 GB/s +15.5

In-game FPS increase:
Crysis: Settings set to "Very High" -> 3 fps increase. (Running at 18-19 fps)
Far Cry 2: Settings set to max -> 3-4 fps increase. (35-41 fps)
Dirt 2: Settings set to max -> 7-8 fps increase. (46 fps)

I was pretty surprised at the Memory Clock. The Memory type is GDDR3.

 

[Hardrive]

How can you play 18-19 fps? I find it hard to play anything that isn't running at a constant 60 fps. I'll even change my settings to make sure it can do this.

 

[Adiuvo]

Crysis runs a lot better than most games at 20 FPS, but even still I can't imagine playing it for any period of time doing so.

What processor are you using?

 

[Serideth]

How can you play 18-19 fps? I find it hard to play anything that isn't running at a constant 60 fps. I'll even change my settings to make sure it can do this.

What, that's madness, I'm happy with 30+

 

[Hardrive]

What, that's madness, I'm happy with 30+

Maybe it's just my monitor or my rig, but 30 looks awful

 

[x3sphere]

I'm fine with 30 in most cases unless it's a Source engine game. TF2, L4D etc feel so sluggish at below 60.

 

[slicer4ever]

that's probably because they were designed to run at 60, and not compensate for lower frame rates, but that's just an estimated guess

 

[Trigun]

What, that's madness, I'm happy with 30+

same here, I can not recall how many games i've had to play with lower framerates and still had the time of my life

 

[MenaceInc]

GTA3 on the PC has a built in limit of 30fps. It's annoying the hell out of me.
Crysis though, as has been said, is playable around the 20~30fps mark.

As for games with lower fps, well I remember the slowdown on Megadrive games when a lot was going on and also on the N64. 8 Dark Agents vs 4 human players with rocket launchers and N-bombs in Perfect Dark tended to run like treacle. Still was hilarious.

 

[Hardrive]

I remember Halo 1 LAN parties, when we had 16 players with shotguns and instant respawns on Damnation the game lagged pretty badly too

 

[x3sphere]

GTA3 on the PC has a built in limit of 30fps. It's annoying the hell out of me.
Crysis though, as has been said, is playable around the 20~30fps mark.

As for games with lower fps, well I remember the slowdown on Megadrive games when a lot was going on and also on the N64. 8 Dark Agents vs 4 human players with rocket launchers and N-bombs in Perfect Dark tended to run like treacle. Still was hilarious.

Really? I thought were was a way to turn off the frame rate limit in GTA 3. There was in GTA: VC, anyway.

 

[MenaceInc]

Really? I thought were was a way to turn off the frame rate limit in GTA 3. There was in GTA: VC, anyway.

If the frame limiter is off, fraps shows it running at 60fps but there's a goddam stutter..like 2 frames missing every second.

 

[elite]

Crysis runs a lot better than most games at 20 FPS, but even still I can't imagine playing it for any period of time doing so.

What processor are you using?

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66 GHz

 

[elite]

I've just flashed my GPU bios to the new values. Not the max ones, just for safety reasons.

Flashed clocks:
CPU clock: 756 Mhz
Memory clock: 1116 Mhz
Shader clock: 1836 Mhz

 

[Zero]

Looks like you got lucky with your card, I have the 9800 GTX+ which was rebranded to the 250 GTS and can't OC it a bit. But it's a stellar card nonetheless for my needs anyway.

You may also want to give the Crysis CCC config a run, added about 5 frames for me in Crysis on Very High (Lv4).

 

[elite]

What does that config actually do?

 

[Zero]

Tweaks some of the hidden cvars that control the renderer, for maximum efficiency. Didn't notice any IQ degradation from Very High.

Got it from here: inCrysis - Crysis Forums / Cuban Ultima Doom Sword's ...

 

[elite]

Well I knew that before I posted and after my search.

Actually, that one isn't the latest. The latest is 2.21 for Crysis and 3.00 for Warhead.

I tried it, and yeah! Playable FPS on custom graphics (which should be set to very high). Actually, I decreased AA to x4, and the game gained mush FPS. Meh, that toggle really loads the GPU.

 

[Zero]

Recommend all AA should be disabled for a 250. r_edgeAA 2 does a good enough job for me mostly anyways. Crysis also has an odd performance penalty with AA, the performance degradation increases exponentially with resolution, much moreso than in other games.

 

[MenaceInc]

Recommend all AA should be disabled for a 250. r_edgeAA 2 does a good enough job for me mostly anyways. Crysis also has an odd performance penalty with AA, the performance degradation increases exponentially with resolution, much moreso than in other games.

It's not THAT odd considering that the scene is being rendered in 2x/4x/8x the resolution then downsampled to give the anti-aliasing. This means that with higher resolution, the more that the computer needs to render to give the AA effect.

That's just FSAA though, there are other methods of AA but that's the basic one that most applications use.