Always been wary of going too far with GPU O/C, life's too short to push the edges on this. I've never been really sure what I had was comfortably in the "safe" zone, everyones setup is slightly different, so there is a limit to "emulating" other setups. Anyway, came across a full O/C routine using a 275GTX using RivaTuner and Furmark. Hit the spot for me. It was at :

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-275-overclock-guide/

I started at 774/1927/2200 and immediately - once the card warmed up on the full stress test - had small, infrequent (one blip every 2 mins or so), but still there, artifacts.

I went through the whole routine as recommended there, and ended up with a clean test screen, after a 15 min stress test to be sure, at 761/1907/2296, which interestingly showed a slight Furmark increase, and two degrees lower at full stress test running at 83degrees. I backed off 10Mhz on each once I reckon I had hit a clean test.

Standard temp for me when GPUGRID crunching is 63 degrees (I have a mid tower and 4 disk RAID in there, so its going to be slightly higher than "expected").

Now a happy bunny - I think rofl:)

Any other experiences and setup levels would be welcomed for comparison. Anyone who has not been to Guru3D, I recommend them without reservation, they are very good, and have an attached Forum populated by some serious hardware guys. I have depended on them for years. No doubt there are "better" ones around, usually are in these things, but you could do worse than keep them on the favourites list.

Lets not turn this into a competition for highest card settings, its safe O/C I, and I suspect most people, am interested in.

My card is a 9800GTX+

Regards
Zy

He does mention the fact that they wrote Rivatuner and therefore recommend's it, but not known why he does not specifically mention the steps. I usually use it, however I found when I updated to the latest driver 185.85, Rivatuner claimed "No supported drivers detected for this display adapter" - presumably because it was so recent - and did not give any options to O/C, disabling the Driver settings section, only giving those for the display settings.

I therefore used ASUS Smartdoctor to actually O/C. The settings I showed are a read from ASUS smartdoctor. I have found it will change the input value by a few Mhz presumably to some kind of "step" as you mentioned for Rivatuner, but it appears to do it in steps of 2-4 Mhz in terms of what you actually see.

Regards
Zy

Cant do it - Rivatuner does not give me access claiming it does not recognise the driver. I hear what you are saying, and its possible that ASUS smartdocter is telling "porky-pies", and in fact does only step the amounts you mentioned, not in 2-4Mhz steps. I have GPU-Z, I'll have a look and see what its claiming.

If there is a way to "force" Rivatuner to see 185.85 I'm all ears. Not tried resinstalling it yet

Regards
Zy

Tried GPU-Z, it reports:

GPU Clock: 761/1148/1907 (same as smartdoctor)
Default Clock: 740/1100/1836

I also tried it on 1930 in ASUS Smartdoctor as you asked, GPU-Z instantly changed to 1930 without refresh. I Reverted back to the original 1907 setting I had.

Regards
Zy

No, cant get at it, probably the new driver. Its fair enough, would be kind of hairy operating on a driver they havent spec'd or tested I guess - we all want exciting lives from time to time, but thats probably too exciting for them rofl :)

Regards
Zy

EVGA Precision is a very nice OCing tool for members of the green team. I've been quite pleased with it.

No patch needed for my PNY or BFG 260 216 cards.

Thanks for all the information on the EVGA Precision alternative to RivaTuner, and the Furmark program for testing stability! I now feel much better that I can overclock my GTX260 a bit and not produce bad science results!

Actually, does anyone know if GPUGrid is sensitive enough to detect too intense overclocking?

Thanks.
____________

You should be able to run games a higher clocks than GPU-Grid, as they tolerate more errors before they crash.

If there is a way to "force" Rivatuner to see 185.85 I'm all ears