This morning I was test benching one of my rigs, and I thought I'd give my Asus 768MB TOP a whirl and overclock it. I intend to use the card for folding so it really does need to be rock solid stable, and I spent some time researching the kind of overclock I could expect. I was using Asus Smartdoctor, dialed the vCore up to the maximum of 1.1V and started with 800MHz core speed. There was no hint of artifacting and temps remained very low, around 52C load. I decided to crank up to 850, then 900MHz core. I also increased the memory to 4200MHz. By now I was expecting some serious artifacting, but was getting none. I then went crazy and cranked the core to 950MHz, and again, no artifacting. Load temp was 60C. I was struggling to believe these results were accurate, so I decided to get it folding. It acquired a monster 7200 point WU and had already been folding for 30 mins error free when I left it to go out for a meal. I'm wondering if I'm not using SmartDoctor properly because surely this kind of overclock is very unlikely? Also, how long do I need to run Furmark to be confident of absolute stability?
I'd just run numerous tests just to see what you get, it is more than likely you're just very lucky and have a very nice card (the Asus cooler is very good, hence the temps).
Considering 'some" MSI GTX460 1GB HAWK can reach 1GHz overclock, I think it not impossible to reach 950MHz with a very good core, and it sounds like you landed with a very good one indeed I always think when it comes to overclocking the graphic card, good core > PCB design. Some HAWK struggle to overclock beyond 900MHz despite with with the superior PCB design and voltage design, because it is limited by an average core.
Wow, quite an OC! It may be worth running the Heaven Benchmark for a couple of hours to watch for any artifacting - it seems particularly sensitive to them. Watch for sudden HDR style blue/red flashes.
GPU-z will show voltages in the monitoring/sensors section. Don't use furmark, use Crysis:warhead on the first snow level. Kill the first 3 nanosuit guys, jump on on the rock to the right of the hovercraft and look up so you see a little bit of ground, a bit of hill on your right, and the towering stormy mountain thing making up most of the scene. turn your mouse over so the cursor wont move and leave for 2 hours. Come back and woosh through the level on easy (so its less of a chore). If it doesnt crash you have rock hard stability. Failing that just leave it folding. Ive heard of alot of people just use folding to test overclocks for gaming.
