Hardware & Technical Overclock for Elite: Dangerous

[Kiblams]

I have had many Radeon video cards the past and every time I have over clocked them I have been underwhelmed by the performance increase that they yielded.

I bought a new Radeon 260X the other week and was bored today so I decided to see what it was capable of. This is what I managed:

GPU core clock: from 1050mhz to 1200mhz (~13%)
Gpu memory clock: from 1500mhz to 1800mhz (!)

I run E: D at 2560x1080 and on ultra settings and used the most intensive part of the game as my test; docked inside an orbital station.

Fps without overclock: 31-32
Fps with gpu overclock: 32-33
Fps with both overclocked: 37-38

That's around a 20% increase which is crazy for 10 mins messing with the overdrive settings in CCC! As you can see, the biggest difference was in the memory clocks.

Any who, thought I would share as I was personally astounded, hope it helps someone else.

 

[adoredtv]

Yes the 260X only has a 128-bit memory bus but it was given a lot of shaders. This can make for what is known as a "top heavy" graphics card - lots of raw grunt but lacking in memory bandwidth. A memory overclock is the easiest way to increase performance in that case - that is also why your GPU core clock increase didn't yield much - basically speaking the card is heavily bound by it's bandwidth so increasing the core without increasing the memory doesn't yield much.

 

[Kiblams]

Yes the 260X only has a 128-bit memory bus but it was given a lot of shaders. This can make for what is known as a "top heavy" graphics card - lots of raw grunt but lacking in memory bandwidth. A memory overclock is the easiest way to increase performance in that case - that is also why your GPU core clock increase didn't yield much - basically speaking the card is heavily bound by it's bandwidth so increasing the core without increasing the memory doesn't yield much.

Great info, thanks for posting, I really wasn't expecting 20% from it though!

I just tested the metro 2033 benchmark on very high: 28 before OC up to 33fps after, I'm astounded!

I also did some further testing in Elite Dangerous to get a better picture of the improvement:

Looking at a planet and it's moon
Non OC: 63
OC: 71


Looking at an orbis station 12km out
Non OC: 58
OC: 66

I worked out the average for all 3 scenarios as a 15% increase.

 

[adoredtv]

(1800/1500)*100 = 20% higher so you're getting pretty close to that on the memory overclock yeah. Pretty good, it's a nice card and far better than the 750 Ti on price/performance currently. It also has TrueAudio, which is otherwise only seen on the high-end R9 290 and 290X's so far.

 

[Surfinjo]

I've been thinking about over clocking things on my computer. As well as my Graphics card I can also over clock my CPU. Now that I've read your feedback I think I might look into it.