How To Overclock Your GPU

Overclocking your GPU doesn't have to be hard. In fact, it's really easy. Here's the easiest guide on how to overclock your GPU for maximum performance.

If you have ever heard of and grasped the concept of overclocking, you likely want to learn exactly how to overclock your GPU. This article will clarify the process and assist you in understanding how it can be beneficial and what you should anticipate.

It goes without saying that the key reason for overclocking your GPU is to boost your PC’s performance.

Your reasons for wanting to try overclocking might vary. Your card might be getting outdated and unable to run modern games at the same level as before. You might simply want to squeeze in a few extra frames to gain a competitive edge in online games.

Although you might have come to this article already grasping what overclocking is, it can’t hurt to reiterate that information.

Table of ContentsShow

What Is Overclocking?

Overclocking
Overclocking increases the performance of your hardware

Before understanding overclocking, you should be aware of exactly how the graphics card operates. It is essentially a smaller-scale computer with its own processor and RAM (here named VRAM).

As with the CPU and RAM, the GPU and VRAM have their own clock speeds, which determine how rapidly they can perform operations.

Each of these clocks is provided with certain “factory” settings, guaranteed to be safe by the manufacturer. In theory, you won’t have any issues with these default settings.

The process of overclocking calls for the user to manually modify these clocks and attempt to make their hardware run faster. If you’re wondering, the opposite process (underclocking) consists of manually lowering the clock to reduce temperatures inside the enclosure.

How Much Can The GPU Overclock Affect Performance?

Gaming PC

It’s perfectly reasonable to want to know how substantially your GPU’s performance can actually improve if you decide to overclock it.

The answer to this question isn’t as simple as we would like. It largely depends on how much you’re willing to push your GPU. Other key components include having a dependable PSU and sufficient cooling in place in order to maintain the stability of the GPU because overclocking can disturb that balance.

It simply isn’t sensible to expect a 50% increase in performance, but in most cases (and if you do things the proper way), you can enjoy a substantial 10-20% boost.

What’s Necessary Before You Overclock Your GPU

In the days when the concept of overclocking was still new, there was a certain mystique surrounding it. Many PC users might have been puzzled if they witnessed it. Today, the process has become extremely effective and uncomplicated, so there isn’t much preparation required. In fact, you might not even need to open your PC case.

We still recommend doing so simply to ensure that the cables inside haven’t moved (provided you took care of cable management in the first place) and that they aren’t blocking the atmosphere from flowing freely through the case. Make sure the graphics card can “breathe”, as its fans will need to cool even more than before.

Tools

msi afterburner screenshot
MSI Afterburner

As mentioned earlier, the entire overclocking process has evolved and can now be done without ever needing to access BIOS. You only need a few complementary simple Windows tools, and you’re good to go.

One of the key components to overclocking is benchmarking. When you think about it, it makes sense that you would need a benchmarking tool to compare the situation before and after the overclocking process.

Related:The Best GPU Benchmarking Software For 2023

Although, for the most part, MSI Afterburner would be a suitable tool for this job, we recommend using something else such as 3DMark or Unigine Heaven. In fact, ideally, you should use both. This will allow you to have insights from multiple perspectives.

heaven unigine screenshot

To perform the actual overclocking, we recommend using MSI Afterburner. Don’t be discouraged by the MSI branding; it can be used on any graphics card, founders edition, and AIB alike.

The GPU Overclocking Process

Although the process is relatively uncomplicated, there could be some unexpected bumps along the way, and we’ll try our best to help you navigate past them.

Step 1 – Benchmarking

To find out the current condition of your system and its performance capacity, it is crucial to conduct a benchmarking test prior to commencing the overclocking process.

Ideally, you should run any of the previously mentioned benchmarking tools and take note of the effectiveness, but you should also run the stress test inside the game you want to play.

This will obviously be harder to measure accurately if there’s no built-in benchmarking tool within the game. Fortunately, a lot of modern AAA games pay attention to this detail and have included this kind of tool. Here are some examples: Red Dead Redemption 2, Borderlands 3, Horizon Zero Dawn, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and many others.

Tomb Raider Benchmark
The built-in benchmark in Shadow of the Tomb Raider

After you have run all these tests, either jot down the results or take a screenshot. This is crucial if you want to compare the performance boost you receive when you overclock your GPU.

Step 2 – Overclocking

The primary event. Perhaps it’s best not to look at it that way. In truth, you might need to repeat the process multiple times to achieve optimal results.

Regardless, these are the actions you must take to witness any minor performance differences. Keep in mind to proceed carefully; this can be a delicate procedure, and there is no urgency. While you can search online for the best clocks for your GPU, it doesn’t guarantee identical outcomes for your setup.

Boosting The Core Clock

You should first enhance your core clock. We suggest doing this at around a 5-10% increase. Unfortunately, if you’re using MSI Afterburner, you won’t be able to adjust the clock by percentages and will instead need to use your own mathematical skills (or Google) and calculate a 5-10% boost based on the base clock.

If you want to be extra cautious, upping the clock by just 5% is almost guaranteed to maintain GPU stability, but this is unlikely to produce any perceptible results.

Upping The Memory Clock

As you might already know, the overclocking process isn’t exclusive to the graphics card; the CPU is often also subjected to substantial overclocking. However, unlike the CPU, the GPU won’t have the same considerable results simply by overclocking the core.

The memory clock is a vital component for transferring stored data rapidly to and from memory and enjoying better performances from your graphics card.

Much like the core clock, we recommend raising the memory clock in modest increments to stay on the safe side.

Fine Tuning

There is an interesting school of thought that argues that running a looping benchmark might be the simplest way to see how much you’re improving the performance of your card and understand its limitations. The same logic could be applied to the core boosting part of the overclocking process.

This isn’t a poor approach at all. It’s quite a good solution if you’re able to spot any artifacts, such as stray pixels or other visual irregularities.

GPU artifacts
GPU artifacts with an unstable overclock

In any case, you will eventually reach a limit that will probably make itself known in the form of a Windows crash or restart. This is not ideal, but it’s also nothing to panic about.

When that happens, you will have discovered your limit.

After this step, you should return to your overclocking tool and decrease whichever setting you modified last. If you enhance the core clock by 25Mhz, reducing it by that amount should resolve it. Otherwise, you will encounter the same freezing and rebooting issues repeatedly.

Increasing The Power Limit

Once you’ve pushed all the settings as far as you can, there is still something that can help you enhance the performance. We’re talking about increasing the power threshold.

This helps by giving your graphics card extra power and the ability to overcome its previously set limits.

Giving your graphics card more juice will be noticeable when you try to run a demanding game and hear the sound growing louder inside the case. Don’t worry, that sound is simply the fans working harder.

Step 4 – Fine Tuning

Despite mentioning fine-tuning in the preceding step, this is separate. There, you had to progressively increase the core and memory clock speeds to get the optimal result out of the entire overclocking process.

However, it’s crucial to note that this stage is optional.

This means that, even if you decide to skip it, you will still have gained something from the GPU overclocking process. This step is vital if you’re looking to get the maximum possible results. We will continue right where we left off, and that’s by increasing the power limit.

Essentially, this step provides another opportunity to repeat the same process. However, we are responsible for telling you that there isn’t much space left for further overclocking. When you increase the power limit to its maximum, you won’t be able to increase core and memory clocks by as much as you did in the previous stage.

This step is hopefully where your patience will shine through. We know that the process leading up to this has probably been lengthy. If you’re inexperienced, it might also have been a little daunting. However, if you persist now, you won’t have to tweak any more, and you should get the best possible performance from your GPU.

Step 5 – Benchmarking Again

This final step isn’t necessary for the GPU overclocking process, but it’s crucial to give you a good overview of the results. This will show you how much you have managed to improve your GPU’s performance.

It’s crucial that you use the same benchmarking tool that you used to measure the initial performance. Run the test multiple times to confirm, then compare the numbers with the original ones.

Once you have the numbers, you can precisely gauge how much you have improved your GPU’s performance. Hopefully, it’s now at an acceptable level, and you can game freely to your heart’s content.

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Aleksandar Cosic

Alex is a Computer Science student and a former game designer. That has enabled him to develop skills in critical thinking and fair analysis. As a CS student, Aleksandar has very in-depth technical knowledge about computers, and he also likes to stay current with new technologies.