Overclocking - constant or periodic?

[KnightRid]

Just thought of this. When overclocking, should i let the card ALWAYS run at the OC'd speed, or set it to stock for normal use and oc for just games?

I am wondering for the longetivity of the card, is it better to not have it ocd all the time?

Mike

[Zertz]

Running anything at higher frequency does shorten it's life, but the question is... will you really use that card for the next 5+ years? I don't think so ;)

[DaIceMan]

I only clock mine up for games, and rarely do I even do that. I don't really see that much improvement in frame rates from the overclock and what can I do at 63 fps that I can't do at 60 fps?

[stev]

Knowing that an OC'ing shortens life with electronics, I don't push the OC to any high limits. Rather a mild OC to a medium OC is best with the proper cooling. This way things can run a little peppy without the lose of hardware in time.

[Bio-Hazard]

I only run the max OC (CPU and GPU) for benchmarks, I don't really need all that speed 24/7 for what I do day to day. ...................

A nice cool mid level OC with nice cool temps is good enough for me for day to day usage ............... I like to keep my temps under 40c full load.

[skier]

unless your like me, and what you are using isnt good enough for what you are doing, no matter what(like gaming for several hours with max res and highest settings you can manage(ie, low mostly for me ) )

[martini161]

actually i know that on nvidia cards, when you overclock using riva tuner or ntune you can the frequencys are set at 3 levels, 2d (aka desktop, flash games) low power 3d (old games, those crappy looking 3d flash games) and high performance 3d. i only overclock under the high power 3d ones, which is teh default behavior of riva tuner

[KnightRid]

actually i know that on nvidia cards, when you overclock using riva tuner or ntune you can the frequencys are set at 3 levels, 2d (aka desktop, flash games) low power 3d (old games, those crappy looking 3d flash games) and high performance 3d. i only overclock under the high power 3d ones, which is teh default behavior of riva tuner

Thats what I have set also - so then I am right that the card isnt actually running oc'd until I actually run a 3d app? or is it running at the higher clock for everything?

Mike

[martini161]

nope, not unless you have the same overclock setting in all the catagories. i think the memory still runs at the same rate all the time, but most memory ics are extremely well made and even when overclocked then its more likely that a capacitor will break before a memory ic

[skier]

same thing with ATI, the settings in CCC are for 3D only(i think only in fullscreen maybe) and it uses the cards stock settings for everything non fullscreen/3D(except fanspeeds, that stays at what is set to)