The day I learned how heavy FurMark is

[Tomi1337]

So, at this moment I'm running 2 Asus Direct Cu II TOP 560 Ti's.

If I remember right, I'm using the stock voltage settings.

Other clocks are 966/1932/4400.

Even though I have played many games, like Battlefield 3, Skyrim, and other games that are really depentant of my GPU(s), My heat has NEVER got up to 70 while gaming. And it's always been really stable, no artifacts on the screen or anything like that. (I monitor my temperatures using 2 monitors).

Yesterday I tought of maybe trying to push the limits of my 560 Ti's.

But before actually changing the voltage settings, and pushing the clocks even further I downloaded FurMark, and did a burn-in test at 1920 x 1080.

In 3 minutes my temperatures got almost up to 90! I'm pretty sure I would have hit 100c, but then OpenGL crashed, and the program closed. Definitely not going to overclock even a bit more..

 

[mihapiha]

I think overclocking the graphic card is not such a bad thing, but I disagree with people doing this for 24/7 usage. Too many of my graphic cards blew up in my face. Now I bench with overclocked cards, but use the stock card for 24/7. This is much healthier. Are you sure that these games you play are not playable with your card running stock? It's really risky if the temperatures got that high just because of furmark. You never know what else could cause your graphic card to get this hot. It may be just a really hot day where you live or one fan failing, and you'd loose your graphic card because of it. I don't think it's worth the risk...

 

[Tomi1337]

Are you sure that these games you play are not playable with your card running stock? It's really risky if the temperatures got that high just because of furmark. You never know what else could cause your graphic card to get this hot. It may be just a really hot day where you live or one fan failing, and you'd loose your graphic card because of it. I don't think it's worth the risk...

Well. I play Battlefield 3 with Ultra/High settings, and it does get pretty laggy sometimes, so the overclock really helps reducing the lag spikes. And also Skyrim lagged even more than Bf3, since it sucks when it comes to SLI. I sometimes dropped down to 30 fps in towns etc, so it definitely helps out.. But otherwise.. It wouldn't hurt that much to drop the clocks a bit. But I really enjoy having a overclocked setup, so I won't do anything to it at this moment. Maybe in the future.

 

[mihapiha]

I totally understand. My experiences just made really cautious. You have to understand that I had 3-way SLI GTX480s and I had to RMA 5 times. And they didn't overheat or anything, because I water cooled them. It's just so annoying. The only thing I overclock now is the CPU. And I overclock the crap out of it

 

[Tomi1337]

I totally understand. My experiences just made really cautious. You have to understand that I had 3-way SLI GTX480s and I had to RMA 5 times. And they didn't overheat or anything, because I water cooled them. It's just so annoying. The only thing I overclock now is the CPU. And I overclock the crap out of it

Heh. I'm getting Hyper 212 EVO Cpu cooler next week, upping my I5 2500K to 4.5Ghz At this moment going 4.1Ghz stable with the stock cooler.

 

[Damien c]

Furmark if I remember correctly is not advised to be used by most companies because it has something that disables the power regulators on most card's, causing them to shove more power through the gpu core than is required which is why I have not used it on my, GTX 680.

I normally run MSI Kombuster, and then also 3dmark and Heaven to see how it is and what the temp's get to.

I have also found that 3dmark will run with my card at 1 speed but heaven won't and even bumping up the voltages it still won't run it at that speed, so I just back it off till the point that it will run and leave it there for when I need the extra grunt.

 

[Tomi1337]

Furmark if I remember correctly is not advised to be used by most companies because it has something that disables the power regulators on most card's, causing them to shove more power through the gpu core than is required which is why I have not used it on my, GTX 680.

I normally run MSI Kombuster, and then also 3dmark and Heaven to see how it is and what the temp's get to.

I have also found that 3dmark will run with my card at 1 speed but heaven won't and even bumping up the voltages it still won't run it at that speed, so I just back it off till the point that it will run and leave it there for when I need the extra grunt.

I see. I was really surprised my self too, when the heat jumped up to 90. I've run 3Dmark, and other stuff like this and never got up to 70 if I remember right.

 

[Carl A]

I killed a 460 with furmark. Granted it was heavily oc'd but it was fine with every other benching prog out there. Never again ..... I believe the info on volt regulation and also believe in stress uapps that represent real-life usage unlike Furmark & Prime

 

[Master&Puppet]

Yea furmark is getting a bit of a reputation. Best to use something else really.

As for overclocking - one of the things I use in MSI afterburner is the profiles. I never select the "overclock at start up button". I just select the OC profile when I need it and put it back to stock (or even an underclocked profile) for everyday use.

 

[KING_OF_SAND]

Furmark is not a benching tool. It's a burn test tool designed to test TDP.