Cannot OC a GTX550TI, not even a bit. Why?

[Swapnil]

Disclaimer: Everything discussed here in this post is out of pure curiosity and educational purposes. If you wish to discuss the benefits of overclocking a GTX550 TI in 2016 instead of buying a new card, please skip that thought.


In my quest of staying 5 years behind in technology, I have obtained an MSI N550GTX-TI Cyclone II OC (blah blah blah...) from UCC after following @VANGUARD bro's post. Yesterday I tried to OC it, to see how much can I go, just out of curiosity. But I cannot OC it even a little bit. If I increase the core clock just 5 MHz to 955 MHz (from it's factory OC 950 MHz) it starts racking up error's on OCCT's GPU test with Error Check, and display driver crashes within 5 minutes in any game. The more interesting thing is even if I increase the core voltage (tried up to max 1.15v from it's stock 1.062v) it still behaves the same.

Is there something that I'm doing wrong here? A quick google shows me a lot of people going well above 1000MHz with this card. Even if the chip I got is the worst cherry picked one, if it is able to run stable at 950MHz at 1.062v it should OC at least 5 MHz with a 88mv voltage boost, right?

[Set]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/31...3-overclocking check the post by jitpublisher it might help you

[Swapnil]

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/31...3-overclocking check the post by jitpublisher it might help you

I did that exactly the same. But I fail at the first step, increasing the core clocks. He said to increase it in 20-25 MHz steps, mine fails at just 5 MHz. But I am actually using Afterburner, not RivaTuner. Latest version of afterburner has core and shader clocks locked together by default. I'll give RivaTuner a shot later.

[Sybaris Caesar]

I did that exactly the same. But I fail at the first step, increasing the core clocks. He said to increase it in 20-25 MHz steps, mine fails at just 5 MHz. But I am actually using Afterburner, not RivaTuner. Latest version of afterburner has core and shader clocks locked together by default. I'll give RivaTuner a shot later.

Afterburner is re-skinned and some feature-packed RivaTuner. Every popular overclocking tool is if I recall.

[VANGUARD]

Disclaimer: Everything discussed here in this post is out of pure curiosity and educational purposes. If you wish to discuss the benefits of overclocking a GTX550 TI in 2016 instead of buying a new card, please skip that thought.


In my quest of staying 5 years behind in technology, I have obtained an MSI N550GTX-TI Cyclone II OC (blah blah blah...) from UCC after following @VANGUARD bro's post. Yesterday I tried to OC it, to see how much can I go, just out of curiosity. But I cannot OC it even a little bit. If I increase the core clock just 5 MHz to 955 MHz (from it's factory OC 950 MHz) it starts racking up error's on OCCT's GPU test with Error Check, and display driver crashes within 5 minutes in any game. The more interesting thing is even if I increase the core voltage (tried up to max 1.15v from it's stock 1.062v) it still behaves the same.

Is there something that I'm doing wrong here? A quick google shows me a lot of people going well above 1000MHz with this card. Even if the chip I got is the worst cherry picked one, if it is able to run stable at 950MHz at 1.062v it should OC at least 5 MHz with a 88mv voltage boost, right?

If you ruin the card while experimenting, you wont get any warranty. It only had checking warranty. Keep that in mind. Happy Overclocking!

[Swapnil]

If you ruin the card while experimenting, you wont get any warranty. It only had checking warranty. Keep that in mind. Happy Overclocking!

I know. I know.

[Swapnil]

I have figured it out. This card craps itself as soon as it's temperature crosses 79° C. That's why I thought the OCs are unstable. Now I realized it does that in stock clocks too, and also when underclocked. If the temps are kept in check it goes up to 970 MHz with stock voltage, higher with a bit of voltage bump.

Now just one mystery, when the OC fails, I never saw any artifact or discoloration, nothing, just the OCCT crashes and a message pops up about display driver crashed and recovered. I wonder if some other version of the driver would be more stable. But I'll rest it at that, and go back to working on something that will actually pay money.