As you may know, I run a low spec setup because its’ more cost effective
for me (and it was a gift from my sister). I only buy brand new tech once
I know I really need it; for example, guitars. I can’t really get away with
buying a cheap version of a SG anymore because I can tell the quality
difference.
As well, the PC is so powerful that it’s actually pretty fun trying to
wring out as much power as you can out of it.
For my current PC, my budget has always been under a $100 GPU. I’ve been
lucky enough to grab some low profile ones so I didn’t have to do any
heavy modifications on the PC setup. I started off with a 710 and upgraded
to a 730. With that said, this was when we were in a GPU shortage so I
wasn’t effectively buying – just wanted to have a little more oomph.
Not OC’ed, the 730 initial stats were core running on 800MHZ w/ the VRAM
running around 800MHZ at full core usage, heat temp around 50C.
So I ended up deciding to overclock the GPU because, well its fun and
interesting.
For overclocking software, I tried using GPU Tweak III first but as soon
as I set the setting to “OC”, and it was only a slight bump on the core
MHZ – my computer felt sluggish and the performance, especially for EFT
was down – more stutters, lag, etc.
I then decided to use MSI Afterburner and after watching a Youtube video
on how to do it. It was suggested to bump the sliders of the core mhz field
first, slowly, until the benchmark breaks – then work on memory clock mhz
till the benchmark breaks. Core Voltage, the video suggested, is not worth
the hassle of overclocking. The video also suggested to set the Power and
Fan Speed sliders to the max but since this GPU is not build like that (no
fan, just heat dispenser and since its a low profile – power I guess is
kinda capped).
For heat dispersion, if needed to, I have an external OC fan that I turn on
to help.
So for my settings, Core MHZ is set to +175 and Core Clock MHZ is set to
+75 which is like 1000Mhz/850Mhz when engaged. For the benchmark, I ran it
on the games I normally like to play; Escape from Tarkov, Rust, and CSGO –
obviously, I am running these games on the lowest setting possible, without
low spec graphics mods, just vanilla settings.
For EFT; in the Factory map (which is the lowest resource hogging map), I
get around 40-60+ FPS except when there’s a heavy firefight, in which I
didn’t track the FPS because…. well I was busy fighting them off. For
customs, a steady 30+ FPS. (side note: always weird that this game responds
better to .50 downscale instead of .75 or even off)
For Rust; 40 to 70.
For CSGO, 60 to 100. Frames drop when I am in a fire fight but not as bad as
before when the GPU was overclocked. side note: I wish I can overclock my RAM
but Dell propriety BIOS….. sadge
Anyways, just that little overclock helped my games run better. I can’t wait
to try fighting games like Tekken and see how they fare.