Safe voltage for overclocking Asus 6950 directcuII

I have an Asus 6950 directcuII graphic card in my computer. I tried overclocking it to get a better performance out of it. But I failed as I couldn’t find the proper voltage at which it becomes stable. I have managed to get 930 core and 1325 memory clocks on the stock voltage of 1.1v. I tried setting the voltage in smartdoctor and I reached the core of value 980 with total voltage of 1.8 V. I had to stop at his level because the graphic card losing its stability. Can someone suggest me some way to get the graphic card overclocked while maintaining its stability?

I know this problem and it happens because of the graphic card being overheated. Try using 3D Mark Vantages at 975 MHz at 1.225 V. At this rate the temperature will rise up to 70 degree Celsius. So in this case, overheating becomes a big issue. To achieve good results you must provide good voltage. After providing a good amount of voltage, the graphic card will start generating a large amount of heat. To reduce this generated heat, one must provide a good airflow to the graphic card. With this good airflow, all the hot air will be released into the environment resulting into cooling of your system.

Don’t be afraid to push the voltage a lit further. I know it will cost you more voltage and stability might be a problem, but you have to try it. If you are having more than one graphic card connected together using the SLI technology, ten you will need to have heatsinks in your CPU to cool the both graphic cards. Also providing too much power will kill the cores. So you must also control the power supply so that it doesn’t become too large or too less. If too much voltage is provided, overheating may happen but you will get a stable processor. Another disadvantage will be that, it might reduce the life span of the processor.

You do not need to increase the voltage directly to the higher values. Instead you can try increasing it gradually. You can increase the voltage to add 1 GHz per minute to the total processor speed. But again this will need you to have great control over the stability. So I suggest that instead of increasing 1 GHz at every minute, try increasing 0.1 GHz every 30 seconds. This will cost you too much time but it will guarantee you stability of the graphic card. Overclocking a graphic card is more rigorous and tiresome process than overclocking of a main processor. You need to have patience and will to keep trying if you fail.

For overclocking a graphic car, follow these steps,
1) Start adding the processor speed to the graphic card in values of 10 MHz.
2) At one point the graphic card will become unstable. You have to quickly start adding voltage to avoid it from crashing.
3) Don’t expect or try to achieve the processor speed quickly. It might overheat the graphic card and result in damage.
4) Stress the graphic card using software like 3D Mark and keep a note in changes of temperature.
5) Keep the stress high until the temperature is also high.
6) Once the temperature reaches a peak, go on reducing the voltage gradually.

If you want to know where to stop, that is, at which voltage you should stop before your graphic is damaged. Then the whole process depends on the temperature of the cores. You must have enough cooling system that will cool your cores when needed. As you have mentioned in your question that your graphic card is of DirectCU version, it is a pretty high end graphic card. So you will need to have a good cooling system like water coolers or heatsink of large size. If proper cooling is not provided, the core might burn and the graphic card will become useless.

DirectCU graphic card are high end and generally need a good amount of voltage to be overclocked. Not just voltage, but ample amount of clocks is to be provided. This results in generation of high amount of heat. This heat can rise up to temperature of 88 degree Celsius even at medium voltage and low clock speed. To eliminate this heat, one generally needs to keep the side panel of CPU open all the time. Also the ambient temperature needs to be less when working on overclocking of these graphic cards. At full load the temperature of graphic card can go as high as 100 degree Celsius. So I suggest that you have an Air cooler or air conditioner available and working on low temperature in the room you are working in.

For better results while overclocking, I prefer overclocking the memory core first and then go for complete graphic card. This gives a better control as the memory cores are already overclocked. So now one can concentrate only on overclocking of graphic card. All the efforts required to overclock graphic card along with memory cores is reduced. Also having the memory cores overclocked gives enough head room for overclocking of graphic card and its other components. You can also try artifacting the graphic card. This will give smoother results when overclocking.

First thing that you should be aware of is that overclocking process of the graphic card is not similar to overclocking of CPU processor. A CPU processor has much more many parts for its support, so it can bear heavy voltages without losing its stability. SO never expect a graphic card to be stable at same voltage values as that of CPU processor. Also the techniques differ vary widely. SO never attempt to use the techniques you use in overclocking of CPU in overclocking of graphic card.