Are you willing to upgrade or plan on Overclocking Graphics Card? Make these sacrifices for a marginal improvement in frame rate.
Is the trouble and risks of overclocking worth it to reach peak graphics card performance? In my own experience using a GeForce RTX 4090, I would argue that it’s not. Let’s delve into why this is.
Flickering of the Screen
The problem of screen flickering arises when your GPU overclock is unstable, typically due to insufficient voltage supplied to the graphics card. This can cause instability in clock speed retention.
To prevent increased power consumption and temperature, many individuals opt to overclock without boosting voltage. However, this decision jeopardizes the dependability of your graphics card as it may cause game stuttering or screen flickering during navigation on Windows.
There are various methods to address screen flickering on Windows, but if it occurs after an overclocking attempt, the only solutions would be increasing your GPU voltage or resetting the clocks back to their original settings.
Crashes During Gaming Sessions at Intervals
Your preferred games could experience crashing in addition to screen flickering when you have overclocked your GPU, particularly in those that rely heavily on the graphics processing unit. This indicates an unstable overclock and should not be ignored.
As a result, you will have to either raise the voltage on your GPU or decrease both core and memory clocks until crashes become no longer an issue.
If you’ve overclocked your CPU or RAM, there’s a chance that game crashes may occur. For this reason, it is crucial to conduct safe stress tests on your overclocked GPU, CPU and RAM prior to indulging in games.
Not everyone is cut out for overclocking. It’s only worthwhile if you absolutely require that extra boost in performance and believe it would have a discernible impact on the games you enjoy most. Otherwise, it simply isn’t worth undertaking given all of the potential difficulties involved.
Increased Operating Temperature
Increasing the voltage during overclocking also results in elevated heat dissipation. In essence, providing more voltage causes your graphics card to generate a greater amount of heat which is undesirable since overheating can damage it.
If you possess a triple-fan GPU accompanied by large heatsinks or have opted for liquid-cooling, this won’t pose as a significant problem. In my case, I possess an RTX 4090 AIO unit that has been liquid-cooled and comes with a sizeable 360mm radiator; therefore, this holds the least concern for me personally.
Overclocking your graphics card can significantly reduce its lifespan, particularly if it frequently runs hot. Consequently, I advise against overclocking it if you intend to use the same card for an extended period of time.
Power consumption has risen.
Regardless of whether you safely overclock your graphics card, an increase in power usage is a certain outcome. This occurs because more voltage must typically be supplied to the graphics card to achieve greater performance levels.
While it is possible to increase the core and memory clocks of your graphics card without increasing its voltage, there are several drawbacks that come with this approach. These include stability issues which we will discuss shortly.
By adjusting the voltage or power limit slider in a GPU overclocking tool such as MSI Afterburner, your graphics card pulls more electricity from the socket to deliver enhanced performance.
Based on my personal experience using the RTX 4090, overclocking resulted in a minimal frame rate improvement of only 2-5 percent while increasing energy consumption by an alarming margin of 15-30 percent across multiple games.
As such, I believe that the additional expense associated with increased electricity usage outweighs any potential benefits and do not consider it to be worthwhile.
