What programs to use when stress-testing overclocked GPUs?

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fantanode

Weaksauce
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Other than benchmarking stuff like 3DMark06 and game benchmarks.

I know about ATI Tool (doesn't even work with Nvidia cards?) but I think you need to look for artifacts in that one, isn't there something like the CPU stress tests where you can just leave the on for hours and come back later to see if their are any errors?
 
i just used ATI tool to artifact test and called it good. also gaming for several hours.
 
Porter_ said:
i just used ATI tool to artifact test and called it good. also gaming for several hours.
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How long do you run ATI tool for? I mean if there are no artifacts after, say for example 5 minutes, do you stop or go on for 2 hours or even more?
 
You want to get to a stable temp and then run for at least a couple of hours to verify that it's stable...
 
I have yet to find a benchy that will give me a true stabilty test compared to running a good ol' Source game like HL2E2. I ran ATi tool and others for over an hour without issues on my 8800GTX, but as soon as I played 5 minutes of HL2E2, I was locking up. Had to take my core clock down quite a few notches to get stable.

The current benchies just can't seem to simulate real-world gaming.
 
OK I just installed ATI Tool, it seems there's some kernel mode driver problem but I don't need it to overclock (will be using RivaTuner) so that's not a problem.

I can launch the '3D' view and use the 'Scan for Artifacts' feature. When I need to test an overclock do I just launch the 3D view or do the scan for artifacts thing? Or both? Sorry for asking so many stupid questions, I haven't done this before, not that it's not obvious. :p
 
Scan for artifacts. I usually have Rivatuner's hardware monitor up also to watch the temps. Rthdribl is also good at stressing the card.
 
Real Time High Dynamic Range Image Based Lighting For The Win.

I use that if I want to test my gpu overnight, if I try to do it with 3d06, catalyst will just give me a vpu error within a few hours too (or it used too).
 
^eMpTy^ said:
You want to get to a stable temp and then run for at least a couple of hours to verify that it's stable...
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OK, sorry to bump this thread, but I had to comment on this after a 4/5 hour ATI Tool + Rthdribl simultaneously stressing my card resulted in some errors. 2 hours is not even close to enough apparently. :eek:

I'm going to do a 12 hour run just like I did with Prime95 for my PC, and then another 12 hours on Memtest.

It looks like my final clocks won't really be that much higher than the original one. Memory is the same, shaders are at 1631 instead of 1566 and core is at 704 instead of 625. I reduced them by 2/3 Riva Tuner 'steps' so I'm guessing the 12 hour run will be a success. I'm just disappointed my card doesn't go faster than this, and I don't want to do a volt mode of any sort.

Then again overclocking really didn't make much of a difference looking at the gaming benchmark I did - Crysis. I overclocked both CPU and GPU and lowered memory timings and got the same results, LOL. 3DMark06/PCMark05 scores did go up though but that's not a big deal, all of this is being done to get better performance on games and not synthetic benchmarks.
 
UT3 so far is the best test I've done... only tried using atitool rthdrbl(or whatever) and 3dmark. I atitool and overnight and literally I got up in the morning and saw it kept runing and opened ut3 benchmark loop to run it during the day while i was at work... it locked up in ~10 seconds.

Anyways I don't think there is one surefire test... like Prime95 on CPUs.

I wonder with Nvidia's CUDA developments as of late eventually someone will end up writing a stress utility. A stress type program using CUDA could also incorperate some sort of error checking.
 
I agree with everything else that's been suggested...ATI Tool, rthdribl, 3DMark etc. are all good ways to stress a GPU. Also alot of game testing as well...if you can game for hours on end without issue, chances are your overclock is pretty stable and most likely won't crash on you. Though if you want to be sure you're 100% stable, doing something like scanning for artifacts in ATI Tool overnight would be your best method.
 
ATITools for 1 hour set with artifact testing slider all the way to LEFT side

Then run Crysis for at least 1 hour. This 2 punch combo is by far the most stressful on the vid card that I've seen so far. I find 3dmark2006 always passes unless the GPU has very obvious problems.
 
I ran rthdribl full screen with the ATITool "Scan For Artifacts" running in the foreground...The monitoring window showed I was stuck at 100%. Let this go for three hours, no errors, good to go. :)
 
For me World in Conflict is always able to wipe the smile off my face when it comes to overclocks. Something that is rock solid stable in everything else always seems to come crashing down in WiC.
 
Has there ever been an unstable factory overclock btw?

I'm curious of EVGA for example has problems with their SSC cards.
 
fantanode said:
Has there ever been an unstable factory overclock btw?

I'm curious of EVGA for example has problems with their SSC cards.
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Theirs always unstable factory overclocks, thats why they provide life time warranties sometimes with cross shipping.
 
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