# Overclocking the GTX 860M (Maxwell)



## MoeMoelol

Hello

This is my first post, so I'm not sure where to post this.. So feel free to move it to another forum.
To the topic, have anyone tried overclocking this card? Since this card is Maxwell based, I think it has a good potential when it comes to overclocking.
Obviously I'm a noob at overclocking lol, but I've done an overclock before to a GT 740m, done it with MSI afterburner, didn't mess with the bios or voltage, just raised the core clock by 135 and the memory clock by 240.
It gave me a nice boost in some games, with a slight difference in temps and it was very stable.
Wonder if I can do that same overclok with the GTX 860m or is it too high? I have no idea so if anyway could help me I would be thankful.

P.S excuse my English as its not my native language..


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## DrClaw

i wouldnt overclock anything todo with laptops. they run too hot. you could try just overclock the core like 10 points but i would very very careful.

it might increase a few degrees. I dont use laptops at all so im not entirely sure but i know friends with laptops that use external fans to keep their laptops cool during gaming.

i hate skype calls with them, lousy noise.

anyway get yourself msi afterburner, dont install the beta because its gonna expire, or use your nvidia thing, theres probably an nvidia overclock tool there i dunno, i havent used nvidia card in awhile.

the rules are simple. you overclock core by increments of 5-10 points. you choose your minimum overclocking value and you have to run benchmarking tools like unigine valley 1.0

while benching, or stressing your system, you must lookout for graphical anomalies, artifacts, *things that shouldnt be there*
this is how you determine how far you can overclock. and do full test for each increment until you get a black screen. Thats when you know you have reached the tipping point.

now either you can increase core voltage or pull back on the core clock. Because you have a laptop i wouldnt even stress it to the point of reaching a blackscreen.
but this is how overclocking is done.

memory clocks i forget, i think memory clock can go higher than core without touching the core voltage too much.

Because you use a laptop, you risk cooking everything to death. Even if it works for a few hours i wouldnt overclock too high
i honestly cant tell you how high, You have to analyze how your temperatures are affected during a gaming session (2-4 hours). thats enough to count in the heat buildup. And make sure you play the most demanding game that your system can handle. Bf4 is good, or arma 3. or modded skyrim. thats all i like to play.

then you have to decide what temperatures you're comfortable with. high 60s? high 70s? 80s?
dont forget to monitor your vrm 1 and 2 temperatures.

use gpu-z to do all the fancy heat inspection. So like i said, see how much more your temps go up when moving core clock by 5 increments, then 10.

Personally i like to keep things under 75C. cooler is better.
I seen a long term study on hard drives operating 20-30 C, then 40-50 C, then 60 and beyond.

they found that 40-50 is the best. not too cool, not too hot. best longevity. Now were talking about gpus and 40-50C is quite uncommon. oh well


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## MoeMoelol

Thanks DrClaw for the reply and the useful information.

I don't think heating is that much of a problem with my laptop, the GPU usually stays at 65 c with maximum load (thanks to the Maxwell architecture) , usually laptops run in the 80's or a bit less, and often more.. hell, my Lenovo was running at 98 c for the GPU and it is still alive and fine







, and with the overclock I did the temps were slightly different, not more than 4 degrees..

Also I only OC with demanding games, and when I do I lock the framerate at 35, so the GPU would cool down at less GPU-stressful events of the game.


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## Imglidinhere

There's no more danger in overclocking a gaming laptop than there is doing such in a desktop. Get that in your heads people.

You aren't going to fry the GPU just from pushing the card another 100mhz on the core. I'd honestly push the memory as far as you could. The memory bandwidth is holding the card's potential back by a sizable amount.


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## DrClaw

alot of laptops can overheat easier because of their miniature fans and extremely small housing. It makes more sense that a desktop disperses hot air more efficiently.
whatever boundry that may be for cooking a laptop from overclocking, its closer than a desktop pc.

i know friends of mine where the laptop gets so hot underneath, its a killer in the long run. better longevity by keeping things cool, heat destroys all those little circuits over time.


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## Imglidinhere

And I'm telling you that a gaming laptop isn't going to have shoddy cooling, lest that manufacturer wants to lose money on their investment. And desktops are by far easier to kill with overclocking, lower quality solder and silicon or whathaveyou.

Also, a lot of laptops don't have an 860m. If you think overclocking is bad, then go look up the records for laptops out there. My friend has a machine that's running strong (going on 5 years now) and has overheated several dozen times, yet still works like it's a new machine.


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## TheReciever

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DrClaw*
> 
> alot of laptops can overheat easier because of their miniature fans and extremely small housing. It makes more sense that a desktop disperses hot air more efficiently.
> whatever boundry that may be for cooking a laptop from overclocking, its closer than a desktop pc.
> 
> i know friends of mine where the laptop gets so hot underneath, its a killer in the long run. better longevity by keeping things cool, heat destroys all those little circuits over time.


Wheres the foundation in your thought process? A system is built and a cooling configuration to suit its needs for daily operation. If a gaming laptops daily operation is to be under load, why would you assume it lacks cooling?

I have my 755m running +135 core and +100 memory daily.

Heres the other thing you failed to mention, pushing the clocks up without touching voltage does nothing to the temperature. Just like also you can undervolt your CPU as well to bring overall temps down


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## Klem

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *MoeMoelol*
> 
> Hello
> 
> This is my first post, so I'm not sure where to post this.. So feel free to move it to another forum.
> To the topic, have anyone tried overclocking this card? Since this card is Maxwell based, I think it has a good potential when it comes to overclocking.
> Obviously I'm a noob at overclocking lol, but I've done an overclock before to a GT 740m, done it with MSI afterburner, didn't mess with the bios or voltage, just raised the core clock by 135 and the memory clock by 240.
> It gave me a nice boost in some games, with a slight difference in temps and it was very stable.
> Wonder if I can do that same overclok with the GTX 860m or is it too high? I have no idea so if anyway could help me I would be thankful.
> 
> P.S excuse my English as its not my native language..


Can you place here vbios from your card? You can get it with GPU-Z, just click on the small icon of chip in GPU-Z window.


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## DrClaw

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *TheReciever*
> 
> Wheres the foundation in your thought process? A system is built and a cooling configuration to suit its needs for daily operation. If a gaming laptops daily operation is to be under load, why would you assume it lacks cooling?
> 
> I have my 755m running +135 core and +100 memory daily.
> 
> Heres the other thing you failed to mention, pushing the clocks up without touching voltage does nothing to the temperature. Just like also you can undervolt your CPU as well to bring overall temps down


ive experienced increase in gpu temps by increasing my core clock. This obviously seems to differentiate between graphics cards. Also since his laptop has a good video card that i knew nothing about, i thought it was a typical randy dandy laptop with some gaming potential. Some.


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## TheReciever

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DrClaw*
> 
> ive experienced increase in gpu temps by increasing my core clock. This obviously seems to differentiate between graphics cards. Also since his laptop has a good video card that i knew nothing about, i thought it was a typical randy dandy laptop with some gaming potential. Some.


What you experienced was actually hitting the ceiling of your temps that the manufacturer designed for you to hit. Otherwise your overclocking ability wouldnt exist in the first place save for older generation model laptops.

Not due to Voltage alterations.


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## DrClaw

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *TheReciever*
> 
> What you experienced was actually hitting the ceiling of your temps that the manufacturer designed for you to hit. Otherwise your overclocking ability wouldnt exist in the first place save for older generation model laptops.
> 
> Not due to Voltage alterations.


im not hijacking the thread just responding here









that cant be true, i have pcs 290 right, triple slot gpu, vrm 1 goes as high 65-70 C
vrm 2 always stays mint 52-54C

core is always 70C

this is for gaming temps

running stock 1040 core and mem 1350
pushing core just a few points say 10 or 20 brings core temp to 73, push a bit more and i reach 75. Then again its clocked alot higher than a reference 290 but i dont really know what the ceiling is for these non-ref 290s

the ref-290 is supposedly okay to reach 94C with throttling*. Personally i dont see a ceiling anywhere on my card, just a pretty and effective heatsink









ive pushed higher clocks before not sure if it was entirely stable, gamed for about an hour, no artifacts and things.


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## batman900

OP just grab the afterburner software or evga precision x, also get the heaven benchmark and run it in a loop in windowed mode. Up the mem or gpu clock a little at a time until something goes funky, like artifacts, strange colors, lock up, driver crash etc. Back the clock down about 20ish from that point and leave it there for stability.

There is no danger in OC'ing a laptop. If temps get too high it will just throttle like anything else. I have overclocked many and never had an issue because of it. Yeah it will burn your lap if that is where you're actually using it to game but most do not.

Like others have said, OC on the memory is probably the most important and where you want to start first.


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## TheReciever

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *batman900*
> 
> OP just grab the afterburner software or evga precision x, also get the heaven benchmark and run it in a loop in windowed mode. Up the mem or gpu clock a little at a time until something goes funky, like artifacts, strange colors, lock up, driver crash etc. Back the clock down about 20ish from that point and leave it there for stability.
> 
> *There is no danger in OC'ing a laptop. If temps get too high it will just throttle like anything else.* I have overclocked many and never had an issue because of it. Yeah it will burn your lap if that is where you're actually using it to game but most do not.
> 
> Like others have said, OC on the memory is probably the most important and where you want to start first.


/Thread

And to the other point if your on battery you will be hard pressed to overclock anything at all lol


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## DrClaw

over time, heat destroys integrated circuits. I said earlier about reduced longevity thats all. So obviously while he overclocks its not big deal especially the type of gaming laptop he has, its a well cooled gpu.

put into perspective, somewhere in the ballpark of 4-5 years vs say 7-10 years.

i just like a clean slate with my electronics, no boozing up any clocks but who am i to discourage overclocking a gaming laptop! kind of funny since most people replace anything pc gaming related within 2-3 years.

personally i think its crazy


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## TheReciever

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *DrClaw*
> 
> over time, heat destroys integrated circuits. I said earlier about reduced longevity thats all. So obviously while he overclocks its not big deal especially the type of gaming laptop he has, its a well cooled gpu.
> 
> put into perspective, somewhere in the ballpark of 4-5 years vs say 7-10 years.
> 
> i just like a clean slate with my electronics, no boozing up any clocks but who am i to discourage overclocking a gaming laptop! kind of funny since most people replace anything pc gaming related within 2-3 years.
> 
> personally i think its crazy


Heat is inevitable. There is no way around this.

There isnt much reason for the majority of users to get a desktop save for budget reasons. As most of the time a decently speced laptop will fulfill most users needs.

Plus, this is OCN. we push everything to the limit here.


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## DrClaw

that all depends on persons comfort zone with heat, its preference really. Personally i like to hold on to my gear alot longer so im not a big overclocker. trying to pin down likelyhood of longevity on electronic components operating between 50C and 80C or 60 or whatever is useless, especially things being better built, more efficient but i would still bet theres better likelyhood of driving those years down from pushing limits

hey maybe i should switch forums







hahaha, i like this site though


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## TheReciever

Heat dump would remain the same however, all you see is temp gauge reach a threshold your not comfortable with and set your configuration around that

Sent from my One using Tapatalk


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## MoeMoelol

I'm sorry for the late reply, and thanks for the replies, I really appreciate it.

Anyways, I manged to overclock it, used MSI afterburner, raised the clock speed by 135 MHz, and raised the memory clock by 330 MHz too, so now the core clock is 1232 MHz compared to the stock 1097.

And the memory clock is now 1418 compared to the stock 1253.

I tried raising the memory clock more, raised it by 350 instead of 330, and started to get artifacts.. and I'm not willing to change the voltages...

I didn't benchmark a lot. but I played an hour of Battlefield 4, and saw a nice boost, from 3 to 11 frames (thats. from me looking at fraps, so it could have been less sometimes or more sometimes, idk)

And also benchmarked on Heaven Benchmark 4.0, on the extreme setting. I saw a difference of 2.1 fps..
The temps remained the same, at least the max temp did so that's good..
I've been using it for two hours, so far its sable.. so I think iI will stick with it.

The only problem is, MSI afterburner acts weird sometimes, like it applies the memory clock overclock but not the core clock.. And sometimes when I apply the overclock, it adds random numbers to the clocks, in thousands, kinda freaks me out sometimes lol, any idea why that happens? Any fix for it? cause I'm tired of restarting my PC just to get it to work..
Cheers ;D


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## emas

Hi, I have asus g750jm with gtx 860m (maxwell) yestarday I did some overclock: raised the clock speed by 135 MHz and memory clock 550 mhz. is this value save? After that played witcher 3 and my temps after 30 min was 71 degree. Is this acceptable?


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## Klem

Quote:


> Originally Posted by *emas*
> 
> Hi, I have asus g750jm with gtx 860m (maxwell) yestarday I did some overclock: raised the clock speed by 135 MHz and memory clock 550 mhz. is this value save? After that played witcher 3 and my temps after 30 min was 71 degree. Is this acceptable?


Yes, this values is very safe. And 71C is very nice temps.


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## Brainiarc7

Hello there,

How did you overclock the GPU on this system?

On Windows 10, I have the Asus GPU tweak pre-installed (and it only does the stock overclock of ~10% by ASUS).

Can one use a third party program to do the same?


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## Klem

Yes, for overclock your GPU you can use the programs Nvidia Inspector, MSI Afterburner, or EVGA Prescision.


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## Brainiarc7

And what do you use?

Also,is it persistent after reboots?

And also, with your overclocking, do you have the ASUS GPU Boost installed?


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## Klem

MSI Afterburner will persistent after reboots.


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