Today nosotros're going to be diving a fiddling deeper into overclocking the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti and RTX 2080, roofing a whole range of things from how to overclock these cards, to typical doable clock speeds, to functioning and power consumption.

To beginning off this guide we'll be going through our standard methodology for overclocking Nvidia graphics cards and specifically the new RTX series. We'll as well be showing you how Nvidia'southward new Scanner API works and just how good their 1-click overclocking tin be, comparing to a manual overclock, while too showing you lot how to exercise said manual overclock.

The cards we're using today are the Founders Edition RTX 2080 Ti and Founders Edition RTX 2080. Both come 'manufacturing plant overclocked' in some sense compared to base of operations-level board partner models, just that OC is quite small at just xc MHz on the core, and nothing on the memory. But the carte du jour we're using doesn't really matter, the steps you lot come across here will apply to all RTX cards.

The commencement matter nosotros'll be doing is going through what's potentially the easiest method of overclocking your RTX card: using Nvidia's Scanner. 1-click overclocking has been around for a while, just this time Nvidia has built a framework for doing it rather than letting lath partners create their own algorithms, which the chip maker says is better tuned for their GPUs, more accurate, and more than reliable.

To use Nvidia Scanner, you'll demand to grab the latest versions of whatsoever overclocking utility. We tried EVGA Precision X1 and MSI Afterburner, both beta versions, and for the Scanner functionality we found Afterburner to be more reliable.

Had a few crash problems with the early version of Precision X1 which we assume will get fixed, whereas Afterburner seemed to work every time. It's a bit disappointing as Precision has a much nicer interface than Afterburner, simply nosotros'll get back to using Precision a bit later.

Afterwards yous've installed and opened Afterburner y'all'll run into a bunch of dials and sliders, bit of a cluttered interface but that's fine. What we're interested in is the small bar graph icon to the left of the core clock slider. At this stage information technology'southward non necessary to touch anything else in the app. Merely click on the bar graph icon, then click OC Scanner, and and so in that window hit 'Browse'. Now you can sit dorsum and wait a while because the one-click overclock process takes around xv to 20 minutes.

What the Scanner is doing is basically running a bunch of clock speed tests at a range of voltages to find the verbal voltage-frequency curve for your graphics card. It has its own test algorithm built-in to stress the GPU with the ability to recover from whatever hangs or crashes if the GPU is existence pushed a bit too hard. Information technology's basically simulating what we'd do with a transmission overclock, simply doing it faster and potentially more accurately.

Don't worry if the application hangs or your screen goes black temporarily during the process, that'south normal. At the terminate, you'll be given an average overclock, merely crucially you'll get a full frequency bend, which potentially is a bit more efficient than a simple core frequency offset. You tin can see at the lower end of the voltage curve, we're getting slightly college overclocks than at the top.

For the RTX 2080 Ti on average we accomplished +181 MHz, but at the superlative cease our OC is only +150 MHz. With the RTX 2080, nosotros achieved an average of +113 MHz and a height-terminate OC of around +xc MHz

At this bespeak, we'd recommend heading back into the Afterburner chief application and cranking up the power and temperature limits to the maximum. We've never benchmarked a card, fifty-fifty a last-generation Pascal card, that didn't similar having these limits raised all the manner, so with these RTX cards information technology merely makes sense to creepo information technology up. This will allow Nvidia'southward GPU boost algorithm to push every bit high as possible on top of the frequency curve we've already set, going beyond the former limit.

I affair to note here is that we've set the power and temperature limit afterward running Nvidia Scanner. Nvidia says the Scanner merely modifies the core clock, so if you change the power and temperature limits earlier hand, the Scanner might find different and potentially higher cadre clocks. However in our feel, we actually achieved lower clocks in the Scanner setting the power limit beforehand, so we'd recommend cranking information technology up afterward the Scanner is complete.

The other obvious limitation is the lack of memory clock gains, Nvidia Scanner simply handles the GPU core and doesn't touch memory. Then if you're after that simple, ane-click overclock solution, you lot'll be missing out on any gains yous'd go from tweaking retention. Cadre overclocking is much more important for getting performance gains, but a boost to memory tin can aid out in some situations.

We've got the Scanner OC results at present in the bag. At present permit'due south see how to perform a transmission overclock, and afterward we'll compare the manual overclock to the Scanner results.

For this nosotros're switching to EVGA Precision X1 because it has a much nicer and more intuitive interface.

For a transmission overclock we desire to offset from a decent point, and then again we're going to crank the power limit and temperature limit to the maximum. We're also going to scroll the bottom section across to the Temp Tuner, and conform the bend so we're getting the maximum clock speed at all possible temperatures. For our reference card this isn't a big deal every bit we're not reaching up to those highest temperatures, but if you are running above 84C, y'all'll want to adjust this curve for maximum functioning.

From here, information technology's all about adjusting the 2 main sliders for memory and core frequency. The basic steps are we want to increase each value past a reasonable amount, apply the overclock, then validate it in a programme similar 3DMark to ensure we're not getting crashes at those settings.

The amount y'all increase the values is upwardly to y'all, only note that y'all're non going to damage your card by choosing a value that's also high; instead you'll just crash your system and have to reset it. No large deal.

Then for the RTX 2080 Ti we started with around a +150 MHz starting time on the cadre and +500 on the memory, those are adequately conservative figures for this menu. That worked in 3DMark, so we pushed the core up to +200 and memory up to +650. If y'all want to play it safer we'd recommend merely changing one of those values per test run, but the more you lot become familiar with the process, the more yous can adjust at one time.

With +200 on the cadre our 2080 Ti crashed in 3DMark, so now it's a process of finding the exact limit. Nosotros stepped down in 10 MHz increments, eventually discovering that +180 was unstable, but +170 was perfectly fine. From hither we can try to push button up the memory even further using a similar sort of process, and for our model we settled on +700 being the sweet spot.

The last stable overclocks for this carte du jour were +170 MHz on the core and +700 MHz on the memory, and that's a fairly typical figure going on what we've seen from others. Note that if yous take a non-FE or not manufacturing plant-OC card, the cadre offset you'll demand will be college equally yous're coming from a lower starting point.

The vanilla RTX 2080 comes factory clocked a fleck higher than the 2080 Ti, and so we started with +100 MHz on the core and followed the same procedure. Eventually we settled on +110 MHz on the cadre and +700 MHz over again on the memory for the RTX 2080.

One time you notice what you think are stable overclocks it's always a good idea to validate them farther in a game running for several hours, something very GPU intensive. While 3DMark's Time Spy gives a good indication of whether a carte du jour will work at a certain frequency, sometimes it will but crash under a longer test, so it'south adept to test both.

A quick notation on voltage, Nvidia's Turing cards are voltage locked. In other words, Nvidia does not betrayal proper voltage controls to the user like you lot might get with overclocking a CPU on a motherboard. Instead we have a voltage slider, but it's not really an offset, what it theoretically does is raise the voltage limit by a few steps, but still within what Nvidia deems safe. And that comes at the expense of lifespan: Nvidia claims you should get 5 years out of stock voltage and but 1 year with the voltage limit raised slightly, so go on that in mind.

In practice, raising the voltage slider did absolutely nothing for our overclock, so information technology'south not worth thinking most.

So on a pure clock offset basis, the Scanner OC coming in around +150 MHz at the top voltage range is lower than our +170 MHz manual offset for the 2080 Ti, with a similar gap for the 2080. Plus, of course, with transmission overclocking we increased the memory frequency too.

This indicates manual overclocking remains the mode to get for many, and you can see that is the case when looking at our Shadow of the Tomb Raider results next...