Folding Forum

Should you run the MSI afterburner overclock scan after you do a driver update, or will the overclock settings still be ok? I can't seem to find any answer doing a quick web search. In other words, does a driver update imply doing another overclock session with afterburner? I would rather avoid the 20 minute process if it is not needed.

I don't know, but overclocking is rather a bad idea for folding. The level of stability you need for gaming, for example, is lower than what is required for successfully folding.

My gut tells me that any overclock settings from before a driver update may be suspect once the update is done .. I have no foundation or proof for this other than instinct and the crude logic that drivers can change GPU behaviours and that a tuned overclock may be undermined by these changes .. obviously overclocking is a personal choice (overclocks are not officially supported by FaH) but if you want to be "safe" then I reckon a new tuning session after driver updates is called for.

Over the years, I have read that new drivers are more optimized for gaming which in turn could push the GPU harder. What was once a stable overclock on the edge, could now be pushed into the realm of instability. Do note that comparing gaming stability with folding stability is the equivalent of an apples and oranges comparison. Folding has generally been more stressful than gaming on a diverse set of GPUs.

Please note that, F@H doesn't officially support overclocking. Moreover, latest GPUs with recent drivers tend to "overclock" themselves as long as they are cool and within certain power and temperature values. Thus, I won't spend any time manually overclocking when the current GPUs and drivers can do a fantastic job as long as it is cool enough. I personally rather focus on stability and have my systems to fold and forget

I understand that FAH does not support overclocking. However, MSI has an automatic overclock tool that seems to work well. I have been using a new card overclocked with this feature for a couple of weeks now and no problem. I would not try to do a manual overclock, and I have left the memory speed alone also. I updated the driver yesterday and was just curious. As far as I can tell, the card is acting the same as before with respect to top clock speed. In some respects, this makes sense to me. The hardware limit (which is what I suspect overclocking should affect) should not change no matter what software is driving it. But that is just speculation on my part.

As PantherX pointed out FAH does not support overclocking. And it is correct that nvidia drivers do "overclock" on their own (I noticed this before I even made my changes). And that folding is much different than gaming.

The most important thing is to keep getting CPU/GPU cycles applied (rather than fight an unstable machine.)

Thanks for all the thoughts.

I do not 'overclock'. What I do is over fan, so the card never thermally throttles, I find 85% of max is quiet enough. My GPUs are cooler, my PPD is up, and I am not overclocking.

Interesting idea. However, on my GPU, the temperature never goes above 66, and the thermal limit is 95 (and the fan is ~50%). What seems to limit my GPU is the amount of power it draws. That will stay around 100% of the TDP. Just goes to show that every system is different (even with the same cards)

Your settings can be saved in a profile.
After a driver update, it's as easy as loading up the profile again.
In most cases, new drivers won't significantly affect overclocking performance anymore.
it was true in the beginning, when they still were ironing out some issues.
But Nvidia has made a new driver nearly on a monthly base.
Most of the improvements for drivers, is to include new GPU support, minor corrections or optimizations to work better with the OS (Just like Android often requires you to redownload your apps, so Nvidia needs driver updates as your OS updates; this is especially true for Linux).
And game optimizations (like DSR settings which are optimized for individual games).
There may be a lot going on behind the scenes, but I haven't seen much performance difference since drivers 380 came out for RTX GPUs (that's 1,5 to nearly 2 years ago).

have updated drivers many times but never had it affect my Afterburner profile.