Overview
A few steps and explanation for you to game peacefully.
The problem
This simple guide will help you solve GPU related problems.
If while you’re gaming you have problems with crashes or artifacts, this will definitely help you.
I’ll keep it simple.
First step
1) Download MSI afterburner (and RivaTuner).
Link: [link]
2) Click “settings”
3) Mark ✓ “Start with Windows”
4) On the sub-menu “Compatibility properties”, under the “General” tab, mark ✓ all the options.
5) Click “apply” and “okay”. Close the settings menu.
6) In the main UI, bottom left, there is a Windows symbol (it’s a button) under “Startup”. Click and make sure it stays red.
Now here comes the magic
What you’re gonna do (at the main interface of MSI afterburner):
1) Undervolt it by 5 to 10%. Some GPUs are undervolted by offsets, others are by raw values (if that’s your case, make the math).
2) Underclock both “Core clock” and “memory clock” to the minimum MSI afterburner allows you to.
Done.
Conclusion and final steps
This will make your GPU cooler and working with much less stress. Your performance will decrease a lot. Game for a few hours or let “Valley Benchmark” (a GPU testing software) running for an hour on reasonable settings. For a GPU with 4gb, it will be something like 1080p medium to low quality.
Don’t ever let it get past 70° Celsius (158°F). If it does, you have cooling problems (try changing the fan properties on “settings”, “fan” and make it work a little harder. Like 85% of the force all the time.
You will very muck likely play for hours and hours with no artifacts or crashes at all.
Now, if you want to see until where your GPU can take it keeping stable, try increasing both clocks a little bit before every game session. Mine is stable working at 66% (2/3) of default clock settings and 6% less voltage. Don’t remove the undervoltage. There is a reset button on the main UI if you’d like to go back to default settings.
Doing this will not damage you GPU. Overclocking and overvoltage might. But this guide will definitely not damage your hardware.
Hope this helps.