This process should take around 15 minutes before presenting you with its conclusions. Scanning is the actual process described above where the algorithm will determine the highest stable frequency on 4 different voltage levels. When you click that, the OC Scanner window will open showing two options: Scan and Test. When all of this is done, it's time to start the OC Scanner!Ĭlick on the button left of the “Core Clock (MHz)” text as highlighted below to open the Voltage/Frequency Curve window.Īt the top right of the Voltage/Frequency Curve window you will see the OC Scanner button. All this does is to allow your graphics card a bit more room to stretch its legs when you run OC Scanner.Īs mentioned above, setting these sliders to their max values is completely safe as the values are defined by the manufacturer of the graphics chip to be considered safe. After this, you can click apply at the bottom and nothing will happen yet. You can do that by checking the boxes below.Īfter this, you should set the sliders for Core Voltage, Power Limit and Temp Limit all the way to the right. What OC Scanner does is to see how far the curve can be safely adjusted to provide higher clockspeeds.īefore you start the process of OC Scanner, we recommend that you enable detailed control of your graphics card in the Afterburner settings. Out of the box the last few generations of graphics cards have used this curve. By doing this you will get a curve where higher voltages are required to run at higher clockspeeds. This curve works by matching the values of clockspeeds to corresponding values of voltage that can sustain those clockspeeds. It does this because the OC Scanner algorithm uses the so-called Voltage/Frequency Curve. This process will repeat itself 4 times to cover 4 different Voltage levels. At that point, the last known stable clockspeed will be set as the maximum value.
This process repeats itself until the GPU fails to maintain stability under load. If the clockspeed is stable under load, the clockspeed will be upped by another step and the GPU will be stressed once more.
The process consists out of the same basic steps as manual overclocking, being: increasing clockspeed by one step, then stressing the GPU to see if this clockspeed is stable. Within just a few minutes it will run a process that will determine the highest stable overclock settings for your graphics card.
The OC Scanner is essentially a tool that uses an algorithm developed by NVIDIA for the RTX 20 series graphics cards. If you want to learn more about manual overclocking you can check out this blog article: This is good to know when you’re just getting into overclocking and you’re scared of damaging your precious hardware by simply changing some values. If a GPU gets too hot, it will automatically reduce its effective clockspeeds to reduce the workload and output of heat until it reaches a level deemed safe. A great example of this is a thing we know as Thermal Throttling.
The processors and drivers themselves also continually monitor things like temperature and power usage so that action can be taken to ensure the safety of the product.
These days, most Graphics Processors have built-in safety measures that restrict the changes you can make with overclocking software like Afterburner to values they consider to be safe. Over the course of recent years, we’ve seen those manufacturers engineer ways to minimize any chance of accidentally damaging their products. It seems the major chip manufacturers caught on to the worries of their customers about damaging their products. Scary because I was afraid of causing any kind of damage to the expensive equipment inside my PC. I can remember the first time I ever attempted overclocking, it was quite overwhelming and even scary at some point. Mostly because of the time it takes to understand the process and do it right. Overclocking has long been a hobby for a relatively small group of hardware enthusiasts.
It's free, it works great and the best part is: it’s completely safe too! This blog article will explain in some detail how OC Scanner works and guide you on how to use it. Always wanted to get more performance out of your graphics card, but don't know how overclocking works or simply don’t want to risk it? The new OC Scanner feature in MSI Afterburner will do the overclocking for you at the click of a button.