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M. Tibbits
Asked: 2010-10-17 09:17:57 +0800 CST

How can I overclock a graphics card from within Ubuntu?

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I would like to boost the Core frequency, shader clock, and memory clock on an eVGA GTX 480 I have in my development box running 10.04. Is it possible to overclock a recent graphics card from within Ubuntu? I tried the Coolbits approach, but I couldn't get this to work. I also tried nvclock, but as it has't been updated since January, 4th, 2009, it doesn't work with my card.

In windows, the driver itself ships with the ability to overclock the cards, but nvidia appears to have left this out of the linux drivers. Has anyone discovered a solution? Or would it be possible to stage the windows drivers within Ubuntu? (ick)

If there is a more appropriate forum to ask this question in, I'd be happy to do so -- but I'm hoping for a solution within Ubuntu. Thanks!

Update: It appears that I may need to have "Coolbit" "5" as discussed here. Hmm. Nope.

Here is the relevant section of my xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce GTX 460"
    BusID          "PCI:2:0:0"
    Option         "Coolbits" "5"
    Option         "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device1"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce GTX 480"
    BusID          "PCI:3:0:0"
    Option         "Coolbits" "5"
    Option         "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

When I restart with Coolbits set to 5, I can enable fan control on GTX 460. I can also set it to maximum performance mode. I cannot change the clock frequencies. I am about to try different levels. But here is what I see (with Coolbits = 5):

alt text

Update 2: I've tried driver version - 260.24(beta - nvdeveloper) & 260.19.12 (released today). I am not able to see the "Clock Frequencies" tab for any of the 4xx cards. I can however alter the fan speed for the card with a display attached. I'm going to ask a second question and wait for better drivers to be released.

drivers nvidia graphics gpu overclocking

5 Answers

  1. You almost had it. Coolbits is the way. Here's my device in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

    Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
    BoardName      "GeForce GTX 260"
    Option         "Coolbits" "1"
    Option         "NoLogo" "True"
EndSection

    And then (after restarting X - control+alt+f1, sudo restart gdm), load up nvidia-settings and there's a Clock Frequencies page:

    alt text

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  2. 2018 Answer

    To enable overclocking, run:

    nvidia-xconfig --cool-bits=28

    Reboot your PC. Now you can do things like:

    # List all GPUs
# Set power to 100W, +1000 Mhz Mem clock offset, and +100 Mhz on GPU clock offset.
nvidia-settings -c :0 -q gpus
nvidia-smi -i 0 -pl 100
nvidia-settings -c :0 -a '[gpu:0]/GPUMemoryTransferRateOffset[2]=1000'
nvidia-settings -c :0 -a '[gpu:0]/GPUGraphicsClockOffset[2]=100'

    The adventage of this method is that you can change the power input. Potential harm risk. Proceed with careful. Source here

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  3. For anyone tackling this question in 2021:

    I searched the issue with my Ubuntu distro (20.0.2)

    The file is now located in /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-nvidia.conf

    I set Option "Coolbits" "28"

    Restarted the GDM using systemctl restart gdm.service

    You will also need to run to enable multiple GPUs: sudo nvidia-xconfig --enable-all-gpus

    HotTip when using the GUI: You need to press Enter when editing the GPU clock or memory values in order for changes to be applied. You'll know they were applied because some text will appear in the bottom left side saying that the value was set

    You should also note that the options are now nested in PowerMizer and look different than Screencapped here

    This method also works for Ubuntu version 21.04

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  4. There are also the following tools in the default Ubuntu repositories that you can install from the Software Center or from the terminal:

    NVIDIA - for Ubuntu <=14.04

    nvclock - Allows you to overclock Nvidia cards

    nvclock-gtk - Nvclock but with GTK support

    nvclock-qt - Nvclock but with QT support

    ATI - for all currently supported versions of Ubuntu

    rovclock - Allows you to overclock ATI cards

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  5. For anyone having issues with GPUMemoryTransferRateOffset, I created a script using GPUMemoryTransferRateOffsetAllPerformanceLevels which you can find in this related question: https://askubuntu.com/a/1368739/1434762

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