What's the best 3DMark stress test for validation? Try other software?

[Marii Wukruk]

I plan to sit down and do a somewhat competent work on my GPU i.e. try a plain core overclock, see where that gets me, what's the limit, then UV plus OC and to tune the VRAM, but what would the best benchmark for that or perhaps best custom benchmark . . . ?

[UL_Jarnis]

If this is purely about the GPU and to validate an OC, I'd use custom Port Royal run with settings:

Windowed mode enabled
Loop enabled
Demo disabled

And then let it run for at least 30 minutes. Windowed mode ensures the run cannot be interrupted by a popup from a background program and disabling demo ensures only one test is selected so the loop has no loading pauses.

If the GPU cannot run Port Royal, then I'd use Time Spy Extreme and choose GT2 only enabled (no demo, GT1 or CPU test) again with windowed mode + loop.

Note that loop run like this is infinite and will not stop until you cancel. So set an alarm or something and go watch some TV for a good while and if when you come back it is still running the test without any visible graphical artifacts showing up and framerate is same as it was early on, I'd say you are good. You may also want to run some monitoring application to have GPU temps showing in a separate window if you want to make sure the OC is not causing a substantial thermal throttle (this part can also be verified by just running the Stress Test - well cooled system started from cold start (important!) should get 97%+ from it)