Overclocking is popular with many enthusiasts because it is often possible to take cheaper hardware and use a little ingenuity to boost performance to something similar to a more expensive part. Who doesn’t like extra, free performance? PhilsComputerLab recently published a nice video which explores the potential hidden performance available with an NVIDIA GT 1030 card, in this case a low profile 2GB card from GIGABYTE.

The video kicks off with quick intro of Phil’s inexpensive small form factor build to which he has added the GT 1030 card just to bump up FPS when gaming. The card retails for around $70 USD and is fitted with a wee cooling fan. Using the bundled AORUS Graphics Engine app, Phil then starts tweaking first GPU, then graphics memory settings. With a 10% boost in clocks we find that in fact the graphics memory tweak actually proves to be most effective in raising frame-rates when gaming. By the end of his testing Phil manages to configure his entry-level Pascal GPU at 1,688MHz, a nice boost of 37.57%. In memory terms he ended up with a boost of 20%, all of which translated into a nice bump in frame rates in all games tested.

Overclocking entry-level graphics cards is probably not all that interesting to the majority of Enthusiast and Extreme HWBOT members, but there is another reason to cover this video from Phil. In a few weeks we hope to announce the second season of the Cheapaz Chips contest on OC-ESPORTS, a contest series that is all about overclocking, and indeed modding entry-level graphics cards. Season 1 was all about the GT 710 card. I wonder if you can guess which card we will be using in Season 2.

You can find the GT 1030 overclocking video from PhilsComputerLab here on his YouTube channel. It might not be an earth-shattering, LN2-fuelled romp at World Record breaking, but it definitely is an overclocking tutorial that many entry-level gamers could learn from. Nice work Phil.