I have 120mm x2 rear and bottom mounted fans. 200mmx2 top and front fans. CM Hyper N520 HSF. Storm Sniper Case. Running SLI, idle temps are around 30-31, on load via 3D Mark was around 72 max for GPU 1.

I want to very conservatively overclock my cards to get the most out of it. I had heard that 900mhz at 1.07 V was a good starting point? If I did this to both of my card what kind of performance would I be looking forward too? Would my SLI GTX 560s on 900mhz beat a GTX 580? Is my version of Afterburner up to date? Thanks!
 
Left the Voltage the same, raised the core clock to 850, and fan speed to 40 on auto.
 
Ran Unegine Heaven 2x
Ran 3D Mark 11 Basic Performance Test

Idle temps: 35
Max temps: 67

Before OC Scores:
Heaven: 1631
3D Mark: P7326

After OC Scores:
Heaven: 1698
3D Mark: P7632


Is this too conservative? Should I got further? 

My i5 2500k is also OCED to 4.0 GHZ on 1.20 V

Corsair Vengeance RAM is at 16gb 1600MHZ 1.5V
 

<message edited by abablitz on Monday, January 30, 2012 8:08 AM>

FYI, your GTX560s at stock speeds are faster than a single GTX580. As for your overclock settings, only you can determine that. All cards are not equal and what works for one doesn't mean it will work for another. You'll have to do some testing to see what your cards can do and at what voltages. Try incrementally raising your clock speeds until you get instability like driver crash or system hangs. At that point then try raising your voltage and re run the benchmark and see if there is still instability or if the issue subsides then proceed to raise clock speeds until it happens again. Repeat this process until you are satisfied or until temps begin to exceed 90C load or there is no appreciable gain in performance.

Craptacular One is right, all GPUs are different, some won't be able to go further than 900, some will go much further.
 
Here's something to compare your OC'ing to in terms of 3DM11 :)
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2362289
My score :D
 
Just keep doing what you're doing, OC'ing slowly.
ASIC quality is 85.1%, I'm wondering if that matters for OC'ing at all as it's just speculation so far.

Wow, my score was around 7890 ish with the 850 mhz clock. Isn't it unsafe to clock at rates higher than 900?

Unsafe is a little hard to define with overclocking, apart from voltages.
 
I guess overclocking the core immensely , like 2Ghz instantly and adding no volts, or lots and lots of volts would be extremely unsafe.... but no, 900Mhz is fine...
 
I think the world record for 560s ever is 1.3Ghz something (not in SLi) and SLi one is about 1.2Ghz, maybe less.... IDK...