So, I am trying my hand at overclocking a GPU for the first time...  I just finished giving a light over clock on my first AMD CPU ever (it was a breeze), I believe that it's stable at 4.32GHz...  So now I am on to my GPU...  I have an MSi GTX 760 4GB card and I believe it is the Gaming OC edition...  I have it at +40MHz on the Core Clock and it has done multiple runs of Valley and is able to complete Firestrike Extreme, so I assume that it is stable...  I have yet to play any games with it this way however.  Here is a screenshot of what I have so far.  Is it safe to go further?
 

Zuhl3156
It is safe to keep increasing your Core Clock until it becomes unstable and starts crashing or giving you TDR warnings. Once you reach this point you need to back it down 10 to 20 MHz where it should run stable. After that you can start on the Memory Clock following the same procedure. You can always try boosting your Voltage to give it a kick in the pants too.

In BF4 it seems to stay at 1189... I want to say it should be going to at least 1240... It was running at 1250 on the benchmarks...

Your card boosts (and throttles) in 13MHz increments..When you add (or subtract) GPU Clock Offset, it needs to be done in increments/multiples of 13MHz (13, 26, 39, 52, 65, and so on)..The next boost bin won't become effective until a 13MHz increment is added (or subtracted)..If your card's Boost Clockspeed is, say, 1150MHz and you add 12MHz to the GPU Clock Offset, it will remain at 1150MHz because you didn't hit the 13MHz boost bin..But if you add 13MHz to the GPU Clock Offset, it will hit and clock to 1163MHz..If you add 38MHz to the GPU Clock Offset, it will clock to 1176MHz (1150 + 26) because the 26MHz boost bin has been reached and is effective but not the next 13MHz boost bin after 26MHz (which is 39MHz) which would clock to 1189MHz..See how it rolls?
 
Different monitoring software will also read the clockspeed slightly differently, depending on the actual 1/10MHz clockspeed..A clockspeed of 1018.7 (in GPU-Z) may be read by PrecisionX as rounded to 1019..Some round up, some round down..GPU-Z (or GPU Shark) is good to have. 
 
Setting 'Prefer maximum performance' in the NVIDIA Control Panel will not allow your card to drop down below it's Base Clockspeed when running 3D applications (games), and will do nothing to make your card boost higher..KBoost will keep your card running at it's boost clockspeed (whatever it is, or whatever you have it OC'd to) all the time.
 
Like Zuhl said, it's 'safe' to increase the Clockspeed, but you'll get to a point when freezing, artifacting, TDR's or other problems occur..Then, increasing the voltage may help as long as you agree to the warning about applying overvoltage at your own risk.
 
Just because an OC passes benchmarks/testing doesn't neccessarily mean it will work okay in games.

bob16314
Your card boosts (and throttles) in 13MHz increments..When you add (or subtract) GPU Clock Offset, it needs to be done in increments/multiples of 13MHz (13, 26, 39, 52, 65, and so on)..The next boost bin won't become effective until a 13MHz increment is added (or subtracted)..If your card's Boost Clockspeed is, say, 1150MHz and you add 12MHz to the GPU Clock Offset, it will remain at 1150MHz because you didn't hit the 13MHz boost bin..But if you add 13MHz to the GPU Clock Offset, it will hit and clock to 1163MHz..If you add 38MHz to the GPU Clock Offset, it will clock to 1176MHz (1150 + 26) because the 26MHz boost bin has been reached and is effective but not the next 13MHz boost bin after 26MHz (which is 39MHz) which would clock to 1189MHz..See how it rolls?
 
Different monitoring software will also read the clockspeed slightly differently, depending on the actual 1/10MHz clockspeed..A clockspeed of 1018.7 (in GPU-Z) may be read by PrecisionX as rounded to 1019..Some round up, some round down..GPU-Z (or GPU Shark) is good to have. 
 
Setting 'Prefer maximum performance' in the NVIDIA Control Panel will not allow your card to drop down below it's Base Clockspeed when running 3D applications (games), and will do nothing to make your card boost higher..KBoost will keep your card running at it's boost clockspeed (whatever it is, or whatever you have it OC'd to) all the time.
 
Like Zuhl said, it's 'safe' to increase the Clockspeed, but you'll get to a point when freezing, artifacting, TDR's or other problems occur..Then, increasing the voltage may help as long as you agree to the warning about applying overvoltage at your own risk.
 
Just because an OC passes benchmarks/testing doesn't neccessarily mean it will work okay in games.

Alright. So I need to do increments of 13. I'll go try this. Why did it boost to my OC during the benchmarks?