HardOCP News
[H] News
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Another review of the MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4GB has hit the internet today. For comparison purposes, you can see our evaluation here.
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MSI GeForce GTX 970 Gaming 4GB
- Thread starter HardOCP News
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Until you need to put a card behind the GPU, which case the backplate will just laugh at you, a very ironic situation.
I am personally very happy that I got one of these and not another 970 with a backplate, I would be a very sad panda if both of my 970's had backplates.
I am personally very happy that I got one of these and not another 970 with a backplate, I would be a very sad panda if both of my 970's had backplates.
Mine does very well when overclocked though. Perhaps their gpu didn't overclock that well though.
* Weird when I hit spacebar it deletes the words in my post. when I go back to place a new word in the sentence...........
* Like it pushes it to delete as you try to replace the words. That is rather annoying.
* Weird when I hit spacebar it deletes the words in my post. when I go back to place a new word in the sentence...........
* Like it pushes it to delete as you try to replace the words. That is rather annoying.
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Porter_
[H]F Junkie
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i have this card, it's fantastic. very quiet and overclocks well.
Looks like they got 1439MHz boost which is on the lower end of most overclocks with quite a handful of people achieving 1500+ with stock voltage, myself included.
I'll be sure to experiment with mine but with my original PNY 970 that I returned, I had to leave it at stock volts if I wanted to OC at all, and even then I could only get 1440 stable. If I touched the voltage at all it would crash with any kind of OC setting. I did get the memory to 8000 though. Hoping for 1500+ on the MSI !! 
I'll be sure to experiment with mine but with my original PNY 970 that I returned, I had to leave it at stock volts if I wanted to OC at all, and even then I could only get 1440 stable. If I touched the voltage at all it would crash with any kind of OC setting. I did get the memory to 8000 though. Hoping for 1500+ on the MSI !!
On my MSI I noticed I didn't get much more out of additional voltage, maybe only another 25MHz or so, and it resulted in hitting my TDP limit a bit too frequently causing throttling. I may go the custom BIOS route down the road to prevent the TDP limit throttling but until then I'm leaving it at stock voltage.
Starrbuck
2[H]4U
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What's the ~60MHz difference amount to in FPS? Maybe 1 or 2. Certainly negligible.
Installed. running 344.75
1500/8000 stable in game so far (Hawken), 1540 glitched/crashed in Valley but that may have been the memory, haven't tested core alone yet. voltage is at stock, raised Power limit to 110
Now for the real test, MWO (edit, stable in MWO so far! nice....)
1500/8000 stable in game so far (Hawken), 1540 glitched/crashed in Valley but that may have been the memory, haven't tested core alone yet. voltage is at stock, raised Power limit to 110
Now for the real test, MWO
(edit, stable in MWO so far! nice....)
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Camberwell
Gawd
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These look like nice cards, I'm thinking of getting two to SLI to replace my GTX 780 Ti....
I have an MSI gtx 970 gaming as well and I just wanted to ask you guys if you have some sort of guide on OCing this with msi afterburner? As in what settings do i need to mess around with and is heaven the best benchmark to stress test it? I heard OC'ing graphic cards are much simpler than cpu's so I was just looking for a cookie cutter guide on this as its my first time.
Really want to overclock my graphic card this time around because it seems on all the reviews, they are getting almost a 10-12fps increase!
Really want to overclock my graphic card this time around because it seems on all the reviews, they are getting almost a 10-12fps increase!
What I like to do is to have Heaven/Valley running windowed in the background while I adjust the settings in order to confirm the new settings via the OSD and check for any glitching before you get to the point of driver crashing. Keep in mind you will first need to go into RTSS (RivaTuner Statistics Server) settings and turn on the OSD options that you want. This is also where you need to enable adjustments to voltage and power limits.
In Afterburner main screen you can use the slider but I find it's easier to just click the box and manually enter the number you want. The memory on these seem to be pretty good and you might be able to bump it to 8000 (from default 7000) to do this you would enter +500 for Memory clock (since it's effectively doubled, you'll see it reported as 4000mhz in OSD) Supposedly memory overclock isn't as beneficial as core clock, so it may or may not even be worthwhile to worry about it. Still, faster is faster even if it's not really noticable.
Then you can do the same thing with core clock. At stock my MSI Gaming was running at something like 1332. I was able to do +168 and have it run at 1500 stable for a few hours of gaming in my usual titles. 1520 seemed ok in Valley and 1540 crashed the driver. I have more experimenting to do however. For instance, you may be able to push core clocks higher if you leave memory at default.
I'd say it's perfectly safe to raise the Power Limit to max (110%) and there is basically no reason not to do so. These cards have plenty of power provided to them and have good cooling, so it's an easy way to allow the card to run better. If you want to mess with voltage, the general concensus is to find your highest clocks that are stable at stock volts first. That way you know how high you can go before adjusting the voltage.
This is your basic overclocking. Beyond this you get into flashing with a modified BIOS in order to do things like raise the Power Limit (typically to 125%) which is something I have not attempted yet.
Hope this helps!
In Afterburner main screen you can use the slider but I find it's easier to just click the box and manually enter the number you want. The memory on these seem to be pretty good and you might be able to bump it to 8000 (from default 7000) to do this you would enter +500 for Memory clock (since it's effectively doubled, you'll see it reported as 4000mhz in OSD) Supposedly memory overclock isn't as beneficial as core clock, so it may or may not even be worthwhile to worry about it. Still, faster is faster even if it's not really noticable.
Then you can do the same thing with core clock. At stock my MSI Gaming was running at something like 1332. I was able to do +168 and have it run at 1500 stable for a few hours of gaming in my usual titles. 1520 seemed ok in Valley and 1540 crashed the driver. I have more experimenting to do however. For instance, you may be able to push core clocks higher if you leave memory at default.
I'd say it's perfectly safe to raise the Power Limit to max (110%) and there is basically no reason not to do so. These cards have plenty of power provided to them and have good cooling, so it's an easy way to allow the card to run better. If you want to mess with voltage, the general concensus is to find your highest clocks that are stable at stock volts first. That way you know how high you can go before adjusting the voltage.
This is your basic overclocking. Beyond this you get into flashing with a modified BIOS in order to do things like raise the Power Limit (typically to 125%) which is something I have not attempted yet.
Hope this helps!
Thanks for the starter guide, i'll be getting into this today and see how high i can reach on my core clock. So when you say you were running at 1332 core and you bumped it to +168, is that the boost clock? which is only when your gaming or is the card constantly going to be at 1500 at ALL times even in desktop?
TheMadHatterXxX
2[H]4U
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At Power Limit 110% I was only able to get to +125 Core Clock/+400 Mhz without seeing any artifacting in Heaven/Valley.
Is there a way to change the LED color of the dragon on the card?
Is there a way to change the LED color of the dragon on the card?
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About all you can do is turn it off, make it pulse, cycle and strobe and flashing stuff in Geforce Gaming Experience Led Visualizer Panel. Other than that you are stuck with what you get unless you want to mod them.
At Power Limit 110% I was only able to get to +125 Core Clock/+400 Mhz without seeing any artifacting in Heaven/Valley.
Is there a way to change the LED color of the dragon on the card?
TheGoat Eater
[H]ard|Gawd
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I am loving mine - I am going to move it into my new MATX build in a BitFenix Prodigy M and probably get a second for SLI. I do love the efficiency of these new cards and that if saves money on the PSU purchase
- I am going to move it into my new MATX build in a BitFenix Prodigy M and probably get a second for SLI. I do love the efficiency of these new cards and that if saves money on the PSU purchase misterbobby
2[H]4U
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A 970 gaming can use as much power as a reference 780 so its really not all that efficient.I am loving mine
I keep trying to push it a bit more... 1510 is stable in-game, 1525 crashed in MWO. That one game seems to trigger crashes more than any of the others that I play. This is still at stock voltage. Not really sure it's worth over-volting just for a few more mhz.