NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Overclocking Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Overclocking Review - We follow-up with a full evaluation of overclocking the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN. We will find out how fan speed and temperature affect the clock speed, then we will take it to the extreme with voltage tweaking to see how fast we can get our TITAN and the performance increase as a result.
 
Awesome!! Reading it now

Edit - just finished reading through it. Really good stuff and pretty on par to what I've been seeing with my cards as well. Though I'm not sure how long I would want to keep my fans at near max for prolonged sessions.
 
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Excellent review Kyle!

I'm going to adjust my fan profile a bit to see if i can increase my OC a little bit more for those challenging moments.
 
Interesting to see what simply raising fan speed can do, it's really a shame we will not be seeing aftermarket cooled cards. They would have the potential to help overclocking even more.
Worth noting for me is the nice improvement in minimum fps.
I wonder how much my i7 would bottleneck just one & if it's worth getting.
Thanks a million for staying up late to push this one out! ;)
 
Very nice article, thanks!

I've been using an aggressive custom fan profile since I got my Titan, resulting in 80% fan speed and 67-69°C while gaming - 1019 Mhz boost. Card's ASIC is 84.7% if that really matters.

If I feel like I need more I will add +100 Offset but im waiting for a few new driver releases first.

Kind regards
 
Seems like a pretty average OC. Nice to see that the team didn't use a cherry picked sample. I know others have stated that Titan "overclocks like garbage" but 2688 cores at 1.1GHz seems pretty damn awesome to me.
 
xp3nd4bl3 said:
Seems like a pretty average OC. Nice to see that the team didn't use a cherry picked sample. I know others have stated that Titan "overclocks like garbage" but 2688 cores at 1.1GHz seems pretty damn awesome to me.
Click to expand...

The team never uses cherry picked if at all possible. It is party of the [H] integrity program.

Odd question to kyle and crew...do you think it would be possible to disable cores to see if you could find the weak link in terms of speed? It just seems that with so many cores, finding the few "duds" and disabling might allow the OC to go higher. With that many cores..every MHz is really felt. It would be hell of an effort, but a potential worthy one.
 
make you wonder how high that thing could clock with a custom wc setup.
 
From some of the other Titan owners I spoke to, water cooling didn't seem as effective as I would have thought for attaining better over clocks. I'm still interested in hearing from more people using water cooling for their cards. I did adjust my fan profile, making it a bit more aggressive but I have not had enough time to test it out yet. So far the card seems a bit more stable for prolonged usage (3 hours) but the jury is still out.
 
Milena said:
Very nice article, thanks!

I've been using an aggressive custom fan profile since I got my Titan, resulting in 80% fan speed and 67-69°C while gaming - 1019 Mhz boost. Card's ASIC is 84.7% if that really matters.

If I feel like I need more I will add +100 Offset but im waiting for a few new driver releases first.

Kind regards
Click to expand...
two questions, any reason for the sawtooth curve and what does last entree(hysteresis) of 5 do ?
 
Seems about spot on for a stock Titan with no BIOS flash, they all seem to settle around the same.

EdKiefer said:
two questions, any reason for the sawtooth curve and what does last entree(hysteresis) of 5 do ?
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Hysterisis is used to control huge fan speed fluctuations if you have a steep curve built. For example, if your card is set to go to 100% at 70*C, and you have Hysterisis at 10*C, it will not drop to the next lowest speed until 60*C, preventing it from spinning up and down if the card rides the line at say 68-72*C. If you did not use this feature, the card might go between 80% and 100% or whatever you have your curve built at, causing heat spikes and annoying pitch changes.
 
out of curiosity... are kyle and brent using 690's in their personal rigs or have you guys switched to titan?
 
It would be neat to see what a water block could do or not do in this situation.

Fan noise is always the Achilles heel in these cards, and a block would eliminate that problem.:D.

That said.....expense and time are the enemies.
 
LigTasm said:
Seems about spot on for a stock Titan with no BIOS flash, they all seem to settle around the same.



Hysteresis is used to control huge fan speed fluctuations if you have a steep curve built. For example, if your card is set to go to 100% at 70*C, and you have Hysterisis at 10*C, it will not drop to the next lowest speed until 60*C, preventing it from spinning up and down if the card rides the line at say 68-72*C. If you did not use this feature, the card might go between 80% and 100% or whatever you have your curve built at, causing heat spikes and annoying pitch changes.
Click to expand...

Ok, thanks I looked up meaning of Hysteresis in Wikipedia and yes it a kind of lag , so in above post since his steps are 5c I guess 5c hysteresis stops any on/off jumping at the temp points .
 
There is a 700+ page thread over on overclock.net discussing this card and how to overclock it.

Long story short: you will get even more out of these cards by flashing to a custom bios that gets around power, heat, and voltage restrictions/fluctuations.
 
alexp247365 said:
Long story short: you will get even more out of these cards by flashing to a custom bios that gets around power, heat, and voltage restrictions/fluctuations.
Click to expand...

This. Custom flashing is a must. I must have flashed my Titan ~20 times now via Windows with no issues. I've edited my bios to run 1176/7000 as stock, with 300W 100% and 350W 116% TDP limits. My card is game stable at those clocks, and can bench 1228/7500 as well.I imagine the same will apply to Titan LE (GTX 780) when that is released.
 
alexp247365 said:
There is a 700+ page thread over on overclock.net discussing this card and how to overclock it.

Long story short: you will get even more out of these cards by flashing to a custom bios that gets around power, heat, and voltage restrictions/fluctuations.
Click to expand...

So, you can completely utilize all the temperature headroom created by watercooling? ...or are you still leaving some clock speed on the table due to voltage restrictions and all the rest?
 
trick0502 said:
make you wonder how high that thing could clock with a custom wc setup.
Click to expand...

Water only seems to help Titan stay cool, but doesn't really provide any additional oc headroom. It seems to be power/voltage limited.
 
I'd say water-cooling will get you an extra 50-100mhz on the core while keeping temps in the 40's under load. Water-cooling only removes temperature as a limiting factor. As Brent found out, 80c is a hard limit in the bios.

I'm running a modded bios with the following:

MSI afterburner for the following :
Up to 144 percent power (Just move the slider all the way to the right)
voltage locked at 2.12
I have two clock settings - Idle 826, and then whatever my boost is set to.
core runs at 1124-1176 depending on game stable with no fluctuations
memory runs +350 - 450 depending on game.

There are limits to the card. You'll know that you've hit them when you get a driver reset.

Also of note, your PSU requirements will go through the roof if you are overclocking your cards as well as your CPU. My cards became much more stable after upgrading from a Corsair 850, to an ax1200i.
 
EdKiefer said:
two questions, any reason for the sawtooth curve and what does last entree(hysteresis) of 5 do ?
Click to expand...

The sawtooth curve is better for both system performance and fan life. Permanently adjusting fan speed up and down is taking more CPU cycles and not optimal for the fan controller and motor.

From the Precision/Afterburner Documentation:

- You may double click the edit area to switch between linear and step curve modes. Step mode can be used to reduce fan speed update related CPU performance hit due to less frequent fan speed changes.
 
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Milena said:
The sawtooth curve is better for both system performance and fan life. Permanently adjusting fan speed up and down is taking more CPU cycles and not optimal for the fan controller and motor.

From the Precision/Afterburner Documentation:

- You may double click the edit area to switch between linear and step curve modes. Step mode can be used to reduce fan speed update related CPU performance hit due to less frequent fan speed changes.
Click to expand...
ok, thanks, that works in AB too .
 
Great review, at a perfect time, thnx guys!!! Love the Titan - yes, I feel sick without a second kidney but it's worth it!!! I've played more PC in the past few days than I have in years - no crashes, everything maxed already, fkn excellent!! I do have a question - in the NV panel, you can enable CUDA cores and DP for the Titan. Do they both disable GPU boost - I havent really had time to explore this side of the Titan...
 
blade52x said:
This. ....with 300W 100% and 350W 116% TDP limits
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350 watts??....just how does the card draw that with one 8 pin (150watt) one 6 pin (75watt) and one PCIe slot (75watt) power connections? Unless my maths is wrong the max power draw for Titan is 300w due to physical power connections not bios settings.
 
pretty sure the card is hard locked at 1.212v and has a max tdp between 285 and 300 at those settings.
 
technogiant said:
350 watts??....just how does the card draw that with one 8 pin (150watt) one 6 pin (75watt) and one PCIe slot (75watt) power connections? Unless my maths is wrong the max power draw for Titan is 300w due to physical power connections not bios settings.
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During 3dmark11 in the first benchmark underwater scene, I've hit 112% usage with my TDP settings. That's 336W. Outside of that, I have occasionally seen ~102% (306W) but usage is generally 85-95% power. The power connectors and PCIe slot can draw a lot more than they are rated for. Part of the reason i even approach 300W is because I have my memory clocked to 7000 (which is stable and artifact free).
 
technogiant said:
350 watts??....just how does the card draw that with one 8 pin (150watt) one 6 pin (75watt) and one PCIe slot (75watt) power connections? Unless my maths is wrong the max power draw for Titan is 300w due to physical power connections not bios settings.
Click to expand...

Just from a physics perspective, you could move a lot more than 150W over that 8 pin connector with no problem. Those are just the rules for being "spec compliant". There is nothing to stop the card from drawing more current. Remember, the 6 pin 75W and the 8 pin 150W connector are identical, except for the two extra ground pins that indicate "150W" on tap.
 
blade52x said:
During 3dmark11 in the first benchmark underwater scene, I've hit 112% usage with my TDP settings. That's 336W. Outside of that, I have occasionally seen ~102% (306W) but usage is generally 85-95% power. The power connectors and PCIe slot can draw a lot more than they are rated for. Part of the reason i even approach 300W is because I have my memory clocked to 7000 (which is stable and artifact free).
Click to expand...

There is current monitoring/connection sensing going on inside the psu that limits 6pin connections to 75w.....I'm wondering if using a little trick may help power supply.

I used to do something similar but reversed with my old hd 3870 x2...it had two 8 pin connectors but my psu only had one 8 and one 6 pin. The extra two pins of the 8pin connector are only black earth/ground connections. Grounding the two extra connections on the card tricked the card into allowing overclocking which was not possible with only the 8 and 6 pin connections.

You could like wise trick the psu into thinking it was connected to an 8 pin connector by connecting the two spare black cables to the black cables of the 6 pin block. That way the psu monitoring would tell that connection it was connected to an 8 pin plug and allow 150watts rather than 75watts.

Might be something that would help if power limitation is stopping your overclock.
 
I would imagine the power cuts out as its a overload protection mechanism......I've come across this information while researching other matters......I think it was on wiki....I'll try and find it again to reference it.
 
^....can't seem to find that reference now....it was something I stumbled across....I concede I may have misread something but I don't think I did.....I make no claim to be an expert in PSU design though.
 
overclocked and under load what sort of decibals were you hearing?
 
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