970/980 Custom bios flashing now working!!!

Lord_Exodia said:
Hmm, I'm not sure there is a thermal throttle point. I've watched my card quite a bit and I do not throttle at exactly 70c or 75c but around there I may hit the TDP wall and throttle from that. It would be a thermal throttle point if the moment I hit that temp it throttled but it doesn't for me. It seems more based on TDP for me.
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There's definitely a throttle point at 70C on my ref 980.

Running the "no limits" BIOS from zoson here, I can switch my fan speeds back and forth to let temps go above and below 70C and voltages and core speed both drop a tick when it exceeds 70C. There's a bit of hysteresis, so it doesn't happen immediately.

There's a bunch of temperature-based throttle points, actually. With that BIOS and voltage and power limit sliders maxed out and core/mem at +120/+450, when I start from cold (<40C) and run something 3D, core spikes to 1651 and voltage spikes to 1.275V in Afterburner. As expected, driver crashes after about a half second. Considering at normal operating temps (70-75C) it boosts to 1500, there's definitely some significant throttling going on.

Gah, really need someone with some BIOS smarts to make a boost-free, throttle-free BIOS.
 
Like pretty much everyone I am waiting for unlocked voltage. Two things I really like now though is:

1.) I can set my voltage and stop voltage throttling.
2.) I can modify base clocks so my computer automatically starts OC'd without having AB on at all, since not all games play nice with those utilities.

More voltage might not be better for everyone since higher temps can outweigh the voltage increase. Like my processor OCs better at 50C than it does at 80C. Likewise I got an extra few MHz between my GPUs original cooler and the kraken mod. (85C vs 50C) It's like a double whammy... Voltage causes more heat which makes your temp higher. In turn you have more leakage, which causes more heat. :) But that could be why voltage is not always better. More waste heat maxing out your thermal or TDP limit.

Oh and btw minecraft (kids play it) is horribly sensitive to unstable clocks!
 
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I can confirm that bios flashing fixes all issues for me. It looks like unlocked voltage isn't possible. Voltage is up to 1.312V max as of now and it doesn't look like they are programable beyond that as of now.

I created a bios to fix my voltage discrepancy issues and also keep my boost clocks and power TDP to my lower ASIC card's max stable. Both cards are now in sync @ 1.275V Boosting at 1515mhz Core and 8000mhz Stable Vram without the need for Afterburner at all (besides custom fan profile) and performing very well. 3d mark Fire strike now at 20,790.
 
Yep, got my bios setup to maintain boost fully in 3d mode, run identical voltage, and match)l2 + memory crossbar frequencies to the main core speed, results in a 7 percent boost just from those last two tweaks. Running 1500c and 7950mhz mem at 1.231v (I stability tested at 1.218v but run higher in case driver versions affect things so I won't need to fiddle ever presumably) for 24/7 clocks, been rock solid for days now across a variety of games. I have tried ramping the voltage and clocks further which works but I don't honestly need the extra horsepower and as is things run pretty cool and quiet. But I can't stress enough, raise your L2 and memory crossbar, the gain is huge. I tested with and without and the following two setups are basically identical in performance :

1510mhz core + matching memory crossbar and L2 speeds

Vs

1620mhz core + default memory crossbar and L2 speeds (1300ish).

Saw someone point out they were mismatched randomly and say it gave gains, they were spot on. With maxwell ii bios tweaker and the fixed nvflash to write to the cards, my 970 sli is better than ever :D.
 
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GoldenTiger said:
Yep, got my bios setup to maintain boost fully in 3d mode, run identical voltage, and match)l2 + memory crossbar frequencies to the main core speed, results in a 7 percent boost just from those last two tweaks. Running 1500c and 7950mhz mem at 1.231v (I stability tested at 1.218v but run higher in case driver versions affect things so I won't need to fiddle ever presumably) for 24/7 clocks, been rock solid for days now across a variety of games. I have tried ramping the voltage and clocks further which works but I don't honestly need the extra horsepower and as is things run pretty cool and quiet. But I can't stress enough, raise your L2 and memory crossbar, the gain is huge. I tested with and without and the following two setups are basically identical in performance :

1510mhz core + matching memory crossbar and L2 speeds

Vs

1620mhz core + default memory crossbar and L2 speeds (1300ish).

Saw someone point out they were mismatched randomly and say it gave gains, they were spot on. With maxwell ii bios tweaker and the fixed nvflash to write to the cards, my 970 sli is better than ever :D.
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Whoa I totally missed this. So I need to match my L2 and memory crossbar to my core.... So a lower core and matched speeds out perform a higher core and default on L2 and memory is what I just read.
 
Dayaks said:
Whoa I totally missed this. So I need to match my L2 and memory crossbar to my core.... So a lower core and matched speeds out perform a higher core and default on L2 and memory is what I just read.
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specifically if you have an overclocked version. By default they are already matched. Most or All manufacturers lowered those to reach a higher boost bin. On my reference bios they were already matched.
 
GoldenTiger said:
Yep, got my bios setup to maintain boost fully in 3d mode, run identical voltage, and match)l2 + memory crossbar frequencies to the main core speed, results in a 7 percent boost just from those last two tweaks. Running 1500c and 7950mhz mem at 1.231v (I stability tested at 1.218v but run higher in case driver versions affect things so I won't need to fiddle ever presumably) for 24/7 clocks, been rock solid for days now across a variety of games. I have tried ramping the voltage and clocks further which works but I don't honestly need the extra horsepower and as is things run pretty cool and quiet. But I can't stress enough, raise your L2 and memory crossbar, the gain is huge. I tested with and without and the following two setups are basically identical in performance :

1510mhz core + matching memory crossbar and L2 speeds

Vs

1620mhz core + default memory crossbar and L2 speeds (1300ish).

Saw someone point out they were mismatched randomly and say it gave gains, they were spot on. With maxwell ii bios tweaker and the fixed nvflash to write to the cards, my 970 sli is better than ever :D.
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Is it posible that you could post your bios,i would like to try your settings with my bios to see if it improves oc. That sounds kinda dirty :?
 
Hey guys,
You'll want to use either the AIR or H2O BIOSes going forward. AIR sets the same 1480MHz clock that GameStable set previously, and H2O sets 1531MHz, two bins higher than NOLIMITS.
Both use 1.312v for the maximum boost state.

Boosting behavior should also be significantly better.

Maxwell cards *cannot* disable boost. So if you are waiting for that, you're going to be waiting indefinitely.
 
Just trying to wrap my head around what I need to adjust to increase the minimum boost voltage the avoid tdr's caused by the voltage dropping to low for the boost clock. The P00 section of my voltage table appears to be split into to sets of values, both are 600-1600. Anyone fiddled around with this?
 
If you want to enforce a minimum voltage at P00 state you increase the '600' to whatever the value you want as the minimum.

This will cause an increase in power consumption.

Alternatively you can increase the minimum voltage state at each CLK within the voltage table to whatever your card requires.

My AIR bios scales voltage correctly for reference cards, though. It seems like many manufacturers are throwing out the requested VID from the GPU core and are instead just using the minimum voltage state specified by each CLK level in the bios.
 
Got it sorted, no longer getting transient power related crashes :)
 
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