GTX 970 Throttling issue

[Vatican]

I've been messing around with my msi gaming gtx 970 for awhile now and been having an issue with throttling. I followed all the guides around and raised my power limit to 110%, left my memory at 350 because i get artifacts/crashes at 500 (8k memory)..was able to get my core clock to 1500mhz and stayed stable.. However while benchmarking Firestrike i noticed my core downclocking to 1470-1500..it's as if it's being throttled by something..I checked my TDP and it does reach 113% on GPU-Z during the bench.

Could that be it? What should i do at this point? I don't believe i reach that high of a TDP while playing games like bf4 etc or even running Heavan benchmark. Is this just a Firestrike thing? Also does raising voltage to +87mv help at all? Thanks and I appreciate the help.

 

[KILLER_K]

You will reach the cards TDP long before it overheats. I believe it was like Max 90 -92° degrees though. But the TDP is 145 watts on the gpu. Power limit is max 110% in MSI Afterburner. So only 10% over factory Power Limit. The gpu doesn't have a lot of wiggle room on it for the TDP. Firestrike is a very demanding benchmark to begin with. A lot more stressful on the gpu. Perhaps dial it down a bit more for just that benchmark.

 

[Dayaks]

If anything you'd want to decrease voltage to help with TDP.

Some people BIOs mod to get around TDP. It has risks.

 

[misterbobby]

If you have raised the voltage then lower it. As already mentioned, raising voltage will make you hit TDP even faster.

 

[Vatican]

So i shouldn't be using firestrike as a way to guarantee stability on my overclocks? It doesn't throttle my speeds when I run heaven benchmark nor hit the TDP limit (gets to roughly max 102% out of the 110) even with voltage increase.

 

[Dayaks]

So i shouldn't be using firestrike as a way to guarantee stability on my overclocks? It doesn't throttle my speeds when I run heaven benchmark nor hit the TDP limit (gets to roughly max 102% out of the 110) even with voltage increase.

If you're happy with it I'd say you're fine. Especially if it's not affecting your current games!

 

[Armenius]

So i shouldn't be using firestrike as a way to guarantee stability on my overclocks? It doesn't throttle my speeds when I run heaven benchmark nor hit the TDP limit (gets to roughly max 102% out of the 110) even with voltage increase.

If your Boost clocks are constant while gaming then your overclock is fine. Benchmarks are built to stress the hardware to its limits. Is your hardware of going to be in that situation at any other time? When overclocking my 970s I used benchmarks to tweak and dial in the clocks, and then I played Shadow of Mordor for 2-3 hours to test it. If it stays stable through the length of an average play session for me then I consider that a success.

 

[RJ1892]

So i shouldn't be using firestrike as a way to guarantee stability on my overclocks? It doesn't throttle my speeds when I run heaven benchmark nor hit the TDP limit (gets to roughly max 102% out of the 110) even with voltage increase.

Personally I do my overclocking with Heaven or Valley benchmarks. Then do some testing in OC Scanner. After that I usually hop in a demanding game and do more testing, you generally just want to find a clock speed where your boost clock stays it's highest with your power limit maxed out.

Then check in GPU-Z to see what the maximum power target you actually hit and drop your power target down to that+1 and prioritize it in Afterburner or Precision.

 

[Vatican]

I see, I left it at power limit 106% since GPU-Z reports I only hit around 104.xx% during a gaming session of bf4. However my voltage is still left at +87mv on afterburner. Is this safe to leave it at that or should i find a target for it as well. My clocks are at 1507mhz with the voltage increase, and 1489mhz without. Memory had to be left at +300 since it crashes with artifact/error anything above 350 while im gaming. I'm almost certain its the memory doing this and not the core clock because the problem goes away as soon as i turn down the memory.

 

[n=1]

So i shouldn't be using firestrike as a way to guarantee stability on my overclocks? It doesn't throttle my speeds when I run heaven benchmark nor hit the TDP limit (gets to roughly max 102% out of the 110) even with voltage increase.

Firestrike is relatively light in my own experience. I've had Firestrike stable OCs fail instantly when running 3DMark11 Xtreme or even 3DMark Vantage. Firestrike is good for a quick "first pass" stability check but that's all I use it for.

As mentioned above, several hours of Heaven or Valley will give you a much better indication of stability, though I still prefer Heaven's Extreme HD preset as I find it pushes the GPUs harder than Valley does.

Finally, make sure to do some actual gaming with a demanding game. I've had my OCs pass a 6 hour Heaven loop only to crash after 45 minutes in Serious Sam 3 BFE, so there's no substitute for actual gaming when it comes to stability.