The Official GTX980/970 OC & Benchmark Perf. Thread

My Gigabyte G1 970 always goes down 1 boost bin and 1 voltage bin within ~1 minute of starting any 3d program. Stock/overvolted, stock/overclocked, kboost on/off it doesn't matter. My older g1 had this same issue. Is this normal for all the cards?
 
my actual FTW speed during bench's is 1405 sorry, the 1531 is a misreport from unigine.
 
My Gigabyte G1 970 always goes down 1 boost bin and 1 voltage bin within ~1 minute of starting any 3d program. Stock/overvolted, stock/overclocked, kboost on/off it doesn't matter. My older g1 had this same issue. Is this normal for all the cards?
My 980 does the same thing.
 
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3187213

Here's my sli 970 setup with custom bios just around my 24/7 settings, including memory crossbar and L2 cache speeds matched to the core instead of below like the stock bios has. Never throttles or goes out of sync on voltages.

"1510c/l2/xbar, 8164m, sli 1.218v unleashed tdp in SLI on stock air (MSI Gaming)"

May try to get 1570 synchd stable as 24/7 sometime if I get bored soon, but as you can see the performance even at 1510 synchd up is nuts.

Good stuff Goldentiger. How are the cards performing for you in your games with the new bios. Any throttling anymore? Voltage stable on both cards now? Also, I've never heard anyone speak of Memory crossbar setting and L2 Cache speeds. Is that a tweak people are doing on 970s? Are these same tweaks recommended on a 980 reference too? I honestly don't know anything about that, is there somewhere I can read up on this? Thanks in advance.

EDIT: found a way to modify this in MBT, No Reply from GT :( Anyway, No Guts, No Glory!! I'll modify and flash tonight. :D


My Gigabyte G1 970 always goes down 1 boost bin and 1 voltage bin within ~1 minute of starting any 3d program. Stock/overvolted, stock/overclocked, kboost on/off it doesn't matter. My older g1 had this same issue. Is this normal for all the cards?

Most 900 series cards have strange boost behavior like this. It can be tweaked via a bios update. Have you tried any custom bioses out there yet?
 
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http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3187213

Here's my sli 970 setup with custom bios just around my 24/7 settings, including memory crossbar and L2 cache speeds matched to the core instead of below like the stock bios has. Never throttles or goes out of sync on voltages.

"1510c/l2/xbar, 8164m, sli 1.218v unleashed tdp in SLI on stock air (MSI Gaming)"

Nets a graphics score of 26,282. When testing I found this is as fast as my cards at 1620mhz core or more without the tweaks :D.

If I then raise the core to 1553 but leave the crossbar and L2 at 1510 I get to 26.7k gpu score: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3191520

May try to get 1570 synchd stable as 24/7 sometime if I get bored soon, but as you can see the performance even at 1510 synchd up is nuts.
Nice! Has anyone customized the BIOS for the STRIX yet? I'd be interested in seeing those results. I'm already hitting around 25k graphics score with 1473 Boost using the core clock offset trick and it's pretty solid.
 
someone did a custom bios for similiar on the evga 970 FTW, it stopped his card throttling for TDP.

Since I think my 970 runs fine I am happy with the shipped bios.
 
Running MSI 970 Gaming's in SLI. At +50mv the voltage draw of the cards to not match, which I find a bit odd with .02v difference. But regardless the SLI performance is not to shabby with a graphics score of 26380. Both cards individually will do over 1560 core, but I think since I cannot seem to get the voltages to sync, I have to go a bit lower in SLI.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3199776
 
Good stuff Goldentiger. How are the cards performing for you in your games with the new bios. Any throttling anymore? Voltage stable on both cards now? Also, I've never heard anyone speak of Memory crossbar setting and L2 Cache speeds. Is that a tweak people are doing on 970s? Are these same tweaks recommended on a 980 reference too? I honestly don't know anything about that, is there somewhere I can read up on this? Thanks in advance.

EDIT: found a way to modify this in MBT, No Reply from GT :( Anyway, No Guts, No Glory!! I'll modify and flash tonight. :D




Most 900 series cards have strange boost behavior like this. It can be tweaked via a bios update. Have you tried any custom bioses out there yet?

Heya, yep as you saw they're tweakable by MBT :) which is how I did it as well. There's no reason the same changes wouldn't work just as well on 980-based cards, either.

Nice! Has anyone customized the BIOS for the STRIX yet? I'd be interested in seeing those results. I'm already hitting around 25k graphics score with 1473 Boost using the core clock offset trick and it's pretty solid.

I don't know, offhand... a lot of people have been fiddling at OCN, but it's not too tough to roll your own using this guide:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1522651/disable-boost-and-bake-in-max-game-stable-clocks-for-maxwell/0_40

someone did a custom bios for similiar on the evga 970 FTW, it stopped his card throttling for TDP.

Since I think my 970 runs fine I am happy with the shipped bios.

Fair enough, there's no real reason to mess with it other than for fun (if you even enjoy that kind of thing :)) if it's running as you want already. :D
 
someone did a custom bios for similiar on the evga 970 FTW, it stopped his card throttling for TDP.

Since I think my 970 runs fine I am happy with the shipped bios.
I hope you are not referring to the idiot on the EVGA forums that says hitting TDP limit causes stuttering and additional screen tearing.
 
Can you post this BIOS? Ive tried the BIOS r0ach made (does nothing for TDP throttling) and i tried a bios from this guy Cyclops on overclock which also does not solve the TDP throttling issue. TDP gets raised, but the card wont actually use any of the extra power, so it will cap out at like 70-80% TDP.
 
Can you post this BIOS? Ive tried the BIOS r0ach made (does nothing for TDP throttling) and i tried a bios from this guy Cyclops on overclock which also does not solve the TDP throttling issue. TDP gets raised, but the card wont actually use any of the extra power, so it will cap out at like 70-80% TDP.

Which bios are you referring to? What mode GTX 9x0 do you have exactly? Have you tried modifying your own bios and flashing it back to your card yet?
 
Oh sorry, I have a EVGA GTX 970 FTW. I havent tried making my own bios yet, but the ones I have tried havent been successful in stopping the TDP throttling. Maybe I will have to get the courage to try and make my own.
 
Oh sorry, I have a EVGA GTX 970 FTW. I havent tried making my own bios yet, but the ones I have tried havent been successful in stopping the TDP throttling. Maybe I will have to get the courage to try and make my own.

Can you upload your bios, I'll take a shot at modifying one for you if you want. Of course using it and flashing will be done at your own risk. ;)
 
Can you upload your bios, I'll take a shot at modifying one for you if you want. Of course using it and flashing will be done at your own risk. ;)

The GBT G1 Gaming cards I had started running squirrely after I flashed them, even when I flashed them back to stock.
 
The GBT G1 Gaming cards I had started running squirrely after I flashed them, even when I flashed them back to stock.

That doesn't sound good but what does squirrely mean?

Edit: thinking about this do you mean it goes and then stops then quickly goes again, Kind of how a squirrel walks?

What bios did you flash onto your card?
 
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Oh sorry, I have a EVGA GTX 970 FTW. I havent tried making my own bios yet, but the ones I have tried havent been successful in stopping the TDP throttling. Maybe I will have to get the courage to try and make my own.
Have you observed the PerfCap in GPU-Z? If it does not say "Pwr" then you are not being throttled by the TDP...
 
Have you observed the PerfCap in GPU-Z? If it does not say "Pwr" then you are not being throttled by the TDP...

That is exactly it, on stock bios it will go from 100-110% and be limited by "Pwr". On the others it will go to about 70-80% TDP and still be limited by "Pwr". So GPU-Z reports that extra TDP headroom is available, but it seems the card doesnt know this and still uses the default power cap.

I'm at work right now so I cant post stock BIOS, but I will do so when I get home.
 
It looks like the 970 cards cap out around 225-230w as you can raise the TDP and PT values but it still hits power limit (you get different values when this happens depending on each cards default 100% value used ) .

Seems these cards don't use all available power from the 8+6pin plugs .
If you bump up the PCIE slot amount (1005/max ) you get little more headroom so how power is shared from all sources is odd .

There still some headroom on many cards (EVGA, Asus ) as they are under 225 values in PT of there bios .
 
What is everyone 970 everyday 24/7 rock solid game stable OC? After trying custom bios, I still found the stock bios to give me the best balance of temperature and performance. I found this OC stable through all benchmarks and hours of gaming (COD:AW, Borderlands TPS, Tomb Raider, etc..)

My card is a EVGA SSC 970 w/ a 79.8% ASIC

1-2.gif
 
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1500 MHz for GPU @ stock volts, 7700 MHz for VRAM. GPU could do more but 1500 MHz is pretty nice, stays cool and quiet. I've limited minimum voltage in P00 power state to 1,2V since otherwise it would drop too low in some cases and cause stability issues. I've also lowered the minimum fan speed to 1100 RPM.
 
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for 24/7 setting I run 1482/7500 on stock voltage (1.218 ) but that is not limit of chip, just value i pick with no issues on temps or worry of pushing it till the edge .
 
I got the MSI 970 Gold Edition, and I'm brand new to OCing.

I downloaded MSI Afterburner, and I've been using Fire Strike for benchmarking. I've put the Power Limit to 110, and then increasingly moved the Core clock and Memory to various settings. The hottest my card has gotten is 75C.

Can you guys let me know if the results I'm getting are what should be expected? A lot of the various numbers and boost rates are confusing me. Any help would be much appreciated!

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738470

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738545

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738588

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738882


Mostly, I'm confused because from what I'm reading I should be able to set things higher in Afterburner without having Fire Strike crash/give incomplete results. There's a guide that shows the Core clock +150 and the Mem clock +500, but when I set my Afterburner numbers to those Fire Strike gives incomplete results/I get artifacts or crashes.

Should I RMA my card, or am I misunderstanding things? Thanks!
 
I got the MSI 970 Gold Edition, and I'm brand new to OCing.

I downloaded MSI Afterburner, and I've been using Fire Strike for benchmarking. I've put the Power Limit to 110, and then increasingly moved the Core clock and Memory to various settings. The hottest my card has gotten is 75C.

Can you guys let me know if the results I'm getting are what should be expected? A lot of the various numbers and boost rates are confusing me. Any help would be much appreciated!

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738470

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738545

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738588

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738882


Mostly, I'm confused because from what I'm reading I should be able to set things higher in Afterburner without having Fire Strike crash/give incomplete results. There's a guide that shows the Core clock +150 and the Mem clock +500, but when I set my Afterburner numbers to those Fire Strike gives incomplete results/I get artifacts or crashes.

Should I RMA my card, or am I misunderstanding things? Thanks!
every card will be different as best OC but work your way up with only changing one thing at time .

You can set memory to like 250+ offset if you want and then keep upping the core clock .
how far will depend on chip and cooling . after you find max on core ,try upping the memory more .
try making a custom fan profile in AB so your temps stay around or below 65c .

Also when posting results, post the in game boost you get (what AB says in graph).
 
every card will be different as best OC but work your way up with only changing one thing at time .

You can set memory to like 250+ offset if you want and then keep upping the core clock .
how far will depend on chip and cooling . after you find max on core ,try upping the memory more .
try making a custom fan profile in AB so your temps stay around or below 65c .

Also when posting results, post the in game boost you get (what AB says in graph).

But my scores/numbers thus far look right for this card? Just want to be sure I don't have a dud or something.
 
You would have to look around to compare, I don't know off top of my head and I don't have firestrike installed .
Thing with comparing against other systems, there so many variables ,cpu, MB, OS, drivers etc etc .
Best to use them just for your own scaling of OC , making sure any increase gives increase in performance .

here one review but note its on a Core i7 3960 Extreme (Sandy Bridge-E) @ 4.6 GHz .
So just look at graphic score
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-geforce-gtx-970-gaming-review,21.html

looks good to me .
 
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So I got a couple EVGA 980SCs. I ran them through Fire Strike and got this result...
17365 Score/ 26045 Graphics/ 11262 Physics/ 6464 Combined

Is this in line with what I should expect? I remember reading the graphics score should be around 26000 for stock but I've seen many overall scores at around 22000 which I've fallen way short of...

I OC'd the cards with a +115Mhz on the GPU Clock and +330 on the Memory Clock also raising Power Target to 105% in PrecisionX. Heres what I got...
17488 Score/ 26197 Graphics Score/ 11306 Physics/ 6543 Combined

Whats goin on here? I figured this result would be significantly better.
Besides setting the Power Management Mode to Max Performance is there any other settings I should be changing to get full use from the cards? :(
 
how do you get PerfCap Reason to display in GPU-Z? i'm running 0.8.0 with my GTX 970, using 344.75 WHQL drivers.
 
how do you get PerfCap Reason to display in GPU-Z? i'm running 0.8.0 with my GTX 970, using 344.75 WHQL drivers.

I think you need to actually install GPU-Z to your C drive, not just run it off the file you downloaded. I did it and I can see the perfcap, though I don't really know what it means. I guess it's only important to systems that is running SLi?

My PNY GTX 970 with a Antec 620 is doing 1552/7800 stable (somewhat, I did not exhaustively test it but I did play FC4 for 3-4 hours fine) and load temp is around 50 celcius. I am happy. :D What do you guys think?
 
I got the MSI 970 Gold Edition, and I'm brand new to OCing.

I downloaded MSI Afterburner, and I've been using Fire Strike for benchmarking. I've put the Power Limit to 110, and then increasingly moved the Core clock and Memory to various settings. The hottest my card has gotten is 75C.

Can you guys let me know if the results I'm getting are what should be expected? A lot of the various numbers and boost rates are confusing me. Any help would be much appreciated!

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738470

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738545

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738588

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4738882


Mostly, I'm confused because from what I'm reading I should be able to set things higher in Afterburner without having Fire Strike crash/give incomplete results. There's a guide that shows the Core clock +150 and the Mem clock +500, but when I set my Afterburner numbers to those Fire Strike gives incomplete results/I get artifacts or crashes.

Should I RMA my card, or am I misunderstanding things? Thanks!

Your score looks fine I got 9900 in 3dmark with the rig in my sig. I wouldn't RMA the cards because not getting the overclock you want is not a real reason to rma them as long as they run good. There is alwasy a chance that the replacement card you get could be worse than the card you have now.

I got +240 core and +500 mem. But when adding them together i had to go with +230 core and +400 memory. In far cry i have to downclock the cards to +240/+310 otherwise i crash. getting a slightly less overclock than the average user is not that big a deal and To me not worth the time you spend having to send it back and wait for the replacement.

Also The way I understand it is the cards have a normal clock rate on them and then they get "boosted" overclocked to a certain limit then when you overclock the cards the overclock gets added to the "boost rate of the card" The only thing I would worry about is what the Final clcoks are in afterburner under GPU Core clock,.MHZ and GPU memory clock , MHZ
 
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Just picked up the Best Buy reference 970 (the 980/titan blower model).

This is my first attempt at OCing a card in years, my ASIC is 71.7% out of the box. And here's what I've gotten so far playing around with heaven for a bit.

e399c089b68ace9299c49e099bbc58e2.png


I don't know how to get my power limit passed 106% and this is a WIP since I'm pretty behind in the OCing department and have a CPU bottleneck.
 
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What is everyone 970 everyday 24/7 rock solid game stable OC? After trying custom bios, I still found the stock bios to give me the best balance of temperature and performance. I found this OC stable through all benchmarks and hours of gaming (COD:AW, Borderlands TPS, Tomb Raider, etc..)

My card is a EVGA SSC 970 w/ a 79.8% ASIC
In SLI I'm running 1479/7600 with a pair of STRIX. I have yet to play around with fixing the voltage via a BIOS tweak, but it has been rock solid so far with a +26 MHz offset on GPU1 at 1.200v.
 
http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3187213

Here's my sli 970 setup with custom bios just around my 24/7 settings, including memory crossbar and L2 cache speeds matched to the core instead of below like the stock bios has. Never throttles or goes out of sync on voltages.

"1510c/l2/xbar, 8164m, sli 1.218v unleashed tdp in SLI on stock air (MSI Gaming)"

Nets a graphics score of 26,282. When testing I found this is as fast as my cards at 1620mhz core or more without the tweaks :D.

If I then raise the core to 1553 but leave the crossbar and L2 at 1510 I get to 26.7k gpu score: http://www.3dmark.com/fs/3191520

May try to get 1570 synchd stable as 24/7 sometime if I get bored soon, but as you can see the performance even at 1510 synchd up is nuts.

I made a BIOS with just synced xbar and L2 and saw 0 difference in performance at 1531MHz synced vs default. Applying the power limit/voltage increases did help, however- the core speed maintains the max boost clock when I max out the memory oc, which slightly improved scores. In my case, I couldn't push the core clock any farther using a custom BIOS, it still gives me red/black/blue artifacts and crashes at 1544MHz.
 
Just picked up the Best Buy reference 970 (the 980/titan blower model).

I don't know how to get my power limit passed 106% and this is a WIP since I'm pretty behind in the OCing department and have a CPU bottleneck.

I just got the same card. I love the thing. I am going to mod the bios to up the 106 limit. That or you can solder some resistors... But bios mod takes me 10 minutes. :)
 
Alright people, i got the MSI gaming edition, i tried to see if it would do the same clocks as the hardocp review. did 110 on power limit, 1500 core my stock boost is 1340, did +500 on memory. The result was a 1 and a half hour sesh on crysis 3 on highest settings and then a driver crash. No artifacts though the whole time

But obviously that aint stable, any suggestions guys because im a noob at ocing GPU's, one question i have that i have been searching google for i cant see an answer, The memory and core clock do they need to be within a certain limit?

Like for example would 1450 core be fine with 2000 mhz memory, what's the deal with the ratios?
 
I don't think there is a 'golden' ratio of the speeds, I just tend to OC to whatever value I find benchmark stable for core and memory independently, and monitor if I get performance boost for each value, once benchmark crashes, I lower it and use that to game. if it crashes again I will lower it again and try.
 
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