Overclocked GTX970 issues

[MoonFrost]

alright in msi afterburner I have core clock at +200 and Mem Clock at +400. Usually I'm idling at 1113Mhz Core Clock and 3903MHz MemClock. Sometimes it idles at 898Mhz instead if my driver crashes during a game which I'm also confused about but that's not my issue. While under load the core clock is supposed to bump up to 1528MHz.

 My issue is when I play certain games MSI Afterburner or my graphics card sometimes has a hissy fit. I was playing HAWKEN for a while and noticed that in afterburner my clocks just went super low. While I was playing my Core clock was at 540ishMHz and Memclock was at 3000MHz. I tried closing the game, closing and trying to reload afterburner, loading the profile, uninstalling/reinstalling. Nothign worked. The only thing that finally resolved the issue was a complete restart of the computer.

Anyone have any ideas on what would cause this? or how to re-enable the OC without completely restarting my system?

[astranger200]

it is showing the real clocks. uninstall and reinstall the drivers

[GM_Peka]

Your overclock is too high, it's unstable.

 

Also, if your clock speeds don't go back up, it's probably a driver crash, because your OC is unstable.

 

Try setting both clocks down 50Mhz.

 

This is what I think anyway.

[MoonFrost]

Did both suggestions, thanks for the ideas. Hopefully you wont hear from me again regarding this issue.

[Imakuni]

alright in msi afterburner I have core clock at +200 and Mem Clock at +400. Usually I'm idling at 1113Mhz Core Clock and 3903MHz MemClock. Sometimes it idles at 898Mhz instead if my driver crashes during a game which I'm also confused about but that's not my issue. While under load the core clock is supposed to bump up to 1528MHz.

 My issue is when I play certain games MSI Afterburner or my graphics card sometimes has a hissy fit. I was playing HAWKEN for a while and noticed that in afterburner my clocks just went super low. While I was playing my Core clock was at 540ishMHz and Memclock was at 3000MHz. I tried closing the game, closing and trying to reload afterburner, loading the profile, uninstalling/reinstalling. Nothign worked. The only thing that finally resolved the issue was a complete restart of the computer.

Anyone have any ideas on what would cause this? or how to re-enable the OC without completely restarting my system?

Okay, there are 2 SEPARATE problems on this story.

 

First, the part where the driver crashes. OC is unstable. Plain and simple. For example, my particular Gtx 970 can OC to 1506mhz, 1510 causes a crash every once in a blue moon (didn't try middle values, though, too lazy). Reduce your OC until you no longer get crashes. That's just the way it is.

 

The second problem, is the super low clocks. IT'S A BUG WITH THE DRIVER! Pay attention to this, don't let any idiot say it's MSI Afterburner, or that your card is with a problem, NO, the problem is with the DRIVER. I personally thought this was fixed already, as it's been ages since I've seen it happen with me, but I guess not....

 

Anyway, I'll explain what's happening, skip this paragraph if you just want a fix without understanding what's going on. There's this thing called P States. These are various clock presets in the Bios, and the driver uses that to determine actual clocks and voltages, depending on demmand. On the Gtx 970, in particular, there are 4: P10 (lowest, 135mhz core, can't remember the rest), P5 (405 or 540 mhz, depending on the brand), P2 (your card's stock, 3005mhz on Mem, voltage lower than normal) and P0. MSI Afterburner, and pretty much every OC software outside of Nvidia inspector, can only tweak with P0, they can't fiddle with the other Ps. What happens is that SOMETIMES, when you put up an app that does requires some GPU use, but not quite as much as the full boost (say, a light game), the driver tells the card to go into P5....... and you get stuck there. No matter what you do, the driver locks itself and won't allow you to ever go higher.

 

So what can you do about it? "Reinstall the drivers!", said a certain noob above. True, that will fix it, but there are better ways to do it. All you really need is to "reboot" the driver for it get unstuck. You can do that via hard system reboot (duh), or going into Device Manager, disabling and enabling it manually.... OR, here's a SUPER QUICK method: get GPU-Z. There's a button called "extrac Bios". Press it. It'll ask if it can disable the driver for a quick while, say yes.

 

Done. Fixed. It'll quickly shutdown the driver, read the Bios, and put the driver back on. You don't even need to save the Bios file, you can just cancel it, what you wanted to do (reset driver) was already accomplished. It's a hassle, but once you know what to do, it doesn't become that bad....

[MoonFrost]

Thanks for the reply Imakuni, especially about P states, learn something new everyday.  And yea I had this issue for a while with certain drivers, then after a few drivers I never had the issue, but seems to be back with the current one possibly (355.82)  I have GPU-Z but never realized the extract Bios button, I'll look into that as well if it happens again, or the device manager, never thought about that. I just set mine to an even 1500MHz boost clock to look pretty, and 3901MemClock (cant get it to 3900) :c. We'll see how that goes. 

[KareemK]

On 9/17/2015 at 3:51 AM, Imakuni said:

Okay, there are 2 SEPARATE problems on this story.

 

First, the part where the driver crashes. OC is unstable. Plain and simple. For example, my particular Gtx 970 can OC to 1506mhz, 1510 causes a crash every once in a blue moon (didn't try middle values, though, too lazy). Reduce your OC until you no longer get crashes. That's just the way it is.

 

The second problem, is the super low clocks. IT'S A BUG WITH THE DRIVER! Pay attention to this, don't let any idiot say it's MSI Afterburner, or that your card is with a problem, NO, the problem is with the DRIVER. I personally thought this was fixed already, as it's been ages since I've seen it happen with me, but I guess not....

 

Anyway, I'll explain what's happening, skip this paragraph if you just want a fix without understanding what's going on. There's this thing called P States. These are various clock presets in the Bios, and the driver uses that to determine actual clocks and voltages, depending on demmand. On the Gtx 970, in particular, there are 4: P10 (lowest, 135mhz core, can't remember the rest), P5 (405 or 540 mhz, depending on the brand), P2 (your card's stock, 3005mhz on Mem, voltage lower than normal) and P0. MSI Afterburner, and pretty much every OC software outside of Nvidia inspector, can only tweak with P0, they can't fiddle with the other Ps. What happens is that SOMETIMES, when you put up an app that does requires some GPU use, but not quite as much as the full boost (say, a light game), the driver tells the card to go into P5....... and you get stuck there. No matter what you do, the driver locks itself and won't allow you to ever go higher.

 

So what can you do about it? "Reinstall the drivers!", said a certain noob above. True, that will fix it, but there are better ways to do it. All you really need is to "reboot" the driver for it get unstuck. You can do that via hard system reboot (duh), or going into Device Manager, disabling and enabling it manually.... OR, here's a SUPER QUICK method: get GPU-Z. There's a button called "extrac Bios". Press it. It'll ask if it can disable the driver for a quick while, say yes.

 

Done. Fixed. It'll quickly shutdown the driver, read the Bios, and put the driver back on. You don't even need to save the Bios file, you can just cancel it, what you wanted to do (reset driver) was already accomplished. It's a hassle, but once you know what to do, it doesn't become that bad....

 

This solution helped me. I have a GTX 970 that was acting up. Refreshing the bios by saving it via TechPowerUp-GPUZ worked!!! Thank you very much.