maxwell Sort of oldschool Maxwell overclocking help. Bios mod

[Coddeh]

Hi Guys,

 

Let me start by saying I have a GTX970 and I know its an old card but it has served me well so far.

I've been through Kets Definitive Maxwell II (2) vBIOS Modding guide and toolbox11's overclocking guide as well but I'm at a bit of a loss.

 

The specific card I have is a Zotac GTX970 blower which has remained stock ever since I got it mainly because of the awful cooler design and how loud it gets.

It's the only graphics card I've never overclocked. I generally push all my components to the max when I can.

Recently the blower fan was annoying me at idle so I managed to pickup an arctic accelero xtreme IV for £20.

My temps have dropped from 80c stock clocks at load to 49c and at idle its super quiet.

 

I'm a bit of a tinkerer and bios modding doesn't scare me so I've had a go but I'm not really getting any different results.

All I've changed are the power limits allowing the theoretical max hoping the card will maybe boost higher which it really doesn't

The power supply is a hx520 with 6+2 cables but the card only takes two 6pin allowing for a theoretical max of 225w (pci-e slot plus 2 6 pins).

 

GPU-Z seems to suggest my limiting factor is pwr so am I essentially screwed because of the max power draw when it comes to overclocking?

 

When I put in a manual overclock on the core the card drops down to 1000mV which I can't explain either.

 

I've seen in the guides to mod the voltage table around the clk65 mark but tbh my card doesn't seem to get past the clk43 mark.

 

I've added images of maxwell bios tweaker and monitoring software at the stock state, increased power limit state and manual core clock overclock state.

 

If anyone has any ideas that would be really helpful!

 

Specs:

 

i7 4790k 4.5gh@1.25v or 4.7@1.32v when gaming

asrock z97e ac  itx

16gb 1600mhz ram

zotac gtx 970 blower with xtreme IV

samsung 860 ssd

corsair hx520

 

 

 

[xAcid9]

Right click on Furmark.exe and select delete. Use Valley/Superposition instead. 

[Coddeh]

xAcid, thanks for your help. I've done as you have said and the card is boosting properly now. I just need to figure out why volts are stuck at 1212mV. I have a lot of headroom when it comes to tdp and temperature so I adjusted the voltage table to allow up to 1250mV as per toolbox11's overclocking guide but still a no go.

[Coddeh]

So after some more testing and bios flashing. It appears that the monitoring software I'm using (GPU-Z and msi afterburner) is unable to read past 1212mV which is why it looked like my voltage table bios mods weren't doing anything. It requires some more testing to make sure but it seems that way because after a bit of overclocking I managed to hit 1529.8mhz on core and 1980mhz on ram (not fully finished ram clocking though) which seems unlikely at 1212mV. The voltage table is set to 1287mV max, I've also noticed that the voltage slider on msi afterburner does nothing for stability so probably doesn't work.

 

Also the perfcap reason in gpuz is mostly on pwr but it was on pwr when the core frequency was at 1250 and adding another 250mhz to it didn't seem to matter while giving a substantial score increase on the superposition benchmark.

 

I've now just managed to pip what was the highest scoring GTX970 on there at 1080p high. Got some more testing to do but ill probably dial clocks and volts back a little as the gpu vrm coil whine has gotten much louder. They were silent and now they are audible under load.

 

Max temp of the gpu after several superposition benchmark runs was 51c. The accelero xtreme IV is a beast.

[Coddeh]

So I've done a fair bit more testing and have come to the conclusion that the Zotac GTX970 blower card is one that is locked to 1212mV and no amount of voltage bios tweaking will push it past that. The stock voltage table goes up to 1281.3mV but wen ever it used to boost the voltage would drop to 1870mV or 1620mV. After changing some voltage table values to the max 1212mV when the card boosts it and there are no perfcaps it will stick to that voltage. The card tops out around the 1550mhz core which is about right for low end GTX970s.

 

Now what I want to know is how I get around the PWR perfcap? I've adjusted the power table values to the theoretical max of 225w for TDP and POWER limit (PCI-E and 2x 6pin) and adjusted the PCIE slot and power to 75w but I'm still hitting power limit it seems when running super position or 3dmark which is dropping my core clock speed.

 

Judging by the GPU-Z screen shot it looks like my board power draw and pcie-slot power isn't anywhere near theoretical max. Is that likely to be a misreading or is something wrong?  GPU-Z does show that the graphics card is running at 8x rather then 16x but that shouldn't effect power draw should it?