Voltage dropping from 1.25V to 1.225V on overclocked GTX 980 - unstable overclock

[Sourav93]

So I recently picked up a Palit GTX 980 Super Jetstream, replacing my 770. So after trying out the new card on The Witcher 3, Watch Dogs (I can FINALLY play this without stutter!!), as well as Firestrike, I tried to see how well it handled overclocking. The card is factory overclocked to 1203 MHz at core (1303 boost), and memory is at 7200 MHz.

So I saw that without touching voltage, I can go +150 on the core clock (Afterburner), giving a core clock of 1353 MHz and a boost of 1453 MHz. So naturally I started tinkering with the core voltage following that to get some more out of it. I did the usual 10mV increments, but while testing the card on the new voltage, I noticed if the voltage is over 1.225V (e.g. 1.25), it drops back to 1.225V within minutes into the game/benchmark. This leads to artifacting and also CTDs i.e. unstable overclock. Powerlimit is set to 125% in afterburner, with temp prioritized at 85 degC. Memory overclocked to 7500 MHz.

So any suggestions to why this is happening and how I can fix this? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Core i7-2600k CPU @4.2 GHz Turbo (H80i)
8GB 1600 Mhz DDR3 RAM

550W PSU

Palit GTX 980 Super Jetstream 4GB GDDR5 (ASIC 66.8%)

Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
 

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just a comment not really helpful but that 550w psu might get a bit pushed around with a 126% power limit.

[Sourav93]

Just a comment not really helpful but that 550w psu might get a bit pushed around with a 126% power limit.

Do you reckon that's why the voltage is dropping? Due to not enough power being available?

[Curufinwe_wins]

Do you reckon that's why the voltage is dropping? Due to not enough power being available?

It's possible. I honestly don't know. A 980 could draw 350-400 watts with that kind of oc I suppose and that along with cpu and everything else might be a bit too much.

[Sourav93]

It's possible. I honestly don't know. A 980 could draw 350-400 watts with that kind of oc I suppose and that along with cpu and everything else might be a bit too much.

Hmm, perhaps. Though upon further googling, I see this is a common problem for Nvidia 900 series GPU owners. A lot have said that their GPU voltage drops at load. I was just hoping someone here might have come across this problem and has a possible solution.

[worldwin]

Voltage drop is most likely due to BOOST 2.0. Boost balances thermal, clock, voltage yatti yatti yadda. Best work around to the throttling is to use a custom bios for maxwell to allow for higher voltage and power limits..

[Sourav93]

Voltage drop is most likely due to BOOST 2.0. Boost balances thermal, clock, voltage yatti yatti yadda. Best work around to the throttling is to use a custom bios for maxwell to allow for higher voltage and power limits..

Oh, okay. I guess that makes sense. In that case I think I'll just leave voltage alone for now. I'm satisfied with the performance of the card at it's current clocks. Plus, given that I play at 1080p, it should be fine. Maybe in the future as games get more demanding, I'll look into flashing a custom bios. Thanks. I'll give it a day and see if anyone else has a possible solution without flashing a bios, if not, I'll mark your reply as solved