First time OCing 980 Ti, Core voltage is now barely moving...

[Serath]

Hello, I'm attempting a first time overclock, on a 980 Ti, so far it goes pretty good, tried gathering as much knowledge as possible and with an educated guess to fill in the gaps I started overclocking the card in small step until trouble arrived. Which happened in form of the screen going black and not coming back. Further searching revealed this was instability or, a bad overclock? That could be solved by raising the core Voltage.

 

I raised it with 5 mV and did another run and it seemed good then, but that was only one wole run of Unigine Heaven's Benchmark, the settings are now:

 

 

Before: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10009928/Other/Antec/OC/Unigine%20Heaven%20Benchmark%20980%20Ti%20Reference%20Stock.html

 

After: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10009928/Other/Antec/OC/Unigine%20Heaven%20Benchmark%20980%20Ti%20Reference%20%2B5mV%20%2B250%20%2B300.html

 

The fan curve is a little lower as what was tested with, which was what Afterburner set itself, keeps it cool but is really noisy.

 

Further details, the card is a MSI Reference model, the GTX 980Ti 6GD5, with a ASIC score of 73.8% which i understand is pretty decent. During the benchmark I also noticed the temperatures didn't seem to increase much from the overclock.

 

So, my question is, did I do it right so far, or are there any tips on what I could be doing better? I guess for instance it was a bit earlier to raise the memory speed, but I wanted to make sure the card could outperform a stock Strix OC version, the card that I first had. (Swapped it with this ref because of future, tiny cased, plans.)

[Nacho Marco Segui]

Bump voltage to the max, nothing will happen

[DXMember]

use firestrike for benchmarks

[Serath]

1 minute ago, Nacho Marco Segui said:

Bump voltage to the max, nothing will happen

Wasn't the only downside of a higher voltage that the card will just wear faster?

[0ld_Chicken]

maxwell doesn't necessarily scale that well with voltage so I would NOT adjust it until you reach your max OC first

edit: what speeds are you hitting currently?  they aren't shown in your screenshot

[Nacho Marco Segui]

4 minutes ago, Serath said:

Wasn't the only downside of a higher voltage that the card will just wear faster?

I do that to see what my max oc is, then reduce voltage step by step, like 5 mv or so, i dont run my card at max voltage

[0ld_Chicken]

2 minutes ago, Serath said:

Wasn't the only downside of a higher voltage that the card will just wear faster?

afaik maxwell hasn't shown degredation due to voltage (at least cards are are hard locked under 1.3v which is almost all of them) 

 

Check GPU-z to see what limits you are hitting with your OC currently.  If you are hitting your power limit, then adding voltage will not help but will hinder your OC.

[Serath]

3 minutes ago, 0ld_Chicken said:

what speeds are you hitting currently?  they aren't shown in your screenshot

Oh, the card boosts all the way up to 1465.

[0ld_Chicken]

1 minute ago, Serath said:

Oh, the card boosts all the way up to 1465.

can you take a screenshot of GPU-z's sensor tab while you are gaming/benching?

that is not bad though

[Serath]

3 minutes ago, 0ld_Chicken said:

can you take a screenshot of GPU-z's sensor tab while you are gaming/benching?

that is not bad though

Yeah, give me a second.

 

Note: Forgot to set the fan profile so it runs a little hotter.

[Serath]

I notice VRel triggers in that graph which the tooltip tells is voltage limitation, that something to look into or is that normal?

 

Update: Oh, had a Display Driver crash with the setting while observing the GPU-Z sensor tab, guess it's still not stable.

[0ld_Chicken]

3 minutes ago, Serath said:

Yeah, give me a second.

 

I would check that fan speed, getting close to warm, unfortunately that card will be a bit loud, especially when overclocked to the max ! haha but the voltage is amazingly low and you probably can squeeze some more out of it with raised voltage.  I believe around 1.25v should push about as much as you'll be able to get without diminishing returns of heat and not much speed increases.  I'd bump voltage up in 5mv increments until you hit 1.25 and then start taking the core up slowly.   

[Serath]

1 minute ago, 0ld_Chicken said:

I would check that fan speed, getting close to warm, unfortunately that card will be a bit loud, especially when overclocked to the max ! haha but the voltage is amazingly low and you probably can squeeze some more out of it with raised voltage.  I believe around 1.25v should push about as much as you'll be able to get without diminishing returns of heat and not much speed increases.  I'd bump voltage up in 5mv increments until you hit 1.25 and then start taking the core up slowly.   

Ah, and yeah, I realised I forgot to enable the custom fan profile, it doesn't save together with the overclocking profile it seems.

 

So this card seems only a bit unstable at 250+... So, with the voltage increase, it seems it could go pretty far, unless you only gain a tiny bit for a lot of extra milliVolts.

[0ld_Chicken]

32 minutes ago, Serath said:

Ah, and yeah, I realised I forgot to enable the custom fan profile, it doesn't save together with the overclocking profile it seems.

 

So this card seems only a bit unstable at 250+... So, with the voltage increase, it seems it could go pretty far, unless you only gain a tiny bit for a lot of extra milliVolts.

1.155v to 1.25 is a decent jump that should make a substantial difference but your mileage may vary

[Serath]

On 3-4-2016 at 8:23 PM, 0ld_Chicken said:

1.155v to 1.25 is a decent jump that should make a substantial difference but your mileage may vary

Tried bumping the voltage, sadly, GPU-Z shows it doesn't go over 1.19 Volts for some reason, let me see if I can catch a screenie.

 

Update: It does actually manage 1.218v but nothing higher it seems, even when maxing out the Core Voltage and Power Limit:

 

 

Update 2: Looked up the issue that I'm having and this guy seems to have the same issue as I have. Sooo... I may need a custom BIOS?

[0ld_Chicken]

39 minutes ago, Serath said:

Tried bumping the voltage, sadly, GPU-Z shows it doesn't go over 1.19 Volts for some reason, let me see if I can catch a screenie.

 

Update: It does actually manage 1.218v but nothing higher it seems, even when maxing out the Core Voltage and Power Limit:

 

 

Update 2: Looked up the issue that I'm having and this guy seems to have the same issue as I have. Sooo... I may need a custom BIOS?

is that 1.218v enough to get you more core clock?

 

http://www.overclock.net/t/1573308/nvidia-gtx-900-cards-custom-bios-upon-request  

 

a custom bios will really let it run at its full potiential but not without its risks.  I've used this guy's (mr dark) bios for a while now and it made a huge difference to me.  He usually increases the base clock to whatever you want (choose a high but VERY, very stable clockspeed) disables boost, unlocks voltage and raises the power limit.  When I got my 2nd 980, he increased my firestrike scores by over 2000 points by modding both the bios with similar, good, specs  

 

AND he's a really nice fella 

 

Do make sure to thoroughly read up on the process of flashing a bios to a 9xx Nvidia GPU if you haven't already, it isn't extremely complicated (I mean, I haven't screwed it up yet after 3 modifications) but it is used through cmd and isn't for the faint of heart since you can BRICK YOUR CARD if something goes wrong  

[Serath]

2 minutes ago, 0ld_Chicken said:

is that 1.218v enough to get you more core clock?

It might, haven't tested it yet, I guess the card does that limitation, I noticed that it goes back more if the card gets too hot, it was when I reset the profile with the custom fan profile included, the card went a little past 80°C and it cut the voltage to 1.193v even with a max. over voltage it would barely move from there and only ease up when I restarted the whole benchmark.

 

4 minutes ago, 0ld_Chicken said:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1573308/nvidia-gtx-900-cards-custom-bios-upon-request  

 

a custom bios will really let it run at its full potiential but not without its risks.  I've used this guy's (mr dark) bios for a while now and it made a huge difference to me.  He usually increases the base clock to whatever you want (choose a high but VERY, very stable clockspeed) disables boost, unlocks voltage and raises the power limit.  When I got my 2nd 980, he increased my firestrike scores by over 2000 points by modding both the bios with similar, good, specs  

 

AND he's a really nice fella 

 

Do make sure to thoroughly read up on the process of flashing a bios to a 9xx Nvidia GPU if you haven't already, it isn't extremely complicated (I mean, I haven't screwed it up yet after 3 modifications) but it is used through cmd and isn't for the faint of heart since you can BRICK YOUR CARD if something goes wrong  

Hmm, depends, the card itself is also from MSI and I believe they're pretty laid back with overclocking, but I doubt they would still offer warranty on bricked cards.

[0ld_Chicken]

2 minutes ago, Serath said:

It might, haven't tested it yet, I guess the card does that limitation, I noticed that it goes back more if the card gets too hot, it was when I reset the profile with the custom fan profile included, the card went a little past 80°C and it cut the voltage to 1.193v even with a max. over voltage it would barely move from there and only ease up when I restarted the whole benchmark.

 

Hmm, depends, the card itself is also from MSI and I believe they're pretty laid back with overclocking, but I doubt they would still offer warranty on bricked cards.

I would highly doubt it, they put a "warranty void if removed" sticker on the screws holding the cooler on  whoops!  

 

I believe some are actually hardware limited at 1.218, I dont think that is one but I'm not 100% sure.  I know my MSI and EVGA reference model 980's both do 1.275v no problems.   the "boost" will do that depending on the temps, another thing to watch out for with custom bios, HEAT!  I changed my first one when I was using reference cooler and it was tough to keep it cool under max OC, quietly.  Mine are under water now so that fixes that problem.