Joining the Green Team, any advice?

[Geekavenger]

I ordered an EVGA superclocked GTX 1070 this week, it shows up next Wednesday.  I am super excited, as I have never had a high end GPU before.  I have been running a Radeon HD 7770 for the past 3 years and before that is was a 5750.   I have been super happy with AMD, especially as of late, my cards ability to run games it should have no hope in running has been breathtaking.  But it was time for an upgrade and I wanted to step into the high end tier.  This would probably have meant nVidia anyway since they usually rock this segment, but it wasn't even a choice thanks to how the two companies have decided to roll out their cards (i.e. Vega is still wayyy off in the distance).

 

So anyway long story short, I know nVidia is supposed to be better with driver support, and I am excited to dip my toe into overclocking the GPU and the GeForce Experience.  Is there any advice or gotchya's for a new nVidia owner out there?  Features to avoid, things to play with that might get missed, options or settings that are worth tweaking, etc.

[z97]

Not really anything different minus drivers. They tend to overclock 1000x times better

[BrightCandle]

These aren't teams, stop calling them that. They are very big well established companies competing for your money.

[MightyMic]

9 minutes ago, Geekavenger said:

I know nVidia is supposed to be better with driver support

This is just fan boys trying to one up each other. Both nvidia and radeon have had good drivers and bad drivers.

Historically ATI had terrible drivers (before they were purchased by amd). They were so bad that the open source drivers preformed better. That's no longer the case and both nvidia and amd have had good driver and bad drivers (which they now fix pretty quickly).

 

That said, both nvidia and amd cards use the same process to overclock just pick your favorite software (precision x, afterburner, etc) and go to. 

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

- Be sure to adjust your monitor colours

- Make sure that monitor colour is in "full" not "limited" (This will make sure that the colour profile is loaded)

- Colour profile is loaded a few seconds after boot, a lil different from how it was at AMD

- Don't be alarmed if your screen flickers when launching a game(its just a driver issue) 

- Multi monitor won't work if you have no drivers installed, so don't be alarmed if you have more than one screen and it goes dark on first boot

- Nvidia Control panel may crash if you try to use "Manage 3D settings". Download nvidia inspector as a work around 

- No vrm temp reading

- No Aux voltage control (not really needed)

- No free games LOL 

 

[don_svetlio]

A word of advice form me

-Do not install GeForce Experience. It has corrupted my OS twice. It's also cancerous in terms of forcing updates down your throat at the WORST possible time.
-Expect driver instability. Currently Nvidia drivers are worse. Have been since May 19th 2015
-Nvidia CP will crash
-No VRM monitoring
-Turn the NvStreamerAgent process off and disable it. It's autoconfigured to stream to a Shield device even if you have no Shield devices and as a result loads your CPU by 5% or so and may cause lower performance in certain situations.

[don_svetlio]

@Geekavenger Also, OCing is not necessary - Pascal's scaling is not great so anything beyond what GPU Boost 3.0 gets (1800) is rather useless. The difference between 1900 and 2100 is 2-3fps usually. 1900 is basically the drop-off point

[K0MP4CT]

10 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

A word of advice form me

-Do not install GeForce Experience. It has corrupted my OS twice. It's also cancerous in terms of forcing updates down your throat at the WORST possible time.
-Expect driver instability. Currently Nvidia drivers are worse. Have been since May 19th 2015
-Nvidia CP will crash
-No VRM monitoring
-Turn the NvStreamerAgent process off and disable it. It's autoconfigured to stream to a Shield device even if you have no Shield devices and as a result loads your CPU by 5% or so and may cause lower performance in certain situations.

I really dislike the tone you're setting for the OP. From my personal experience, I have not had any issues with my 960 or my current 970. GeForce Experience has never caused an issue. Never had problems with a faulty driver. Control panel has never crashed either. 

 

The other two points fair enough. But there is no need to command the OP to stay away from installing a useful app just because YOU have had issues with it. I appreciate others have as well, but as far as I can tell, it's not everyone.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, K0MP4CT said:

I really dislike the tone you're setting for the OP. From my personal experience, I have not had any issues with my 960 or my current 970. GeForce Experience has never caused an issue. Never had problems with a faulty driver. Control panel has never crashed either. 

 

The other two points fair enough. But there is no need to command the OP to stay away from installing a useful app just because YOU have had issues with it. I appreciate others have as well, but as far as I can tell, it's not everyone.

So if anyone has an issue with Nvidia's software your response is to attack them? Nice to see everyone fanboy over broken software. Instead of victim blaming you should consider what I am saying. Both times I updated the thing and upon the next boot-up I was getting BSODs. Do you want video proof? Cause I should also have that on my HDD somewhere.

[K0MP4CT]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

So if anyone has an issue with Nvidia's software your response is to attack them? Nice to see everyone fanboy over broken software. Instead of victim blaming you should consider what I am saying. Both times I updated the thing and upon the next boot-up I was getting BSODs. Do you want video proof? Cause I should also have that on my HDD somewhere.

I did not at all attack you. If you feel that way I apologise but there is nothing in my post that implies I was calling you out. I simply said you cannot tell the OP not to do this, not to do that, because of your personal experience. It's fine to say, "I have had issues with GeForce Experience" and in no way do I believe you are lying. What I don't like is the way you make it out to be a global issue, when it clearly isn't.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, K0MP4CT said:

I did not at all attack you. If you feel that way I apologise but there is nothing in my post that implies I was calling you out. I simply said you cannot tell the OP not to do this, not to do that, because of your personal experience. It's fine to say, "I have had issues with GeForce Experience" and in no way do I believe you are lying. What I don't like is the way you make it out to be a global issue, when it clearly isn't.

You ought to check the forum history here and on other sites. LOADs of people are having issues

 

[K0MP4CT]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

You ought to check the forum history here and on other sites. LOADs of people are having issues

 

Again, I did say, I'm sure others are having the issue. But it isn't global. It isn't happening to every single person. If OP doesn't experience issues, then he doesn't need to act. If he does, then fair enough.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, K0MP4CT said:

Again, I did say, I'm sure others are having the issue. But it isn't global. It isn't happening to every single person. If OP doesn't experience issues, then he doesn't need to act. If he does, then fair enough.

All I can do is warn him about the instability GFE introduces. It's his choice whether to heed my advice or not.

[K0MP4CT]

1 minute ago, don_svetlio said:

All I can do is warn him about the instability GFE introduces. It's his choice whether to heed my advice or not.

And I understand and agree with that. However, your first reply, didn't come across as a suggestion, it came across like a command. Which I said was the wrong tone.

[Bcat00]

8 minutes ago, K0MP4CT said:

I really dislike the tone you're setting for the OP. From my personal experience, I have not had any issues with my 960 or my current 970. GeForce Experience has never caused an issue. Never had problems with a faulty driver. Control panel has never crashed either. 

 

The other two points fair enough. But there is no need to command the OP to stay away from installing a useful app just because YOU have had issues with it. I appreciate others have as well, but as far as I can tell, it's not everyone.

His tone may be a bit bad but he did answer the guy's question. Geforce experience is a nice program but it does have the tendancy of updating at the worst tine possible.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, K0MP4CT said:

And I understand and agree with that. However, your first reply, didn't come across as a suggestion, it came across like a command. Which I said was the wrong tone.

OP asked what to do, I told him what to do. I don't see the problem.

[K0MP4CT]

2 minutes ago, don_svetlio said:

OP asked what to do, I told him what to do. I don't see the problem.

Okay, I can't be bothered to continue discussing this lol. I was just making a point about the way you answered. Doesn't matter.

[Geekavenger]

11 minutes ago, K0MP4CT said:

I really dislike the tone you're setting for the OP. From my personal experience, I have not had any issues with my 960 or my current 970. GeForce Experience has never caused an issue. Never had problems with a faulty driver. Control panel has never crashed either. 

 

The other two points fair enough. But there is no need to command the OP to stay away from installing a useful app just because YOU have had issues with it. I appreciate others have as well, but as far as I can tell, it's not everyone.

No worries, I really appreciate hearing the bad experiences.  I work in IT so I get that experiences vary based on a lot of factors.  Going in eyes open, knowing people have had these issues is great.  The plan after this advice is to perform a backup prior to swapping my GPU, which should have been my plan anyway.  Regardless I will still try the GeForce Experience, but I will be prepared for this failure point.

[don_svetlio]

1 minute ago, Geekavenger said:

No worries, I really appreciate hearing the bad experiences.  I work in IT so I get that experiences vary based on a lot of factors.  Going in eyes open, knowing people have had these issues is great.  The plan after this advice is to perform a backup prior to swapping my GPU, which should have been my plan anyway.  Regardless I will still try the GeForce Experience, but I will be prepared for this failure point.

This is exactly why I pointed that out - I didn't have a back up and thus spent 2 of 6 days reinstalling OSes rather than studying for my exams. Result was - extra stress.

[BoldarBlood]

I never really got the hate for GeForce Experience.  It's actually solved some problems for me and I was never able to attribute any issues to GFE itself.  It's also never "forced an update down my throat" unless a little exclamation mark over the icon in the system tray is forcing me....   I actually find it rather handy that it lets me know an update is available.

 

I'm also locked into nVidia with my fancy G-sync monitor but that doesn't stop me from using Radeon for family members that don't want to dish out for the premium.  They both have "issues" none of which would be game changers for me.  

 

I've only had 8 nVidia over the past years but I must be lucky because I've never had a corrupted OS just because of a GPU or its related software.  And the only driver instability I encounter is because I try to push the cards too far...

 

But there is one point that irritates me about my 1070 and the 980ti before it and has persisted for at least 2 years.....  the high core frequency with 144hz monitor while sitting on the desktop with no 3D load.  The 980 ti ran about 980mhz and the 1070 runs at 1500mhz with no load.  The only fix I can find is to turn my monitor refresh down to 120hz. As soon as you hit the "apply" button, the 1070 drops to about 190mhz.   Hotfixes and drivers dont seem to work.

 

 

 

 

[k2711000]

15 hours ago, BoldarBlood said:

I never really got the hate for GeForce Experience.  It's actually solved some problems for me and I was never able to attribute any issues to GFE itself.  It's also never "forced an update down my throat" unless a little exclamation mark over the icon in the system tray is forcing me....   I actually find it rather handy that it lets me know an update is available.

 

I'm also locked into nVidia with my fancy G-sync monitor but that doesn't stop me from using Radeon for family members that don't want to dish out for the premium.  They both have "issues" none of which would be game changers for me.  

 

I've only had 8 nVidia over the past years but I must be lucky because I've never had a corrupted OS just because of a GPU or its related software.  And the only driver instability I encounter is because I try to push the cards too far...

 

But there is one point that irritates me about my 1070 and the 980ti before it and has persisted for at least 2 years.....  the high core frequency with 144hz monitor while sitting on the desktop with no 3D load.  The 980 ti ran about 980mhz and the 1070 runs at 1500mhz with no load.  The only fix I can find is to turn my monitor refresh down to 120hz. As soon as you hit the "apply" button, the 1070 drops to about 190mhz.   Hotfixes and drivers dont seem to work.

 

 

 

 

This is a know driver issue. It happens on my 980 too. The driver is 368.69

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

16 hours ago, BoldarBlood said:

But there is one point that irritates me about my 1070 and the 980ti before it and has persisted for at least 2 years.....  the high core frequency with 144hz monitor while sitting on the desktop with no 3D load.  The 980 ti ran about 980mhz and the 1070 runs at 1500mhz with no load.  The only fix I can find is to turn my monitor refresh down to 120hz. As soon as you hit the "apply" button, the 1070 drops to about 190mhz.   Hotfixes and drivers dont seem to work.

 

43 minutes ago, k2711000 said:

This is a know driver issue. It happens on my 980 too. The driver is 368.69

 

Funny that nvidia and the nvidia fan club claimed to have this issue fixed "some drivers ago" but yet this problem still persists till today. Damn it... Looks like there's only so much one can do to fix a hardware problem through software. 

 

Well hopefully the next "new" architecture from Nvidia won't have this issue anymore.

[Lays]

18 hours ago, Pohernori said:

-

- No vrm temp reading

- No Aux voltage control (not really needed)

 

Depends on the card actually, in his case it won't have them though.

Most of the higher end cards have VRM temp sensors & aux voltage control, but lately companies have called it "PLL"(Cards like the Lightning/kingpin/classified/matrix) 

[Kinda Bottlenecked]

3 minutes ago, Lays said:

Depends on the card actually, in his case it won't have them though.

Most of the higher end cards have VRM temp sensors & aux voltage control, but lately companies have called it "PLL"

 

Yea, that's true. 

Classified, lightning, matrix and so on probably already have high end voltage controllers that would've had this feature.  Just kinda miss how well built reference 290/x pcbs were. Would've snagged one. 

[Lays]

32 minutes ago, Pohernori said:

 

Yea, that's true. 

Classified, lightning, matrix and so on probably already have high end voltage controllers that would've had this feature.  Just kinda miss how well built reference 290/x pcbs were. Would've snagged one. 

Although to be honest, I've never noticed PLL / AUX Voltage actually help me in any scenarios on watercooling / air or even DICE.  I think it's supposed to help cold bug on LN2, but I'm not 100% sure.