how does nvidia boost work?

[Kyzer]

does it go as high as it can based on the temperatures or does it only go to a set mark?

some GPU's have a boost of 1830, some have a boost of 1705...

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487261&cm_re=1060_evga-_-14-487-261-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814126115

 

asking because i like the ASUS card but i dont want to get into manual overclocking and evga lets you change coolers and still have a warranty as long as you put the stock one back on

[App4that]

The boost speed of your card will depend on how cool it is and the silicon lottery. So if you want to plug and play, buy the best cooler you can. Usually the three fan coolers offer better boost speeds. But there are some two fan coolers large enough to compete with them. 

 

 

[Kyzer]

2 minutes ago, App4that said:

The boost speed of your card will depend on how cool it is and the silicon lottery. So if you want to plug and play, buy the best cooler you can. Usually the tree fan coolers offer better boost speeds. But there are some two fan coolers large enough to compete with them. 

 

 

so if you LC'ed the shit out of a card it could potentially reach 2100mhz without any manual overclocking?

 

(say you replace the evga one with an arctic cooler, how would that go?)

(or if you put a better cooler on the asus, would it get higher speeds?)

[App4that]

Just now, Kyzer said:

so if you LC'ed the shit out of a card it could potentially reach 2100mhz without any manual overclocking?

 

(say you replace the evga one with an arctic cooler, how would that go?)

Probably not, the luck you have with the silicon quality matters much more than temperatures. Temps can only limit boost, not add to it. So if you took a reference card and installed a AIO it would hold it's max boost speed better, it wouldn't gain any boost speed. 

[Kyzer]

1 minute ago, App4that said:

Probably not, the luck you have with the silicon quality matters much more than temperatures. Temps can only limit boost, not add to it. So if you took a reference card and installed a AIO it would hold it's max boost speed better, it wouldn't gain any boost speed. 

So you're saying for performance it would be better to buy the EVGA, since it has a higher max boost? OK.

 

What's the temp for the card to stop 'boost'ing?

[othertomperson]

1 minute ago, Kyzer said:

so if you LC'ed the shit out of a card it could potentially reach 2100mhz without any manual overclocking?

There is definitely extra to get out of it by manually overclocking, even on air. I still have a +90 MHz manual overclock on my 1080s even after GPUboost. The automatic OC is still decent relative to stock clocks -- it's still 1911-1920, but it's 2038-2050 with manual tweaking.

 

Also the cards "throttle" when they are not being used. I recently played through Life is Strange (at 4K with 8x Supersampling because this game is about as demanding as Pong) and my cards were sitting at around 1300Mhz under 30% utilisation most of the time.

[App4that]

5 minutes ago, Kyzer said:

So you're saying for performance it would be better to buy the EVGA, since it has a higher max boost? OK.

 

What's the temp for the card to stop 'boost'ing?

All luck. You could get a dud from EVGA, or a winner. But so far the ZOTAC AMP! Extreme is the one hitting pretty consistently in the 2000MHz range. 

[othertomperson]

10 minutes ago, App4that said:

Probably not, the luck you have with the silicon quality matters much more than temperatures. Temps can only limit boost, not add to it. So if you took a reference card and installed a AIO it would hold it's max boost speed better, it wouldn't gain any boost speed. 

The two are intrinsically related. The Silicon Lottery just refers to what voltage you need to achieve a given overclock, and therefore how high the temperature will be (a higher voltage results in a higher temperature)

[App4that]

2 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

The two are intrinsically related. The Silicon Lottery just refers to what voltage you need to achieve a given overclock, and therefore how high the temperature will be (a higher voltage results in a higher temperature)

To a point, but with the limited voltage available at stock settings I don't see a card being limited even with a reference Pascal cooler through the use of voltage. You would see an increase in how the card limits it'self, but not a higher boost speed. 3.0 is tricky, the peak clock speed seems to matter much less than the average clock speed. Maxwell was easy, it boosted up to a point and under load stuck there until temps cased it to throttle. Pascal and 3.0 seem to peak at high numbers but then coast down to where the card can handle things. Why we see better performance in cards who's voltage and clock speed has been lowered, the all mighty average increases. 

[Kyzer]

13 minutes ago, App4that said:

All luck. You could get a dud from EVGA, or a winner. But so far the ZOTAC AMP! Extreme is the one hitting pretty consistently in the 2000MHz range. 

2000mhz boost or overclock?

[othertomperson]

9 minutes ago, App4that said:

To a point, but with the limited voltage available at stock settings I don't see a card being limited even with a reference Pascal cooler through the use of voltage. You would see an increase in how the card limits it'self, but not a higher boost speed. 3.0 is tricky, the peak clock speed seems to matter much less than the average clock speed. Maxwell was easy, it boosted up to a point and under load stuck there until temps cased it to throttle. Pascal and 3.0 seem to peak at high numbers but then coast down to where the card can handle things. Why we see better performance in cards who's voltage and clock speed has been lowered, the all mighty average increases. 

Eh. In my experience the average clockspeed is most dramatically brought down by things like cutscenes (which tend to be locked to 30 fps) or loading screens. The cards will "throttle" as low as 200 MHz if their utilisation plummets.

 

The other thing to note is that GPUboost doesn't only "throttle" clock speed, but voltage and power limits also. You can put the voltage slider all the way up to maximum, but if the maximum clock speed you are sitting at doesn't call for that much voltage (or power), the card won't try to apply it. As such, just whacking the voltage and power up alone doesn't in itself cause the temperature to increase. They do affect average clock speed however. I did do experiments with this. I kept the same overclock on the cards through multiple runs of Firestrike, and each time altered only the Power Limit. Consistently, having the exact same overclock but a higher power limit did result in a higher score.

 

Obviously if you can keep the temperatures down you stand the best change at preventing that being the reason your average clock speed isn't the same as your peak.

 

 

[Kyzer]

2 minutes ago, othertomperson said:

Eh. In my experience the average clockspeed is most dramatically brought down by things like cutscenes (which tend to be locked to 30 fps) or loading screens. The cards will "throttle" as low as 200 MHz if their utilisation plummets.

 

The other thing to note is that GPUboost doesn't only "throttle" clock speed, but voltage and power limits also. You can put the voltage slider all the way up to maximum, but if the maximum clock speed you are sitting at doesn't call for that much voltage (or power), the card won't try to apply it.

 

Power limit does affect average clock speed however. I did to experiments with this. I kept the same overclock on the cards through multiple runs of Firestrike, and each time altered only the Power Limit. Consistently, having the exact same overclock but a higher power limit did result in a higher score.

 

Obviously if you can keep the temperatures down you stand the best change at preventing that being the reason your average clock speed isn't the same as your peak.

 

 

i have NF-F12's for ventiliation (2 intake 2 exhaust 1 cpu) all at full speed (normal tan's)

if I did oc a gtx 1060, which one would be best for $250-270? i have a 144hz monitor, so gonna try to maximize performance.

[othertomperson]

Just now, Kyzer said:

i have NF-F12's for ventiliation (2 intake 2 exhaust 1 cpu) all at full speed (normal tan's)

if I did oc a gtx 1060, which one would be best for $250-270? i have a 144hz monitor, so gonna try to maximize performance.

No idea. Sorry, I've done zero research into 1060s. As much as people are talking about GPUboost 3.0, though, what AMD are doing in Wattman doesn't look any different at all to me.

[Kyzer]

Just now, othertomperson said:

No idea. Sorry, I've done zero research into 1060s. As much as people are talking about GPUboost 3.0, though, what AMD are doing in Wattman doesn't look any different at all to me.

480 gets better dx12 benchmarks most of the time but i kind of want a 1060 because i play mostly dx11 games. arma 3 supports dx12 with apex DLC but i dont think ill be buying that any time soon or if its even properly supported internally.

 

though a 480 is crossfire-able. probably wont ever get around to doing it anyway, though.

 

what would you recommend based on brand cooler then? msi, evga, zotac, xfx (dont remember if they make gtx cards), whatever

[App4that]

10 minutes ago, Kyzer said:

480 gets better dx12 benchmarks most of the time but i kind of want a 1060 because i play mostly dx11 games. arma 3 supports dx12 with apex DLC but i dont think ill be buying that any time soon or if its even properly supported internally.

 

though a 480 is crossfire-able. probably wont ever get around to doing it anyway, though.

 

what would you recommend based on brand cooler then? msi, evga, zotac, xfx (dont remember if they make gtx cards), whatever

The 480 is a great card but don't get twisted by the DX12 talk. DX12 is a new API with limited adoption and Vulkan is literally one game. Async on a hardware level would mean Nvidia abandoning CUDA, and that's not going to happen. It's very unlikely Nvidia will abandon PC gaming or CUDA so they will be working on their drivers for the new APIs, and the divelopers will work on their use of the new APIs and the optimization of their games. Async is a marketing term, just like CUDA. In the end the 1060 and 480 will trade blows just like the cards have for years. 

 

As for your choice, get the one you like and fits your budget. You can't reliably say one card will perform better than another. You can say one runs cooler, or has better software with it. But performance is 100% luck. I like EVGA because they DO have the best customer service.