GTX970 "Spooky" Power %

[sikari2015]

So I've recently purchased a second GTX 970 with an open air style cooler to replace the much louder blower 970 I had in my main gaming rig. I've installed the Asus blower card in a second PC that I'm setting up for game capturing etc and the newer Palit card in my gaming PC.

 

I've run Furmark on both to check stability etc, and what's freaking me out is the Asus card in the older pc with an i7-2600 is scoring higher at 1080p and is reaching 120% of TDP... without an overclocking suite installed and stock clock speeds. The Palit card is in a system with an i7-4770k with much faster RAM, but Furmark is scoring 1000-2000 less using the exact same settings. Even with overclocking the Palit clock speeds 100MHz + it still scores lower and the TDP won't go over 110%. 

The only difference I could put it down to is I've got a more efficient 450W PSU in the 4770k PC and a 650W PSU in the 2600 PC. I've even adjusted target temperatures and neither cards reach it running Furmark so they're not throttling.

 

Is this just silicon lottery or do Asus cards commonly reach 120% TDP?

[TheKDub]

That's pretty odd, my Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 Gaming doesn't even go over around 80% power usage under full load with a +125MHz core overclock, VRAM OC'd to 8GHz, and +0mV on the core.

 

It easily could be either one.

[Jurrunio]

Turn up afterburner and check the power limit value is the fastest way to check the power draw thing.

 

Nvidia cards have GPU boost, basically automated overclocking that can't be turned off. It could be that conditions/settings on Asus cards allow higher frequency than Palit one, so it ran faster.

[sikari2015]

The wierdest thing is the frequency on the Asus card was still 1170ish MHz during the test, the only thing higher was the TDP of 125%. The Palit card won't go over 110% TDP and no matter what I set in Afterburner it won't go above 1303MHz. I might have to switch the Asus card back into the 4770k and see what happens.