Has my card reached it's overclocking limit?

[themoon123]

I was doing some overclocking on my 970 and got to around 1500MHz and set the power limit to 120 from 100% with Unigine Superposition at 1.2v. I then stress tested it with 3DMark since Unigine doesn't have a free looptest and i noticed that the 3DMark stresstest hit the power limit constantly which got my clock speed down to 1470 and 1.18v. Why does Superposition only get to around 110% and 3DMark at 120%? Which one is the most realistic for a game?

 

Does it just mean that i can't overclock it further without modifying the BIOS (which i don't want to)?

 

I am using MSI afterburner.

[Darkseth]

1.8 volt? You mean, 1.18 Volt?

 

But yea, sounds like a Limit. 1500 Mhz~ for Maxwell is quite impressive and high.

[themoon123]

3 minutes ago, Darkseth said:

1.8 volt? You mean, 1.18 Volt?

 

But yea, sounds like a Limit. 1500 Mhz~ for Maxwell is quite impressive and high.

Yes i meant 1.18 lol.

It never reaches 1500MHz in 3DMark Firestrike because of the power limit but i guess i will just lower the oc a bit so it doesn't exceed the power limit.

[Jurrunio]

That's a cheeky thing done by Nvidia. Their cards doesnt go as fast as possible when running benchmark / stress softwares. Use a demanding game that creates GPU bottleneck instead (I use Crysis 3)

[Darkseth]

Nvidia didn't do anything there. If even, it would run faster if decenting Benchmarks ;-) Why should Nvidia gimp their own Benchmark results?

 

But higher stress = lower clock.

 

Play Witcher 3 in 1080p, and your Card WILL have a higher Boost clock, compared to 4k. Even, if both Resolutions give you a 100% GPU Usage.

 

 

But yea, for your OC values, your Power Limit is limiting.

Maybe try undervolting a bit, to keep it cooler and less Power consumption. Depending on how exactly you OCed so far, this might give you a slightly higher Boost in the end.

 

Anyway, just nitpicking kinda^^ it's not, like you could ever feel the difference between 30 Mhz more or less.

[themoon123]

47 minutes ago, Darkseth said:

Nvidia didn't do anything there. If even, it would run faster if decenting Benchmarks ;-) Why should Nvidia gimp their own Benchmark results?

 

But higher stress = lower clock.

 

Play Witcher 3 in 1080p, and your Card WILL have a higher Boost clock, compared to 4k. Even, if both Resolutions give you a 100% GPU Usage.

 

 

But yea, for your OC values, your Power Limit is limiting.

Maybe try undervolting a bit, to keep it cooler and less Power consumption. Depending on how exactly you OCed so far, this might give you a slightly higher Boost in the end.

 

Anyway, just nitpicking kinda^^ it's not, like you could ever feel the difference between 30 Mhz more or less.

My stock voltage is 1.2v.

After testing for an hour in BF1 i get some minor artifacting so i changed the offset in Afterburner to +150 clock speed and will try that.

[Ithanul]

Not bad clocks for a GTX970.  Air cooled I guess?

Maxwell is like Pascal, if you get the temperatures down, the card may go higher or become more stable.

 

But like others stated, 1500MHz is a darn high clock for Maxwell.  I usually only see that stable on rare gold cards on air cooling or cards under a form of water cooling.  To give you an example, my GTX960 will run 1440-1460MHz on stock volts with an air cooler, but smack it under an AIO and the card goes to 1551MHz with stock volts.  Maxwell likes lower core temps.

[themoon123]

Just now, Ithanul said:

Not bad clocks for a GTX970.  Air cooled I guess?

Maxwell is like Pascal, if you get the temperatures down, the card may go higher or become more stable.

 

But like others stated, 1500MHz is a darn high clock for Maxwell.  I usually only see that stable on rare gold cards on air cooling or cards under a form of water cooling.  To give you an example, my GTX960 will run 1440-1460MHz on stock volts with an air cooler, but smack it under an AIO and the card goes to 1551MHz with stock volts.  Maxwell likes lower core temps.

Aircooled GTX 970 Strix  Temps are not really that high, the highest i saw it reach was 74c

[Ithanul]

20 minutes ago, TheiBurger said:

Aircooled GTX 970 Strix  Temps are not really that high, the highest i saw it reach was 74c

Yeah, that temps I don't like seeing on GPUs.  But, that is me.  I tend to keep my GPUs below 50C.

In the case of your GTX970 stating power limits though, good chance the STRIX BIOS is the issue (I know the GTX980 STRIX is volt lock, not sure of their GTX970 STRIX model).

[themoon123]

4 minutes ago, Ithanul said:

Yeah, that temps I don't like seeing on GPUs.  But, that is me.  I tend to keep my GPUs below 50C.

In the case of your GTX970 stating power limits though, good chance the STRIX BIOS is the issue (I know the GTX980 STRIX is volt lock, not sure of their GTX970 STRIX model).

80C is my max for gpu's since their thermal max is 90c

[TheRandomness]

1 hour ago, Jurrunio said:

That's a cheeky thing done by Nvidia. Their cards doesnt go as fast as possible when running benchmark / stress softwares. Use a demanding game that creates GPU bottleneck instead (I use Crysis 3)

No. That only happens in furmark to stop the card's VRMs exploding.