What causes GPU clock fluctuation again?

[OnionRings]

I honestly haven't touched my GPU since I bought it but I decided I'd OC it and get some free extra juice from it, right now I'm trying a 100 core clock and 100 memory and running furmark and its staying pretty cool, at 4 minutes in its only 56c, still climbing and ill edit in the final temp when it stops, but so far so good, but I noticed on GPU-Z the clock is fluctuating very frequently, but it can't be throttling not at 56c, so what causes it? I'm getting a lowest of 1354, it sometimes peaks to 1366, and occasionally up to 1379, but its mostly been at 1354. Memory has not changed.

 

Thanks guys!

 

PS : Power limit 100, temp limit 90c

 

Edit : 57c now and staying there, I also wanted to add a question I had I forgot to ask. Occasionally when gaming if my MSI OSD is on ill notice a power limit warning, however this card has no plug, it sucks it all from the motherboard, what could this mean? Is my el cheapo motherboard suffocating this card for power? (its an evga sc btw) or do I just need to up voltage?

[xAcid9]

14 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

Occasionally when gaming if my MSI OSD is on ill notice a power limit warning, however this card has no plug, it sucks it all from the motherboard, what could this mean? Is my el cheapo motherboard suffocating this card for power? (its an evga sc btw) or do I just need to up voltage?

That mean your card reached it power limit while running Furmark which is normal because it's Furmark. That card power limit is 75w because you mentioned it got not external power plug.

[OnionRings]

Just now, xAcid9 said:

That mean your card reached it power limit while running Furmark which is normal because it's Furmark. That card power limit is 75w because you mentioned it got not external power plug.

No it pops up even when just gaming.

[Jurrunio]

Dont use Furmark, but use a GPU-heavy games and turn up the graphics as high as possible. Furmark is known to burn graphics cards so Nvidia and AMD cards will actively throttle themselves when they detect Furmark running.

[OnionRings]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

Dont use Furmark, but use a GPU-heavy games and turn up the graphics as high as possible. Furmark is known to burn graphics cards so Nvidia and AMD cards will actively throttle themselves when they detect Furmark running.

Any other good programs to use? The game I play most is fortnite pve and it wont stress this thing at all.

[Jurrunio]

3 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

Any other good programs to use? The game I play most is fortnite pve and it wont stress this thing at all.

I have seen other people using Heaven Benchmark's loop function, seems to work.

[OnionRings]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

I have seen other people using Heaven Benchmark's loop function, seems to work.

Will try it

[OnionRings]

Hey what is this? http://prntscr.com/iqxqwy whatever it is it switches from idle to pwr back and forth

[Jurrunio]

1 minute ago, OnionRings said:

Hey what is this? http://prntscr.com/iqxqwy whatever it is it switches from idle to pwr back and forth

Reason of throttling. It could be voltage (GPU gets unstable if too low), temperature (overheating), power (breaking the 75w wall) and no-load (basically saying the card's at idle and it's trying to save power).

[OnionRings]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

Reason of throttling. It could be voltage (GPU gets unstable if too low), temperature (overheating), power (breaking the 75w wall) and no-load (basically saying the card's at idle and it's trying to save power).

So when it flashes pwr that means its having power limits? Poo. How can I fix it? Does upping voltage make my motherboard push more to it or does that only work with power plugs? Should I take the OC's off? Undervolt? Or would I need a new motherboard?

[Jurrunio]

5 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

So when it flashes pwr that means its having power limits? Poo. How can I fix it? Does upping voltage make my motherboard push more to it or does that only work with power plugs? Should I take the OC's off? Undervolt? Or would I need a new motherboard?

You cant raise the power limit because the upper limit is locked at 100% (only cards with extra power connector can go further). Any more and you might ruin the PCIe slot (RX 480 had this issue at first launch which is later fixed, you can find news on that).

 

Power is the voltage multiplied by current, so you actually want to drop voltage (undervolt) in order to draw more current without breaking the 75w limit (same on all motherboards btw).

 

I'm not sure whether you can undervolt though. Do you use MSI Afterburner? You can unlock voltage monitoring and controlling there. If you cant even see the voltage then there's no way of undervolting without modding the vBIOS (which will void the warranty)

[OnionRings]

3 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

You cant raise the power limit because the upper limit is locked at 100% (only cards with extra power connector can go further). Any more and you might ruin the PCIe slot (RX 480 had this issue at first launch which is later fixed, you can find news on that).

 

Power is the voltage multiplied by current, so you actually want to drop voltage (undervolt) in order to draw more current without breaking the 75w limit (same on all motherboards btw).

 

I'm not sure whether you can undervolt though. Do you use MSI Afterburner? You can unlock voltage monitoring and controlling there. If you cant even see the voltage then there's no way of undervolting without modding the vBIOS (which will void the warranty)

I remember the 480 thing yea. I am using MSI afterburner yes, I can take a look. if I drop voltage will that actually improve the performance? Or does it being limited not do anything other than obviously cap its overclocking ability? If I left it alone right now with the power limit warning, what would happen over time?

 

Also, its steady at 60c right now fluctuating between 1794 and the low 1800s on occasion.

 

Edit : fluctuating between 1000, 1012, and 1025 mv

 

Edit 2 : Dropped as low as 975 mv just now

[Jurrunio]

4 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

I remember the 480 thing yea. I am using MSI afterburner yes, I can take a look. if I drop voltage will that actually improve the performance? Or does it being limited not do anything other than obviously cap its overclocking ability? If I left it alone right now with the power limit warning, what would happen over time?

 

Also, its steady at 60c right now fluctuating between 1794 and the low 1800s on occasion.

 

Edit : fluctuating between 1000, 1012, and 1025 mv

 

Edit 2 : Dropped as low as 975 mv just now

Is there a small bar chart logo next to the core clock slider that opens up to a graph after clicking it?

 

[OnionRings]

Also how can I track how many watts my GPU is even pulling? I just turned down the power limit and turned off my overclocks and the MV dropped but I have no idea how many watts its pulling, and the power limit is still showing up. I also can't under volt in MSI it seems, slider won't go backwards.

[OnionRings]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

Is there a small bar chart logo next to the core clock slider that opens up to a graph after clicking it?

 

Yes

[xAcid9]

8 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

Also, its steady at 60c right now fluctuating between 1794 and the low 1800s on occasion.

 

Edit : fluctuating between 1000, 1012, and 1025 mv

 

Edit 2 : Dropped as low as 975 mv just now

Fluctuating clock is normal with GPU Boost nowadays. You can force High Performance in Nvidia Control Panel if you don't want it to fluctuate all the time.

 

30 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

No it pops up even when just gaming.

That simply mean it reach it power limit.

17 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

So when it flashes pwr that means its having power limits? Poo. How can I fix it? Does upping voltage make my motherboard push more to it or does that only work with power plugs? Should I take the OC's off? Undervolt? Or would I need a new motherboard?

You can try undervolting via MSI AB frequency curve, less voltage mean less power.

[OnionRings]

1 minute ago, xAcid9 said:

Fluctuating clock is normal with GPU Boost nowadays. You can force High Performance in Nvidia Control Panel if you don't want it to fluctuate all the time.

 

That simply mean it reach it power limit.

You can try undervolting via MSI AB frequency curve, less voltage mean less power.

Ok, I guess thats why jurrino is about to help me do and thats why he asked about the curve.

[Jurrunio]

2 minutes ago, OnionRings said:

Yes

You have to pull all the dots on the graph so that all of them lies flat on the graph, like 1400MHz. Click apply on Afterburner and it's normal to not be completely flat (especially on the far right).

 

Then you can pull the dots before 900mV upwards as a slope. The dots at the back will raise to the same level as 900mV point after clicking apply

[OnionRings]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

You have to pull all the dots on the graph so that all of them lies flat on the graph, like 1400MHz. Click apply on Afterburner and it's normal to not be completely flat (especially on the far right).

 

Then you can pull the dots before 900mV upwards as a slope. The dots at the back will raise to the same level as 900mV point after clicking apply

Should I try lower than 900? At 800 it was still giving a power limit in heaven. And should I leave power limit to 70% and no overclock?

[Jurrunio]

Just now, OnionRings said:

Should I try lower than 900? At 800 it was still giving a power limit in heaven. And should I leave power limit to 70% and no overclock?

The lower the voltage, the lower the clock you can get. This is good if you want to save power, not so much if you want to squeeze more performance.

 

Or you can start by pulling the second dot (counting from the left) and stress test it, step by steap as you raise it up. When the card gets unstable, lower the dot by 3 steps, then try with the next dot on the right. You might want to save the profile through Afterburner, so in case the freeze is so bad you have to restart the PC, you dont have to pull all the dots again.

[OnionRings]

Like this? http://prntscr.com/iqy1th

[Guest]

You cant pull more than 75watts from pcie, or it would damage your motherboard. If you wanted to overclock should have gotten a card with external power connector.