The Official GTX980/970 OC & Benchmark Perf. Thread

Domingo said:
I got my 980 last night and got to play around a little bit.

In Afterburner I set the clock to +200 and RAM to +650 and finished with a 3DMark score of 11950. I ran it 4-5 times and did get one lock-up, although I think it's because I messed up the setting for my fan.

What are some other people using?
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Same here, only had a little time to play with it. I made some good progress on finding the max OC without overvoltage. I have the eVGA SC (1241MHz base clock), so my offsets will differ.

The best I got on Firestrike was 13349 overall, Graphics Score 15738, Physics Score 13243, Combined Score 6278. This is with +139 core, +496 mem. From the OSD, I'm seeing 1493MHz most of the time, sometimes 1505 or 1518, with 121% power usage, 1.200v typical, 1.225v max, peak temp 71C, and peak fan RPM of 3591.

Pretty cool! I'm coming from a GTX 680 @ 1228MHz core, 3100Mhz mem with a graphics score of ~8100. I'm close to 2x performance increase...I think I can do it.

Playing around with a stressful scene in Crysis 3, I ran with memory at +797MHz (4308MHz) and found significant artifacts. 4207MHz had small bits here and there. The 4100 range seems promising...which is freaking crazy in my opinion.

Subjectively, the GTX 980 can run Crysis 3 at 4xMSAA where the GTX 680 can run it with FXAA, assuming both are overclocked. FRAPS shows basically the same fps, that is, which equates to 1.5x improvement. I also think the GTX 980 is slightly quieter than my 680 was. Both have the reference cooler.

I was worried about the reference cooler, but so far it's keeping everything below that 71C peak. Tonight I'll play with voltage, maybe the story will change.
 
my evga 980 SC only got 10800 on firestrike, you guys crushed my little guy
 
what a card, looking forward to what they come out with at the 980ti level

in my head the 980 is akin to the 780 in that it's not the ti or top of the line model
 
gigatexal said:
what a card, looking forward to what they come out with at the 980ti level

in my head the 980 is akin to the 780 in that it's not the ti or top of the line model
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I could see a Ti version, of course at the Ti price point. Personally I look for 2x performance for ~$500.

I'm more curious how the lineup will look 6 months from now. If they produce a 20nm part, will it actually have good dollar value? 20nm is looking pricey, so I'm not sure we'll see a big performance/$ increase like the 970 and 980 are bringing today.

Phlorge said:
2500k @ 4.2 probably makes a big difference in the physics and combined score right?


Skylake next year hopefully.
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Yeah. That's why I included the graphics score too.
 
Okay so everyone knows, in SLi the second card will run at a lower voltage than the first. I tried both cards alone and they both ran at over 1.2v. the slave card may run just below 1.2v.

I was freaking out thinking one of my cards was finicky.

Got my surround up and running but have an issue with my 120hz monitors running through displayport I'm going to need to find Active Displayport to dual link DVI adapters and they are hard to find and expensive. :(

Anyway, benches coming very soon.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Okay so everyone knows, in SLi the second card will run at a lower voltage than the first. I tried both cards alone and they both ran at over 1.2v. the slave card may run just below 1.2v.

I was freaking out thinking one of my cards was finicky.

Got my surround up and running but have an issue with my 120hz monitors running through displayport I'm going to need to find Active Displayport to dual link DVI adapters and they are hard to find and expensive. :(

Anyway, benches coming very soon.
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So is it better then to have your strongest card as your #2, since it won't need as much voltage to reach the same OC speeds as your weaker card?

I have my two 970's coming tomorrow (hopefully) but am new to SLI.
 
GoldenTiger said:
I'm having the same problem, must be a driver bug. Gonna try spamming the geforce forums and hope for a response :p.

EDIT: Slightly hyperbolically titled thread up! https://forums.geforce.com/default/...way-lower-voltage-than-the-other-driver-bug-/

Please throw in a post confirming you have the issue, anyone who does... the more the merrier.
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Looking at that thread he mentions afterburner and a way to individually set voltages. I don't see a way to set a voltage separately. I just double checked everything. Hmm.

I might switch to precision X just to see if there is any difference. If not I'll post in that thread. (if I can remember my nvidia forum login)
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Looking at that thread he mentions afterburner and a way to individually set voltages. I don't see a way to set a voltage separately. I just double checked everything. Hmm.

I might switch to precision X just to see if there is any difference. If not I'll post in that thread. (if I can remember my nvidia forum login)
Click to expand...


You just use the GPU dropdown in afterburner options, by default it links everything including voltage (he is mistaken on that).

(Settings @ bottom of afterburner panel, then you would click master Graphics Processor selection and uncheck synchronize settings, using the dropdown to choose which card is being edited. However it does sync everything if enabled including volts.)
 
GoldenTiger said:
You just use the GPU dropdown in afterburner options, by default it links everything including voltage (he is mistaken on that).

(Settings @ bottom of afterburner panel, then you would click master Graphics Processor selection and uncheck synchronize settings, using the dropdown to choose which card is being edited. However it does sync everything if enabled including volts.)
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Mine was set correctly too but still having voltage issues. A little bit of throttling too. I don't remember them throttling out of SLi either. Hmm

Installing Precision X now.

Also did my first attempt of tweaking and running my first benchmark in heaven. Low minimum comes up once in a while. Other times it's around 34-35. 2 instances of cpu-z instead of 1 cpu-z and 1 gpu-z (blooper)

Anyhow I thought this was a nice score and nice max fps. Still working on it though.

GTX980SLi3JPG.jpg
 
Lord_Exodia said:
Mine was set correctly too but still having voltage issues. A little bit of throttling too. I don't remember them throttling out of SLi either. Hmm

Installing Precision X now.

Also did my first attempt of tweaking and running my first benchmark in heaven. Low minimum comes up once in a while. Other times it's around 34-35. 2 instances of cpu-z instead of 1 cpu-z and 1 gpu-z (blooper)

Anyhow I thought this was a nice score and nice max fps. Still working on it though.

[*IMG]http://i1244.photobucket.com/albums/gg573/Lord_Exodia/GTX980SLi3JPG.jpg[/IMG]
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:D Nice...

There's unquestionably a driver bug here. I have...

1) Tried each card individually to verify they work properly on their own.
2) Tried each card in SLI in either slot (card 1 on top and card 2 on bottom, vs. card 2 on top and card 1 on bottom).
3) Pulled the BIOS file from each card and compared the CRC32 checksum to ensure they have identical BIOSes.
4) Done a full uninstall of afterburner and the drivers themselves, (even though it would make no sense, just because...), then reinstalled the drivers clean and left afterburner uninstalled, used two copies of GPU-Z to monitor (1 per card) and then run full-screen games...

...and the behavior remains identical through 2, 3, and 4. On their own each card works properly and will go to 1.243-1.250v on the core, but in SLI they power target limit at 100% even though the target is set to 110% and the card read as GPU1 without fail is always 0.05v less on the vGPU regardless of settings.
 
Hmmmm was just thinking of snagging 2 of those MSI's as well.

Just was curious to you overclocking guys, whats the max power on the msi's? 110%?
 
gamingarena23 said:
Thanks for that, damn that so close that neck to neck applies here perfectly :)

Just quick question what are the clocks of your Ti cards?
im running with default voltage and no tweaks like HT off and whatever people are doing to boost there scores, i just run the test in the same environment as i play 24/7.

980's are definitely faster then my Original Titans not the Black at 1110mhz that was the max i could get on them.

Just want to figure out what clocks 780ti needs to be like that on par with 1450/7800mhz 980'sGTX

The thing is 980's are not doing that great in Valley and Heaven compared to real world gaming, going by scores i got in Valley and Heaven compared to my titans you would think they are on par but in real games i see around 20-25% improvement on average, from Tomb Raider, Crysis 3, BF4, Metro etc.. some games show even more delta.
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On my 780Ti's I'm using Precision X (v5.2.0) with it's 150mV overvolt boost, 115% Power Target, +226 GPU Clock Offset and +275Mhz Mem Clock Offset. (According to GPU-Z, that's a 1362Mhz GPU core and Mem at 7560mhz.) I'm using EVGA's LN2 BIOS. Haven't bothered trying the Skyn3t bios that allows for more voltage in that I'm only pushing one 30" panel and the speed I have is more then enough for whatever I throw at it. Temps under full load never exceed 48C, and mostly hover in the low 40's under load. Idle temps are 28C - gotta love water cooling! :)

It appears that a 980 with a moderate OC can basically match what a heavily overclocked 780Ti does - all while running much cooler, sipping less power and providing an additional gig of GPU memory. Pretty nice! Maxwell isn't all that revolutionary, more like a lateral move to me, but a really nice one at the price point it was brought out at. And the dual GPU potential given its low TDP should make for some really interesting hardware offerings in the near future I would imagine...
 
With my SLI MSI 970 Gamings I'm also seeing a lower voltage on one card. GPU1 shows 1.181v instead of 1.206v when used alone. I haven't checked the power target because...

I got the MCW82s installed tonight. Unfortunately, the little heatsink on the VRMs isn't quite good enough without airflow. The temperature on the back of the card (behind them) is slightly higher than it was when air cooled. They need some air flow before I raise the voltage (and probably get limited by the power target anyway).
 
cybereality said:
Heaven.jpg
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That 3rd card doesn't seem to be getting a good return for the money. Lord Exodia just above you, scored just a few frames below you. With just 2 cards and running an older CPU.

This tells us 2 things. First we are not CPU bound on Sandy Bridge CPU's still to this day. Number 2, there is not much of a performance gain going over 2 cards even with a great CPU like the 5960k.

Cybereality, lets see some benches in 4K with those cards of yours, enough of this petty 1080p, hell 970's can do that! :D
 
I started tinkering with my RAM speeds and it seems like 500-600+ is my sweet spot. I got 3DMark to finish once going at 700+, but the next run froze it.
I think I'm just going to go with 200+ Clock and 500+ on the RAM and call it done for my 980.
Typically I've just set up Afterburner with a normal setting and an OC setting. I just toggle between the two when I'm gaming.
Considering I'm locked at 1080p (I'm on a TV), that should be more than enough to max out anything I throw at it for the foreseeable future.
 
GoldenTiger said:
:D Nice...

There's unquestionably a driver bug here. I have...

1) Tried each card individually to verify they work properly on their own.
2) Tried each card in SLI in either slot (card 1 on top and card 2 on bottom, vs. card 2 on top and card 1 on bottom).
3) Pulled the BIOS file from each card and compared the CRC32 checksum to ensure they have identical BIOSes.
4) Done a full uninstall of afterburner and the drivers themselves, (even though it would make no sense, just because...), then reinstalled the drivers clean and left afterburner uninstalled, used two copies of GPU-Z to monitor (1 per card) and then run full-screen games...

...and the behavior remains identical through 2, 3, and 4. On their own each card works properly and will go to 1.243-1.250v on the core, but in SLI they power target limit at 100% even though the target is set to 110% and the card read as GPU1 without fail is always 0.05v less on the vGPU regardless of settings.
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I tried similar things with the same results. I installed precision X but ran out of time to see if the voltage issue is the same but I believe it will be. Once I have 100% confirmation I'll take some screenshots and update that thread you started on the Nvidia Forums.

Edit: New nvidia WHQL. I'm going to try it and see what happens. Here is a link to the release notes http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/344.16/344.16-win8-win7-winvista-desktop-release-notes.pdf

Nothing in there about our problem. However since DRS works for me now, I'm going to make sure by installing this driver that it isn't grayed out by installing. Will try when I get home later tonight.

TLDR Recap: I will try Precision X and new WHQL Driver to see if anything changes on 2nd card sli undervoltage issue.
 
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Romir said:
With my SLI MSI 970 Gamings I'm also seeing a lower voltage on one card. GPU1 shows 1.181v instead of 1.206v when used alone. I haven't checked the power target because...
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Ah, good to hear it doesn't seem to be just me then for sure, that's three people now reporting it. Seems to be a driver problem... if you could throw your hat in here: https://forums.geforce.com/default/...way-lower-voltage-than-the-other-driver-bug-/ and confirm you're seeing it that would help a lot with getting an nvidia response I'd imagine. :)

Nice but bahhhhhh on the watercooling re: the vrm's :(.

Lord_Exodia said:
I tried similar things with the same results. I installed precision X but ran out of time to see if the voltage issue is the same but I believe it will be. Once I have 100% confirmation I'll take some screenshots and update that thread you started on the Nvidia Forums.

Edit: New nvidia WHQL. I'm going to try it and see what happens. Here is a link to the release notes http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/344.16/344.16-win8-win7-winvista-desktop-release-notes.pdf

Nothing in there about our problem. However since DRS works for me now, I'm going to make sure by installing this driver that it isn't grayed out by installing. Will try when I get home later tonight.

TLDR Recap: I will try Precision X and new WHQL Driver to see if anything changes on 2nd card sli undervoltage issue.
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Tried 'em but same thing here... also tried with no afterburner installed and just using gpu-z for monitoring in the background and the same behavior occurs after uninstalling afterburner, then doing a clean driver install :(.

Thanks :) by the way.
 
Darksword said:
So is it better then to have your strongest card as your #2, since it won't need as much voltage to reach the same OC speeds as your weaker card?

I have my two 970's coming tomorrow (hopefully) but am new to SLI.
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I missed this before somehow, Your right though, I'm going to do that when I get home tonight, it's logical.

GoldenTiger said:
Tried 'em but same thing here... also tried with no afterburner installed and just using gpu-z for monitoring in the background and the same behavior occurs after uninstalling afterburner, then doing a clean driver install :(.

Thanks :) by the way.
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NP, That sounds disheartening. More than likely precision X will do nothing for me. WHQL drivers probably will have the same issue for me too.

Once I get home I try those quick things and report back. By any chance did you try the force constant voltage checkmark in either program. (may be worded differently) I believe it send max voltage at all times even when on the desktop? That's another thing I'll try.
 
As just a heads up, I would encourage everyone to test overclocks with an actual game. I've been having issues where I can get an overclock that's completely stable with Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme, but then crashes Battlefield after 20 minutes of gameplay or so.

In particular, I've been able to get the memory to nearly 2050 with absolutely no problem at all in Firestrike Extreme, but it seems anything over about +150 (1825) results in a crash in BF4.

I've been able to get the core to about 1480 or so, stable in everything. This is all at +87mV, too.
 
Question for you guys - I'm considering the stock EVGA 980 but I notice it only has 6+6 power feeds. Won't that limit its overclocking potential, versus some of the other brand 980's with 6+8 and 8+8?

Conversely, cards like the MSI 970 Gaming have 6+8 power. I guess I'm looking for max OC potential. So if a MSI 970 will OC better than a stock 980 in terms of ratio of improvement, I'd rather get the 970 - even if its not quite as fast as the 980.
 
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odditory said:
Question for you guys - I'm considering the stock EVGA 980 but I notice it only has 6+6 power feeds. Won't that limit its overclocking potential, versus the 980's with 6+8 and 8+8?

Conversely, cards like the MSI 970 Gaming have 6+8 power. I guess I'm looking for max OC potential, price is less important, so I'm undecided on whether to go 980/970 for that reason.
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MSi said that the 8-pin is used more for efficient power loading on memory, fans and other components than it is for overclocking headroom.
 
Armenius said:
MSi said that the 8-pin is used more for efficient power loading on memory, fans and other components than it is for overclocking headroom.
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^^^ What he said

odditory said:
Question for you guys - I'm considering the stock EVGA 980 but I notice it only has 6+6 power feeds. Won't that limit its overclocking potential, versus some of the other brand 980's with 6+8 and 8+8?

Conversely, cards like the MSI 970 Gaming have 6+8 power. I guess I'm looking for max OC potential. So if a MSI 970 will OC better than a stock 980 in terms of ratio of improvement, I'd rather get the 970 - even if its not quite as fast as the 980.
Click to expand...

I would also like to add that as of now the TDP Limit of a GTX 980 is 165 Watts, a GTX 970 is 145 Watts. You can set power to 125% which gives you a little more headroom on both cards. Overclocking, voltage etc.. the GTX 970 will not let you go over that 182 Watts (estimate 145w + 25% more). The GTX 980 however, will go up to 206 Watts at 125% power. Once you get to that point both cards will limit you.

Hopefully Bios modding will be available soon that will allow you to Flash a custom bios on your card to increase the stock voltage and increase the power limit on the cards.

Goldentiger found that Kepler Bios Tweaker can allow you to back up the Maxwell card's bios and modify it to up the voltage to as high as 1.3+ Volts on the vcore and bump up the power limits. Right now the dillema is that we have no utility that can flash that bios onto our cards. They are working on it last I heard and ETA is soon :)

Edit: I wanted to add a warning. Brent did say in his review that the PCB of the GTX 970/980 are different and the GTX 980 has better power delivery chips on the PCB so a reference GTX 970 may be limited there. I have no idea what manufacturers are doing with their custom cards. Once bios flashing is available some may be limited by the actual hardware on their card.
 
My card maxes out at 1493-1531 boost range, I only got one bin farther with the 87mV bump. That's just for benchmark-stable, although Crysis 3 was fine for the half hour I played. 4112MHz for memory seems to be fine.

With that, Firestrike is at 13535 overall, Graphics Score 15955. I can't quite double my overclocked GTX 680's score officially, but it's basically there. I could probably get a run through at higher memory speed, but meh.

The memory overclock is surprisingly good, but I'm a little disappointed in the core overclock of +139. Maybe these superclocked cards don't have any more headroom than the rest.
 
Tomb Raider 1440p Ultimate preset
970 SLI stock boost (1329mhz) and overclocked (1600mhz core / 2000mhz memory)

 
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Lord_Exodia said:
Once I get home I try those quick things and report back. By any chance did you try the force constant voltage checkmark in either program. (may be worded differently) I believe it send max voltage at all times even when on the desktop? That's another thing I'll try.
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Good idea, but it doesn't do anything :(, just tried it.
 
Romir said:
Tomb Raider 1440p Ultra preset
970 SLI stock boost (1329mhz) and overclocked (1600mhz core / 2000mhz memory)



I ran fire strike extreme and saw it hitting the 110% power limit on the beta version of 344.16 drivers.
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I've heard of people getting 1600mhz core. Quick question are you cards water cooled or using a special cooler or are these cards really that good at overclocking on stock cooling?
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I've heard of people getting 1600mhz core. Quick question are you cards water cooled or using a special cooler or are these cards really that good at overclocking on stock cooling?
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They're that good. I can get 1570mhz or better on my cards individually (didn't try them very long, just a few bench runs before throwing em into SLI mode) but due to the driver voltage bug on the slave card am unable to do those speeds in sli.
 
Lord_Exodia said:
I've heard of people getting 1600mhz core. Quick question are you cards water cooled or using a special cooler or are these cards really that good at overclocking on stock cooling?
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I had 1600 and 1550 on these two with the stock coolers and stock volts. A voltage bump and MCW82 blocks is giving me the extra 50mhz on the second card. I bought three cards to keep the best two and it turned out the 3rd was the worst, oh well.

GPU 1:
72.8% asic
1.212v
1329mhz stock boost
1550mhz fire strike stable
1570mhz driver crash valley

GPU 2:
77% asic
1.206v
1342mhz stock boost
1600mhz fire strike stable
1630mhz driver crash valley

GPU 3:
70.7% asic
1.206v
1342mhz stock boost
1555mhz valley crash

I'm downloading BF4 and Crysis 3 from origin right now to make sure they're really stable.
 
Romir said:
Tomb Raider 1440p Ultra preset
970 SLI stock boost (1329mhz) and overclocked (1600mhz core / 2000mhz memory)



I ran fire strike extreme and saw it hitting the 110% power limit on the beta version of 344.16 drivers.
Click to expand...

For Reference mild OC on 980's 1450/7800 Ultra Preset 1440p
2014-09-25_00001_zps240d6aed.jpg
 
Just got my MSIs installed. For some reason it wants to ignore the OC every time a new program is run. My next step is to completely remove the drivers, and do a clean install, although I'm not sure if that would affect the OC.

I will say, though, that the MSI cards are a lot quieter than the EVGAs. Hopefully I can get these cards to 1550+ and keep them stable.
 
Happy with the single EVGA GTX970 SC I got.

3dMark Firestrike:
  • Score: 10035
  • Graphics Score: 11827
  • Physics Score: 10889
  • Combined Score: 4454

Heaven 4.0 @ 2560x1600 8xAA Ultra quality Extreme Tess Fullscreen:
  • FPS: 29.7
  • Score: 747
  • Min FPS: 18.9
  • Max FPS: 65.8

Tomb Raider @ Ultimate preset 2560x1600
  • Min: 38.8
  • Max 62.0
  • Avg: 50.7
eVGA Percision X 16 (5.2.0) settings:
  • Power Target: 75%
  • GPU Temp Target: 67c
  • GPU Clock Offset: +150
  • Mem Clock Offset: + 150
 
gamingarena23 said:
For Reference mild OC on 980's 1450/7800 Ultra Preset 1440p
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Oops! It was the ultimate preset. I had tressfx on.

Edit: Ultra settings:
8bWOu77.png

My gpu 2 showed about 5% less utilization on average for some reason.
 
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Just got my msi 970 in the mail. Straight out of the box it overclocks rock solid at
+230 core
+530 memory
 
Here's my result so far (and temps that I end up at after over an hour of play in BF4 and around 90 minutes earlier in Archeage with maxed gpu usage throughout) with the aim being for silent operation & low heat output. This is on a 4.4ghz 2600k running both cards at PCI-E 2.0 x8, to boot...

2187370


This is on the MSI Gaming GTX 970 pair oc'd and just +12mv out of +87mv applied through afterburner :) . Haven't tried higher low-noise game-stable attempts but I can bench much higher if I raise the fans a little bit and up the volts (1540mhz+ even with the weird voltage quirk I've mentioned before) :D.

I also haven't tried higher for game-stable sessions yet so this probably isn't the max OC (I am guessing I could maintain about 1500mhz give or take at about this silent operation and maybe going to +25mv instead from my initial toying around). Might try that later, but given I didn't dip beneath 60fps for more than about 3 seconds out of 10 minutes recorded (which hilariously enough was literally when I opened the scoreboard... I could see the framerate drop each time :eek:) @ 4k nearly-Ultra settings (2x msaa) in the graph there for example (and never observed under 60fps when I looked), even 1500mhz should be plenty for now until BIOS mods get going (or nvidia fixes their driver :p https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/777448/ ).
 
Christ this is annoying. I can't get through fucking valley without getting driver crashes. And now I'm dealing with SLI perfcap (which there is no fucking explanation of anywhere). I was hoping I could just throw these cards in and be good to go.
 
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