280GTX Overclock

[ArchAngel777]

UPDATE 1/10/09

Was bored today so I decided to BIOS mod my card. Worked great. I am now running 702/1404/2486. Fan kicks in at 100% when temps hit 80C. All problems solved and no artifacts.

On a side note, I was pretty depressed to see once again that my somewhat impulsive purchase last week screwed me over again. It has happened two years in a row. About 1 weeks after I purchase a card, it drops over 100 MSRP. To be fair, though, I did wait and I bite only after what I thought would have been the lowest price a 280GTX could have gone for. When I picked it up last Tuesday, it had dropped from $374.99 with no available rebate to 304.99 after $20 rebate and since I was going to pick up Far Cry 2 anyway, I figured this thing can't possibly get any cheaper. Well, fuck myself, it dropped another $115 less than week after my purchase. That kind of depreciation makes me sick, but probably more sick if I picked one up at $649.99. :-/ Well, anyway, I did place an order today for another one. I suppose if I wanted to, I reflash back to origonal BIOS, send it back to newegg and pay a restock fee of 15% and then keep the one from buy.com. I'd still save $50 in the end, but I am not sure I even want to go through the hassle. Maybe I will pickup a 750i motherboard and SLI them. Or I might just cancel my buy.com order since I am generally opposed to the draw backs of multi GPU and don't really *need* any more GPU power.

BTW. if anyone is curious, I was able to dump my video card bios using NVFASLH.EXE, version 5.67. It works in Vista x64, and can be flashed in Vista x64 in the command prompt. True dos is a better environment to operate in when flashing BIOS, but I have never had an issue with the exception of the Motherboard in my sig. I bricked my Abit IP35-E twice. I had to create a custom BIOS rescue disc... What a trip and both times the BIOS write failed it was in Windows. But the board was flaky to begin with at first, so that is probably why.

Basically I did this

Command Prompt
Navigate to directory where nvflash.exe and typed in:
nvflash.exe -b 280GTXORG.ROM <hit enter>
It saved BIOS

I opened Nibitor 4.7, opened the BIOS file. Read the clocks and modified the fan speed and the clock speeds. Saved my bios in the same folder that nvflash.exe was located and called it something else such as 280GTX7021404.ROM.

I then rebooted Vista x64 and hit F8, I disabled the driver signing and loaded into windows.
I closed out of the majority of my background applications and went back to a command prompt, navigated to the directory where nvflash.exe and my new BIOS file were and typed in:

nvflash.exe 280GTX7021404.ROM <hit enter>
It asked if I am sure <y or n>
Hit y and the flash took about... 10 seconds and told me it was complete. Rebooted, all set. I flashed it twice so far, as I modified the fan speed slightly again after testing the card under furmark and ati tool. Hope this information is useful to some people.


UPDATE

Well, good news. I was able to hone in on the problem given enough time. I found that with my card specifically (and likely, all 280GTX cards in general) are sensative to heat when overclocked. If I keep my clocks at 675/1350/1215 I can run ATI Tool for hours, as well as anything else without a lockup. However, when I move the clocks up to 702/1404/1215 the driver will crach when the temperature hits 85C and ATI Tool would give artifacts when I hit 77C. So I set the fan speed to 100% which keeps it under 62C I don't run into any problems. The real issue with the 85C heat limit and the driver crashing is due to the shader. If I bumped the shader up to 1458, the driver will crash immediately even when the temperatures did not yet exceed 60C. So in my situation here, I can run 702/1404 without any errors, but I would have to modify the fan profile via BIOS in order to get it to at the way I want to. However, this is such a small gain over 675/1350 that I don't think I am going to go through the work. Just thought I would update everyone with my experiences. My card is not a dud and works great. This thing is a power house!

I compared my numbers to Anand's Far Cry 2 benchmark and was able to exceed his numbers by using the same settings by around 15%, which really surprised me. In fact, this was with 4X MSAA, TSAA (I doubt Derek test with this on, 10% performance hit on average), 16X AF. I also tested with the same driver version as the article 180.48. So I wonder why I was getting better results running the same exact demo with TSAA added to it on top of that - seems strange. Anyway, I won't complain.

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OP

I just picked up an EVGA 280GTX last night. The one I ordered was supposed to be clocked at nVidia reference speeds, but ended up being clocked the same as their superclocked line (621/1350,/1134). Anyway, the first thing I did was move everything up slightly. I bumped it up to 648/1404/1188 and it always failed right once it hit 82C and gave me a 'driver stopped responding' message. Well, I put everything back to stock and it seems to be running fine.

So, my guess is this. I don't think EVGA bins these things like we think. I think they just stamp them with a BIOS and send them out. Which begs the question - do their SSC and FTW edition cards just increase the BIOS fan speed threshold in order to attain these clocks? Althought I am not finished with my testing, I am relatively sure I could attain 648/1404/1188 if I could set the fan speed to move up to 100% by the time it reaches 77-78C, as it appears hitting the mid 80's causes the driver to stop responding.

So, my question is this.

Has anyone used Nibitor with their 280GTX? I believe you can set the threshhold for fan speed there. So instead of the fan ramping up to full blown max at ~85C, it would start at 75C.

Is there a program that will allow me to modify the fan speed criteria? I am not interested in a static speed. I want it to ramp up only when the temperature calls for it. However, when I used Riva Tuner in the past, I found the fan speed profile only worked when I had the monitoring window open within Riva Tuner. Well, I don't like to leave programs running in the background.

So basically, because I have not delve into this a lot, and don't have much time to test, I am asking you guys for some advice on the fan speed, and overclock. Perhaps there are some tweaks, or ideas to assist me in my overclocking adventure. Nothing extreme as I will be happy with 648/1404/1138, but it just can't do it with the current fan profile that BIOS has. :-(

Thanks!

 

[AzN]

I've done this on 8800gs and I'm sure it's the same for GTX 280. Just fire up nibitor and read the bios into a file and change fan settings how you want them.

 

[OCGuy]

EVGA's precision tuner has hotkey profiles, I wonder if they have hotkey fan profiles as well.........

Also, does it fail with just the core at 648? The memory might not like being OCd at all.

Have you unlinked core/shaders and done it that way? It could be the shaders dont like keeping up with the core.

 

[AzN]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31
EVGA's precision tuner has hotkey profiles, I wonder if they have hotkey fan profiles as well.........

Also, does it fail with just the core at 648? The memory might not like being OCd at all.

Have you unlinked core/shaders and done it that way? It could be the shaders dont like keeping up with the core.

It does have fan profiles but it's annoying when you have to press a hotkey before a game and use hotkey again after your game session.

 

[ArchAngel777]

I have tried EVGA Precision, and that doesn't really have much for options. I did unlink the clocks and tries to find out which one caused the problem. The memory never did and I was actually able to run it at 1224. But the issue was that it would randomly crash on me while in games. I havn't been able to do enough testing yet though, other than that it has been unstable so far.

I seen this link here which is basically the exact same thing I am running into. I went into Far Cry, turned all my settings to Ultra, enabled 4XAA, TSAA, 16XAF and it would run for a while (15 minutes) and then crash with the error "nvlddmkm stopped responding". That was at SSC speeds though. So I have dropped them down to Superclocked speeds and am testing, but did not have enough time last night to see if that improved the stability at all.

If I am still getting those driver errors at the stock speed, I'll be doing an RMA or a return/exchange with Newegg. My 8800GTS never gave me those errors and I do have an Antec Quatro 850WATT PSU. I know I have plenty of power, my system was stable before this card so now I just have to see if this thing even runs fine stock, because the difference between 621/1350/1134 and 648/1404/1188 is very minor that if this thing is fail after 15 minutes on FC2, I am skeptical if it will even handle an hour clocked one bump lower.

Anyway, I think 280GTX is awesome... Crossing my fingers hoping that I don't have a dud.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Well, good news. I was able to hone in on the problem given enough time. I found that with my card specifically (and likely, all 280GTX cards in general) are sensative to heat when overclocked. If I keep my clocks at 675/1350/1215 I can run ATI Tool for hours, as well as anything else without a lockup. However, when I move the clocks up to 702/1404/1215 the driver will crach when the temperature hits 85C and ATI Tool would give artifacts when I hit 77C. So I set the fan speed to 100% which keeps it under 62C I don't run into any problems. The real issue with the 85C heat limit and the driver crashing is due to the shader. If I bumped the shader up to 1458, the driver will crash immediately even when the temperatures did not yet exceed 60C. So in my situation here, I can run 702/1404 without any errors, but I would have to modify the fan profile via BIOS in order to get it to at the way I want to. However, this is such a small gain over 675/1350 that I don't think I am going to go through the work. Just thought I would update everyone with my experiences. My card is not a dud and works great. This thing is a power house!

I compared my numbers to Anand's Far Cry 2 benchmark and was able to exceed his numbers by using the same settings by around 15%, which really surprised me. In fact, this was with 4X MSAA, TSAA (I doubt Derek test with this on, 10% performance hit on average), 16X AF. I also tested with the same driver version as the article 180.48. So I wonder why I was getting better results running the same exact demo with TSAA added to it on top of that - seems strange. Anyway, I won't complain.

 

[chizow]

Sounds like you figured out the problem, but yes it appears that around release 180 Nvidia changed the heat threshold for the GTX 280 so that it throttles at 85C instead of 100C. As you noted, it will actually reset the driver and drop clock speeds to a low power state. The main issue is that the newer drivers also push the GPU harder (hence the performance gains) so the result is either hotter GPU temps or needing to run the fan faster to compensate. If the resulting temps hit 85C this can result in instability and the driver resetting.

I've had to increase fan speed to compensate and switch off AUTO in some games with the 180 drivers, as AUTO does not push the fan speed beyond 65% from what I've seen, at least not before the GPU hits 85C and throttles down. I know RivaTuner allows you to change the temperature/fan speed settings with AUTO but I use Precision exclusively now, so I just set up a few profiles instead.

Shader clocks certainly offer the least amount of overhead, and most results I've seen tend to cap out in the 1400-1450 range. If I set shader clocks to the next higher strap, 1417 I believe, I'll get slight artifacts regardless of temps. The GTX 285 stands to improve on this area the most imo, although core clocks still result in a greater improvement in most titles.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Was bored today so I decided to BIOS mod my card. Worked great. I am now running 702/1404/2486. Fan kicks in at 100% when temps hit 80C. All problems solved and no artifacts.

On a side note, I was pretty depressed to see once again that my somewhat impulsive purchase last week screwed me over again. It has happened two years in a row. About 1 weeks after I purchase a card, it drops over 100 MSRP. To be fair, though, I did wait and I bite only after what I thought would have been the lowest price a 280GTX could have gone for. When I picked it up last Tuesday, it had dropped from $374.99 with no available rebate to 304.99 after $20 rebate and since I was going to pick up Far Cry 2 anyway, I figured this thing can't possibly get any cheaper. Well, fuck myself, it dropped another $115 less than week after my purchase. That kind of depreciation makes me sick, but probably more sick if I picked one up at $649.99. :-/ Well, anyway, I did place an order today for another one. I suppose if I wanted to, I reflash back to origonal BIOS, send it back to newegg and pay a restock fee of 15% and then keep the one from buy.com. I'd still save $50 in the end, but I am not sure I even want to go through the hassle. Maybe I will pickup a 750i motherboard and SLI them. Or I might just cancel my buy.com order since I am generally opposed to the draw backs of multi GPU and don't really *need* any more GPU power.

BTW. if anyone is curious, I was able to dump my video card bios using NVFASLH.EXE, version 5.67. It works in Vista x64, and can be flashed in Vista x64 in the command prompt. True dos is a better environment to operate in when flashing BIOS, but I have never had an issue with the exception of the Motherboard in my sig. I bricked my Abit IP35-E twice. I had to create a custom BIOS rescue disc... What a trip and both times the BIOS write failed it was in Windows. But the board was flaky to begin with at first, so that is probably why.

Basically I did this

Command Prompt
Navigate to directory where nvflash.exe and typed in:
nvflash.exe -b 280GTXORG.ROM <hit enter>
It saved BIOS

I opened Nibitor 4.7, opened the BIOS file. Read the clocks and modified the fan speed and the clock speeds. Saved my bios in the same folder that nvflash.exe was located and called it something else such as 280GTX7021404.ROM.

I then rebooted Vista x64 and hit F8, I disabled the driver signing and loaded into windows.
I closed out of the majority of my background applications and went back to a command prompt, navigated to the directory where nvflash.exe and my new BIOS file were and typed in:

nvflash.exe 280GTX7021404.ROM <hit enter>
It asked if I am sure <y or n>
Hit y and the flash took about... 10 seconds and told me it was complete. Rebooted, all set. I flashed it twice so far, as I modified the fan speed slightly again after testing the card under furmark and ati tool. Hope this information is useful to some people.

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
UPDATE 1/10/09

Was bored today so I decided to BIOS mod my card. Worked great. I am now running 702/1404/2486. Fan kicks in at 100% when temps hit 80C. All problems solved and no artifacts.

On a side note, I was pretty depressed to see once again that my somewhat impulsive purchase last week screwed me over again. It has happened two years in a row. About 1 weeks after I purchase a card, it drops over 100 MSRP. To be fair, though, I did wait and I bite only after what I thought would have been the lowest price a 280GTX could have gone for. When I picked it up last Tuesday, it had dropped from $374.99 with no available rebate to 304.99 after $20 rebate and since I was going to pick up Far Cry 2 anyway, I figured this thing can't possibly get any cheaper. Well, fuck myself, it dropped another $115 less than week after my purchase. That kind of depreciation makes me sick, but probably more sick if I picked one up at $649.99. :-/ Well, anyway, I did place an order today for another one. I suppose if I wanted to, I reflash back to origonal BIOS, send it back to newegg and pay a restock fee of 15% and then keep the one from buy.com. I'd still save $50 in the end, but I am not sure I even want to go through the hassle. Maybe I will pickup a 750i motherboard and SLI them. Or I might just cancel my buy.com order since I am generally opposed to the draw backs of multi GPU and don't really *need* any more GPU power.

That's what i did today. I bought two of the GTX280's from buy.com and picked up a s775 MSI Platinum 750i motherboard from the "open box" section at newegg for $74 shipped.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: jaredpace

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
UPDATE 1/10/09

Was bored today so I decided to BIOS mod my card. Worked great. I am now running 702/1404/2486. Fan kicks in at 100% when temps hit 80C. All problems solved and no artifacts.

On a side note, I was pretty depressed to see once again that my somewhat impulsive purchase last week screwed me over again. It has happened two years in a row. About 1 weeks after I purchase a card, it drops over 100 MSRP. To be fair, though, I did wait and I bite only after what I thought would have been the lowest price a 280GTX could have gone for. When I picked it up last Tuesday, it had dropped from $374.99 with no available rebate to 304.99 after $20 rebate and since I was going to pick up Far Cry 2 anyway, I figured this thing can't possibly get any cheaper. Well, fuck myself, it dropped another $115 less than week after my purchase. That kind of depreciation makes me sick, but probably more sick if I picked one up at $649.99. :-/ Well, anyway, I did place an order today for another one. I suppose if I wanted to, I reflash back to origonal BIOS, send it back to newegg and pay a restock fee of 15% and then keep the one from buy.com. I'd still save $50 in the end, but I am not sure I even want to go through the hassle. Maybe I will pickup a 750i motherboard and SLI them. Or I might just cancel my buy.com order since I am generally opposed to the draw backs of multi GPU and don't really *need* any more GPU power.

That's what i did today. I bought two of the GTX280's from buy.com and picked up a s775 MSI Platinum 750i motherboard from the "open box" section at newegg for $74 shipped.

Cool, I may do that, but I know from past experience and the experience from some others on this forum that the nVidia based motherboards are inferior to Intel when it comes to CPU overclocking. I already have my Q6600 running at 3.6Ghz, and I am worried that I'll have a bitch of a time getting a 750i stable at those speeds. I know the 680I was a POS in that regards. I have personal experience with those boards and what a trip. I couldn't ever get those things stable. Seemed like a real flaky chipset.

 

[OCGuy]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777

Originally posted by: jaredpace

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
UPDATE 1/10/09

Was bored today so I decided to BIOS mod my card. Worked great. I am now running 702/1404/2486. Fan kicks in at 100% when temps hit 80C. All problems solved and no artifacts.

On a side note, I was pretty depressed to see once again that my somewhat impulsive purchase last week screwed me over again. It has happened two years in a row. About 1 weeks after I purchase a card, it drops over 100 MSRP. To be fair, though, I did wait and I bite only after what I thought would have been the lowest price a 280GTX could have gone for. When I picked it up last Tuesday, it had dropped from $374.99 with no available rebate to 304.99 after $20 rebate and since I was going to pick up Far Cry 2 anyway, I figured this thing can't possibly get any cheaper. Well, fuck myself, it dropped another $115 less than week after my purchase. That kind of depreciation makes me sick, but probably more sick if I picked one up at $649.99. :-/ Well, anyway, I did place an order today for another one. I suppose if I wanted to, I reflash back to origonal BIOS, send it back to newegg and pay a restock fee of 15% and then keep the one from buy.com. I'd still save $50 in the end, but I am not sure I even want to go through the hassle. Maybe I will pickup a 750i motherboard and SLI them. Or I might just cancel my buy.com order since I am generally opposed to the draw backs of multi GPU and don't really *need* any more GPU power.

That's what i did today. I bought two of the GTX280's from buy.com and picked up a s775 MSI Platinum 750i motherboard from the "open box" section at newegg for $74 shipped.

Cool, I may do that, but I know from past experience and the experience from some others on this forum that the nVidia based motherboards are inferior to Intel when it comes to CPU overclocking. I already have my Q6600 running at 3.6Ghz, and I am worried that I'll have a bitch of a time getting a 750i stable at those speeds. I know the 680I was a POS in that regards. I have personal experience with those boards and what a trip. I couldn't ever get those things stable. Seemed like a real flaky chipset.

The wierd thing is my 750i "FTW" edition is the best overclocker (at least for a duo core) I have ever had. .01 vdroop without a pencil mod.

My ASUS P5KC was almost a full .1 vdroop, which held me back :/


I wish it wasnt such a lottery.......

 

[Tempered81]

It's flaky for sure. I'm going to go ahead and test the muddy ass waters - there's no other choice since you can't put $180 GTX280's on a P45 and SLI them. Shame on NV - they could have sold millions more Nvidia gpus if they would let us sli on the Intel chipsets.

hahah. Ironic. Looking back it's got to be so clear to them now.
:roll:

I also just came from an IP35-E and E8400. Not sure about NV motherboards - but I have seen 5ghz+ overclocks on them. And I absolutely agree with you that it's going to be more difficult to keep an overclock stable on them. One of the best vids I saw on Youtube was the one where the fella shows how to repair a broken 680i motherboard. He sets it on a chopping board, narrating the repair procedure hes about to make, and then out of nowhere... WHAM! A sledge hammer comes down on the motherboard.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: Ocguy31

The wierd thing is my 750i "FTW" edition is the best overclocker (at least for a duo core) I have ever had. .01 vdroop without a pencil mod.

My ASUS P5KC was almost a full .1 vdroop, which held me back :/


I wish it wasnt such a lottery.......

Thanks for the information. I looked up a few reviews on that motherboard and will probably pick that up. Newegg has it for 169.99 - 30 MIR currently. I already have the CPU, the water block, the ram... Basically, I can swap out the motherboard and and pop in another 280 GTX.

 

[AzN]

Pity you couldn't wait to upgrade. It's already sold out at this point. Price is back up now. Lucky for you and me we pulled the trigger. I got one of those GTX 280 even though I don't even have a power supply to run it.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Well, I did a bit of research, not too much though, but it appears that SLI does not scale as well in minimum frame rates as it does in average frame rate... So, I'll probably give it to my dad and take his 260GTX back and sell it to a friend with what it could cost to restock ($169.99). That way he gets another free upgrade... Then I will just step up with mine to a 285GTX.

 

[LittleNemoNES]

lol

dude, you were warned before you bought the GTX 280 when you were still in the 'research' stage: link w/me telling you to wait

Some new high end cards came out this week so of course it was going to go down in price.

Better luck next time

 

[ArchAngel777]

Originally posted by: gersson
lol

dude, you were warned before you bought the GTX 280 when you were still in the 'research' stage: link w/me telling you to wait

Some new high end cards came out this week so of course it was going to go down in price.

Better luck next time

A couple of things here, because you don't know all the pieces to the puzzle.

1) At that time, the best GTX price was 334.99 AR, and it was from TD and I had to pay shipping. So about 344.99.
2) I waited until the 7th, when news hit that the 285GTX would not be released on the 8th, but instead a week after.
3) The morning of the 7th, most of the 280GTX on www.newegg.com had $100 IR, on top of the mail in rebate. So, this was the price drop that I 'expected'. I don't think ANYONE in their right mind believed that the 280GTX would have dropped to 191AR. If they did, they are lieing or are insiders at buy.com. There is just no fucking way anyone could predicted that the 280GTX would have dropped to BELOW 260GTX price levels. That was an anomoly, an Act of God if you will.

So, there is the correct story. I thought the price dropped happened it didn't (although, this remains to be seen as there are rumors of cancellations on buy.com).

If you look on buy.com now, ALL of their 280GTX cards are now back in the mid $300 range. Also, some people are receiving emails of cancellation. I am crossing my fingers, but it is possible this was a price mistake. Yes, all of the 280GTX's may have been price mistakes. Who knows, maybe it was confused with the 260GTXs, etc... I don't know. But this was a very 'strange' price drop and something I have never seen with a high end video card. So, I rest my case, there is no way anyone could have predicted this type of thing and it will remain to be seen if orders are cancelled or honored. I know that the PNY and BFG cards at $225 and $245 respectively would not have sold anywear near as many as the eVGA cards, so the fact that their price shot up indicates this was a 'model' price mistake, or at the very least, a short fire sale to deplete 'some' of the stock.

AND - I almost slept in today... My wife was watching my kids, so it was possible that I would have woken up and missed the deal and still had no graphics card. So, as you can tell, I not so bummed about my purchase anymore. After going through the scenario in my head, it seemed less a bad choice and more of just randomness or luck, or whatever you want to call it.

 

[AzN]

Yeah. From over $400 couple of weeks ago to $200 is out of this world price cuts.

 

[Hauk]

Don't beat yourself up about today's price run. Sure it was a great deal, but it wasn't fun. I spent nearly fours hours trying to get a confirmed payment. I was emailing buy.com, on ebay, on buy.com, on my credit card's site, and on paypal's site all at the same time trying to complete a freakin purchase. In the end, I ended up with four when I wanted two. I'm not complaining, but what a fiasco. Besides, it's gone, prices are up again. In reality, you didn't get a bad deal..

 

[OCNewbie]

If someone hasn't yet suggested it... Keep the buy.com one and try to resell it. You should be able to get $300+ for it I'd imagine.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Looks like I was right... It was a price mistake. My order was cancelled and I was one of the first to order. Everyone is getting mass cancellations... They did honor a few of them though, I think less than 10%.

 

[Zap]

Originally posted by: ArchAngel777
On a side note, I was pretty depressed to see once again that my somewhat impulsive purchase last week screwed me over again. It has happened two years in a row. About 1 weeks after I purchase a card, it drops over 100 MSRP.

Don't sweat it. That's just the nature of buying computer stuff. I purchased two MSI Wind netbooks at $500/ea and within the month regular price dropped to $450 (and now around $400-430) and a slightly cut-down version goes for around $350. *SHRUG*