GTX 670 - eVGA or Gigabyte?

[DarkRogue]

Hey everyone,

I'm setting up my new build, but I've been wondering about these two brands.
Currently, I have an eVGA GTX 670 (stock one, with the short PCB) mainly because nothing else was really available at the time I purchased it.

I recall a lot of people liked the Gigabyte card, setting aside the fact that its Windforce3 cooler is better than the eVGA stock one, it was also a full length PCB and also featured mroe power phases or something.

The heatsink is irrelevant to me, as I'm going to be throwing on an Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme III either way. However, the catch is I really only want to do it once..
I was originally thinking I'd run the eVGA stock until I snag a Gigabyte card, then use that one, but is it worth it at all? As far as I can tell, the advantages would be a larger PCB, possibly better components, more VRM, and Gigabyte's "ultra-durable" tech, which may or may not help OC's at all.

Should I bother waiting for the Gigabyte, or just run with the eVGA?

 

[toyota]

if you already have the EVGA card and you are going to change the cooler then just stick with that. no card has guaranteed overclocking and the card you have now could end ocing even more than the Gigabyte anyway.

 

[cppguru]

The one with more warranty and better/silent cooler.

 

[jor8888]

I love my asus none-top, total silence and self oc to 1100mhz.

 

[Don Karnage]

Just throw the arctic on your existing 670

 

[DarkRogue]

I guess the general consensus is to just stick with the eVGA card.
I thought there were at least some semi tangible benefits to having a full length PCB on the Gigabyte, but I guess not.

 

[xp0c]

I guess the general consensus is to just stick with the eVGA card.
I thought there were at least some semi tangible benefits to having a full length PCB on the Gigabyte, but I guess not.

Well for one, you won't be wasting half the fans on the Extreme III.
Bigger is better

 

[Don Karnage]

Just keep the stock cooler on it. It should easily do 1250 boost core

 

[DarkRogue]

Actually, I have no idea how to OC, really.

I'm just playing with sliders in MSI Afterburner and running OCCT.

Right now, I'm at +170 core / +270 mem which gives me a boost clock of 1150, and it's still throwing errors. :/

 

[toyota]

Actually, I have no idea how to OC, really.

I'm just playing with sliders in MSI Afterburner and running OCCT.

Right now, I'm at +170 core / +270 mem which gives me a boost clock of 1150, and it's still throwing errors. :/

what? there is no way that +170 would be just 1150. out of the box max boost should be about 1080 range so +170 would be around 1250 max boost. of course the power target would need to be maxed for it to reach that.

 

[Don Karnage]

Actually, I have no idea how to OC, really.

I'm just playing with sliders in MSI Afterburner and running OCCT.

Right now, I'm at +170 core / +270 mem which gives me a boost clock of 1150, and it's still throwing errors. :/

Turn the fan speed up to keep it under 70c

 

[DarkRogue]

I'll admit, as I said, I have no idea what I'm doing, so I could be quoting the wrong numbers.

Please tell me what numbers I should look at, I'm only referencing what I see in GPU-Z.

Currently, I have fan speed pegged at 80%, which is the highest MSI AB and eVGA PrecisionX allow me to go.
Power Target is 122%, maxed in both programs.
With 170 / 270 core/mem set in the program, GPU-Z is telling me that I have a GPU clock of 1085MHz, Memory of 1637MHz, and Boost of 1150MHz.

These settings just failed in OCCT, as it got about 20 or so errors in under a minute, though the drivers did not crash.

 

[Don Karnage]

I'll admit, as I said, I have no idea what I'm doing, so I could be quoting the wrong numbers.

Please tell me what numbers I should look at, I'm only referencing what I see in GPU-Z.

Currently, I have fan speed pegged at 80%, which is the highest MSI AB and eVGA PrecisionX allow me to go.
Power Target is 122%, maxed in both programs.
With 170 / 270 core/mem set in the program, GPU-Z is telling me that I have a GPU clock of 1085MHz, Memory of 1637MHz, and Boost of 1150MHz.

These settings just failed in OCCT, as it got about 20 or so errors in under a minute, though the drivers did not crash.

Run heaven with those settings

 

[toyota]

I'll admit, as I said, I have no idea what I'm doing, so I could be quoting the wrong numbers.

Please tell me what numbers I should look at, I'm only referencing what I see in GPU-Z.

Currently, I have fan speed pegged at 80%, which is the highest MSI AB and eVGA PrecisionX allow me to go.
Power Target is 122%, maxed in both programs.
With 170 / 270 core/mem set in the program, GPU-Z is telling me that I have a GPU clock of 1085MHz, Memory of 1637MHz, and Boost of 1150MHz.

These settings just failed in OCCT, as it got about 20 or so errors in under a minute, though the drivers did not crash.

ok you need to go back to defaults first. then just raise your power target to max and run some baseline benchmarks and look at your graph to see what it is boosting to. to see your graph full size just double click on the little graph and then let it run in the background while you test the card.

 

[DarkRogue]

I dropped mem down 5 mhz. I'll run a default thing for a bit to get you guys the info, but it seemed stable in OCCT for 10 mins at +170/265.

Going to reset to stock and power target @ 122%.. give me a few minutes.

 

[DarkRogue]

Okay, just ran OCCT for 3 minutes at stock settings and 122% power target.

GPU-Z now says my core/mem/boost is 915/1502/980, but the peak GPU clock according to PrecisionX's graph is 1058MHz. It quickly dropped down to 1045, then leveled out at 1033MHz.

 

[toyota]

I dropped mem down 5 mhz. I'll run a default thing for a bit to get you guys the info, but it seemed stable in OCCT for 10 mins at +170/265.

Going to reset to stock and power target @ 122%.. give me a few minutes.

5 mhz is not enough to matter on the memory so you need to drop it more than that. really you need to to see what your actual clocks are before you just go crazy moving sliders. you FIRST need to do what I said about starting over with just the power target raised and see where you are at. then start raising JUST the gpu offset. after you get a good stable offset then start ocing the memory. if crash then you need to restart precision as it can get clcoks screwed up after that. in fact its best to restart pc after a crash from having too high gpu or memory clocks.

 

[DarkRogue]

Yeah, that's what I did, I just didn't note down my starting numbers.

When I first started, I raised power target to 122%, and maxed the fan at 80%.

I then ran OCCT by upping only the core clock, and it seemed to do okay at +180.
Then I zero'd out the core clock, and raised memory clocks, and it seemed okay on its own until about +285.

When I combined the two is where I started needing to drop things.

 

[toyota]

yeah you cannot run them both at their individual max speeds. if you were stable at 180 then I would drop that to like 160-165 and then start messing with memory. you dont really want to be right at your max speeds anyway. listing your offset says almost nothing though as its your actual clock that matter.

 

[DarkRogue]

Right.
So with individual maxes at (apparently) 180/285, my current settings at 170/265 look fairly in line. I don't know if these OC's are any good though; I'm thinking they're not great.

 

[toyota]

Right.
So with individual maxes at (apparently) 180/285, my current settings at 170/265 look fairly in line. I don't know if these OC's are any good though; I'm thinking they're not great.

AGAIN that tells me nothing about your gpu speed. you need to list your actual boost clocks from the graph. my card can do 1283 stable but if all I told was +94 then that would not be helpful at all because you would have no idea what I was adding 94 to in the first place. to be clear my max boost out of the box is 1189 so when i go to +94 then that gives me 1283 max boost.

 

[DarkRogue]

lol, sorry. I'm trying.

These settings are apparently not stable, as I just got 31 errors on a rerun of OCCT.
170/265 translates to the GPU starting off with 1176, dropping to 1163~1150 for most of the test, then a spike to 1267 when I ended the test.

I'll back off the core a bit more and see what I get.

 

[toyota]

yeah 1267 is a bit much for the average reference 670. I would trying to keep it well under 1250 for now.

 

[DarkRogue]

1267 was only a very brief spike at the end of the test, though.

I dropped core clock another 5MHz, I'm getting 1172 to start, 1157 for most of the test, a dip to 1145 and no spike at the end now.

Edit:
I should say I have not messed with the voltage control yet..

 

[Termie]

First, if you're reading the clocks off of GPU-z, they are wrong. Ignore that app entirely for this purpose.

Now, before you overclock, make sure your card can hold 1058 boost with a 122% power target. I'd probably just use Precision's error scanner to test it, since it displays the actual clock for you. If it's dropping, it's the temperature. Might as well max the fan as well. Then let's start with overclocking the core. Add 25MHz in increments and watch how the card responds. In general, you should go up 25MHz in boost for each 25MHz offset, but other things eventually will come into play.

Let's just aim for +100, in 4 easy steps to start.