[H]NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN Overclocking Review

[Jaydip]

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/04/29/nvidia_geforce_gtx_titan_overclocking_review#.UX9Vo6ITLVE

"We've already praised the GeForce GTX TITAN for giving us a great gameplay experience, surpassing every single-GPU video card out there. Now we can say that there is some headroom left in TITAN to squeeze out even more performance for the enthusiast gamer. Keep the GPU cool, increase the fan speed while gaming, and set GPU Offset to at least +100. This should give you a solid 200MHz increase, making things better. If you want to go to the extreme, those out there may be able to get 300MHz, or mor. If you want a "safe" overclock, keep it in the 100-200MHz OC range, if you want the extreme, go for 300MHz more from the base clock. At any rate, the TITAN is very much an enthusiast’s video card, and it is nice to know overclocking works well on this power hungry, high-end video card."

There are couple interesting takeaway from this article.

1.Titan scales well just like Fermi.While GK104 was disappointing in this front Titan is not.

2.Technically Titan can draw only 15 watts more in the max performance settings but it is drawing 50 watts more.How NV defines TDP? seems to me there is a lot of lee-way.

 

[alcoholbob]

Review card basically performs the same as my retail card.

 

[Lepton87]

yeah, 300MHz offset ? Wishful thinking for most, mine does 135MHz and that's it. Memory? Can't be touched at all.

 

[Fx1]

Titan sounds gimped.

7970 memory at 1800mhz.. why cant Titan memory go that high?

 

[alcoholbob]

yeah, 300MHz offset ? Wishful thinking for most, mine does 135MHz and that's it. Memory? Can't be touched at all.

What are you talking about? They only managed to run about 150MHz offset in the review.

The world record stable OC is 1659MHz core on the Titan though, so even 600MHz offset is possible with hacked BIOS (and LN2).

 

[alcoholbob]

Titan sounds gimped.

7970 memory at 1800mhz.. why cant Titan memory go that high?

I dunno, could be partly TDP issue, or it could be certain games stress memory more than others.

I can run my memory overclock at 400MHz offset in Witcher 2 or NWN2 for hours, no problem, but I can't even load a game in Crysis 3 with ANY memory overclock (tested as little as 30MHz) or the game crashes. Hell I even played for about 10 minutes with a 600MHz offset on memory once in Withcer 2 with no problem (only gave me 1 extra fps...)

3DMark 13 was also just like Crysis 3, tests crash with any memory overclock.

I have no problems in DX9, but any mem overclock in DX11 is auto-crash.

 

[lavaheadache]

You guys that are overclocking your Titan's, Are you touching the voltage slider aswell?. I run mine with 100mhz offset on stock voltage. Just curious how high you guys are running your cards and with how much juice you are putting through them.

 

[Grooveriding]

You guys that are overclocking your Titan's, Are you touching the voltage slider aswell?. I run mine with 100mhz offset on stock voltage. Just curious how high you guys are running your cards and with how much juice you are putting through them.

Didn't read the review yet, but, I noticed when increasing the max possible voltage bins that it also caused the card to boost to a higher clock with no clock offset adjustments.

You get those three additional options to increase voltage bins; .13mv, .25mv & .38mv. Just adjusting up through those will cause your card's core to boost higher, no need to adjust the actual offset clock, although you can do that as well. This is how my card behaves using the stock BIOS. I did not play with voltage adjustments using the modded BIOS though.

The modded BIOS let my cards run at higher clocks than the stock BIOS did, but I've since gone back to stock BIOS as I didn't have any need for the additional headroom from the modified BIOS. Now I run with the .25 additional mv on both cards and an offset of +60 core / + 200 memory. This gives me boosts clock of 1137/1124 respectively.

 

[Ibra]

Titan sounds gimped.

7970 memory at 1800mhz.. why cant Titan memory go that high?

Because your brains can go that high?

 

[Rvenger]

Because your brains can go that high?

What is that Kingpin's Titan? Some heavily modded Titan at those speeds.

 

[Lepton87]

I dunno, could be partly TDP issue, or it could be certain games stress memory more than others.

I can run my memory overclock at 400MHz offset in Witcher 2 or NWN2 for hours, no problem, but I can't even load a game in Crysis 3 with ANY memory overclock (tested as little as 30MHz) or the game crashes. Hell I even played for about 10 minutes with a 600MHz offset on memory once in Withcer 2 with no problem (only gave me 1 extra fps...)

3DMark 13 was also just like Crysis 3, tests crash with any memory overclock.

I have no problems in DX9, but any mem overclock in DX11 is auto-crash.

My memory behaves exactly the same it's stable overclocked in many tests even run for hours but crashes in others, what's more interesting it happens very often in less demanding tests or games. My cards boosts to 1150MHz but I didn't check if it actually maintains that frequency or if it oscillates. I have no idea how Hardocp managed to get more increase in performance then the increase in core frequency or memory frequency. They got 1137MHz while at stock it is 990MHZ so it's about 14% increase and performance shouldn't increase more then that, even perfect scaling with clock speed is not really achievable on any architecture. How did they get 19% increase in C3 which is more then the increase in clock-speed. More voltage only makes my card hotter it doesn't allow to clock any higher, voltage control on titian has to be broken. I guess it doesn't maintain 1.2V at all times and that causes crashes.

Titan sounds gimped.

7970 memory at 1800mhz.. why cant Titan memory go that high?

You say that as if every 7970 sample got to that speed. I had two 7970 and none of them got past CC limit of 1575 if I remember correctly. maybe they cheapen out on the PCB or the memory controller can't handle it or maybe they used lower quality memory to save a few bucks . Using lower quality memory to save a few bucks on a card that cost an arm and a leg sounds very nv-like. Does anyone actually checked what memory is used on Titan, is it the same memory that is used on Sapphire 6GB? http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_7970_Toxic_6_GB/31.html its memory actually overclocked to 1885MHz (!!!). I'm curious if the titan uses the same memory or if they used lower quality cheaper memory just to increase profit margin by 1% What a greedy company. Maybe it's the PCB to blame, who knows. Memory controller could also be not up to par. But as far as I remember GTX680 achieves better memory frequencies, doesn't it?

 

[alcoholbob]

My memory behaves exactly the same it's stable overclocked in many tests even run for hours but crashes in others, what's more interesting it happens very often in less demanding tests or games. My cards boosts to 1150MHz but I didn't check if it actually maintains that frequency or if it oscillates. I have no idea how Hardocp managed to get more increase in performance then the increase in core frequency or memory frequency. They got 1137MHz while at stock it is 990MHZ so it's about 14% increase and performance shouldn't increase more then that, even perfect scaling with clock speed is not really achievable on any architecture. How did they get 19% increase in C3 which is more then the increase in clock-speed.

They are not comparing 1137MHz to 990MHz boost, they are comparing 1137MHz to the results they got with 100% TPD/80C which they stated on the first page to vary between 862MHz and 875MHz after the card warmed up.

That's a 31.9% to 29.9% overclock, netting 19% average performance, not over 1 for 1.

 

[Lepton87]

They are not comparing 1137MHz to 990MHz boost, they are comparing 1137MHz to the results they got with 100% TPD/80C which they stated on the first page to vary between 862MHz and 875MHz after the card warmed up.

That's a 31.9% to 29.9% overclock, netting 19% average performance, not over 1 for 1.

I never get such low frequencies at stock I get 966-992MHz

 

[alcoholbob]

I never get such low frequencies at stock I get 966-992MHz

Look at your frequencies after 20 minutes of Crysis 3 and see if you are still running at 992MHz at stock TDP setting

 

[lavaheadache]

I set a manual fan curve. With the fan running at 65% my card stays cool at about 71c and quiet while being able to maintain clocks around 1100 mhz

 

[Lepton87]

Look at your frequencies after 20 minutes of Crysis 3 and see if you are still running at 992MHz at stock TDP setting

I have a fan blowing directly onto the card, but to be fair I haven't tried many games, most were not demanding at all. I don't have C3, is it even worth buying? Right now I hardly care about graphics in games.

I set a manual fan curve. With the fan running at 65% my card stays cool at about 71c and quiet while being able to maintain clocks around 1100 mhz

it's not really quiet at 65%, to my ears it's already loud at that level. Blower cards are inherently loud unfortunately. Someone is bound to release some proper after-market cooler. Maybe 3 slot cooler.

 

[Fx1]

why would they limit this card with such a stupid TDP

 

[Lepton87]

why would they limit this card with such a stupid TDP

They are cutting corners thus increasing margins while lowering RMA rates that further increase profits. IMHO greedy bastards.

 

[Keysplayr]

They are cutting corners thus increasing margins while lowering RMA rates that further increase profits. IMHO greedy bastards.

Yeah, you've just described just about every big corporation on the planet.

 

[lavaheadache]

I have a fan blowing directly onto the card, but to be fair I haven't tried many games, most were not demanding at all. I don't have C3, is it even worth buying? Right now I hardly care about graphics in games.


it's not really quiet at 65%, to my ears it's already loud at that level. Blower cards are inherently loud unfortunately. Someone is bound to release some proper after-market cooler. Maybe 3 slot cooler.

There is always a compromise. Having the fan run at 65% while gaming is hardly intrusive and a good trade off for better thermals and keeping higher performance levels maintainable. Are you one of those guys with his pc about 2 feet from your right ear with the side of the case off? If so I can see your point, otherwise I don't see what the bother is. Do you play your games with the volume on?

 

[Lepton87]

Yeah, you've just described just about every big corporation on the planet.

Titan is such a small percent of their revenue that they shouldn't bastardize it for a few dollars more per card.

 

[Unoid]

sounds like Titan would benefit from watercooling more than mostly every card out there.

 

[Lepton87]

sounds like Titan would benefit from watercooling more than mostly every card out there.

Why? Maybe at stock it would be faster without any OC, but you can't change the voltage (0.35mv is pathetic)and I don't suppose that without any hardware modes you would go much further then with the default cooler with its fan ramped up to 100%.

 

[alcoholbob]

sounds like Titan would benefit from watercooling more than mostly every card out there.

You still have to hack the BIOS, but sure, if you want to void your warranty and overclock your GPU to 1600MHz core, then you can beat 680 SLI performance in a single card with no microstutter.

That said, not sure what the life expectancy of a Titan would be at that high OC...maybe 1 year

 

[hawtdawg]

They are cutting corners thus increasing margins while lowering RMA rates that further increase profits. IMHO greedy bastards.

Sort of. While the stock 265w TDP max is pretty limiting, the vbios can easily be modded to max out at 300w. This allowed me to run 1215/1865 with the baseline EVGA model with stock cooler without ever breaking 85C or 70% fanspeed . And despite what this article says, running a +700 memory boost does make a difference at 1600p. Also, the GPU doesn't really seem to want more voltage. I couldn't even get another 10mhz going from 1.187v to 2.12v.

They left the door open for people to get quite about out of these things.