Have I done the OC properly on my EVGA 980 SC? :)

[yhellothar]

Hi guys,

I'm very new to overclocking - the last time I did was on my old 680, where I gave it a very minimal boost. The other bit of OCing I did was using ASUS's mobo software that automatically OC'd my CPU to as high performance as possible, without me actually touching voltages etc.

My other specs:
Intel i7 2600K OC/4.7GHz
16GB Corsair Vengeance 1600MHz (Though this is showing as 667 on benchmarks Should I play with my BIOS a bit?)

Anyway, I've started to OC my EVGA 980 SC. As I understand it, the tool to use is Precision.

So I've fired up 3DMark, and did a base run, got 11,600. Not too shabby.

I did some larger gains at the start, and eventually, I managed to get to the following, which is stable on Heaven, as well as 3DMark Firestorm.

As you can see, I didn't mess about with the voltages, I wanted the highest clock speeds I could achieve, without messing about with voltages. I'm getting scores on 3DMark of ~ 13,000 - very nice.

So my question now is this:

Am I doing it right?

By that, I mean - is this something I could run comfortably 24/7 on (e.g.) heavily modded Skyrim, Crysis 3 etc. without detriment to my card, nor any bad things happening generally?

And my other question is this:

How much further could I push this, before it becomes 'dangerous'? (And how could I do this?)

Essentially, I just want to eke out a bit more performance, as I'll be using this GPU to replace my 2 x 680 in SLi (I know this is more of a sidegrade, but eventually I'll grab another 980 and SLi that).

Cheers in advance lads!

 

[Techhog]

You just have to play your games and see what happens. If you run into issues, dial it down. If you don't, you're in the clear.

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

Post your full system spec's, how are you cooling the CPU? You can prolly get higher with a bump of the memory, though if your using more then 2 sticks it wont help. you should be able to get 1800 or so with the memory, though it always varies from board to board.
On the GPU, you can go full fan! why wouldnt you crank the fan up if your over clocking? I don't have that GPU so I cant help you there, but your full spec's will help others to help you.

 

[yhellothar]

Thanks for the quick reply guys!

Well, my games all run fine (so far), this was the highest boost I could achieve using precision without voltage changes (what I want).

I'm not sure what other specs you want though?

Oh, and just to clarify - I'm only looking at my GPU at the moment, I don't want to try and overclock other components.

Cheers.

Edit: Oh but having mentioned that, I might as well post a bit more information then.

CPU is cooled via Corsair H80, freshly applied artic silver 5 TC.
Samsung 840 240GB SSD (primary OS/long loading games, Skyrim )
Other games run on a WD Caviar Black.

Running Win 7 Pro

Um... anything else?

 

[ocre]

slide your power target to max

also your temp target to max.

This will keep you from throttling

 

[yhellothar]

Hey ocre, thanks for the reply - doesn't sliding the temp up all the way risk a damaged card? Also, if power target is set to 125% constantly, doesn't this vastly reduce the longevity of the card?

It's possible that I'm just misunderstanding these options, however.

 

[ocre]

Temperatures do contribute in degeneration but voltage is what most overclockers care about. See 91c wouldnt be drastically different than 80c. AMD was so confident in TSMC 28nm that they designed the 290x reference to run at 94c all the time. That is 3c higher than the limit set by nvidia. AMD expects their chips to last years at 94c and i am sure they will.

But see in your 980 SC, the temps shouldnt get high anyway. The driver ramp up the fans and you will never be running at 91c.

The temp target is usually linked to the power limit. Maxing one out usually maxes the other automatically. The power limit is an artificial limitation in boost set by nvidia. Its sole purpose is to limit your TDP. It is not designed as a feature to make your card last longer but an intelligent power consumption control mechanism.

The reason boost was invent was because difference apps and games have different power draw. Some games stress the GPU more than others. Boost allowed the GPU to run higher speeds when the there is extra TDP available. In the past, nvidia used to monitor apps that were ran. They used have the driver look for exe files in memory, such as futuremark.exe and it would throttle the card so as not to have the power consumption go through the roof. See, some apps/games consume more power than others. There is a huge spread.

Boost was born as a way to not waste potential and to not have power consumption go crazy high. It is a very intelligent and elegant solution.

If you overclock you GPU without moving the powerlimit, your GPU boost will be limited. You wont be getting the best results. Nvidia allows 125%, you can bet they know what they are doing. The only reason to move it up is to make sure your not limiting your overclock by locking the card to its stock tdp limit. The risk from moving up the power limit is very low.

The reason to move up these other sliders is to make sure your not starving your overclock or limiting. All of these things work together. If you want your boost to be 175mhz higher than stock, then you set it there. Boost will only go there if your card power draw allows it. If your under 160watts, then it will boost higher. The problem is, your stock boost can use that much power all by itself. So your overclock is very limited.

Anytime you run at high speeds, you are gonna use more power. Nvidia was pressured to reduce power consumption after fermi. This wasnt an issue with longevity, it was an issue with their image. Nvidia went for a very aggressive solution. The power limit is there to keep TDP low, boost is there to get the most performance for the allowed tdp

Nvidia allows 125% power limit on the 980. I think nvidia is smart enough that you can bet it is pretty safe. Most people think this is a very conservative limit. There are modded bios's out that give much more breathing room. heck, MSI has 980s out there with 250 watt TDP limits set in the bios. This is a lot higher than the evga SC even at 125% power limit (which is something like 200watts. Still pretty low)

You have a 3 yr warranty on you EVGA 980. I wouldnt worry about the power limit. If you dont add voltage, your not gonna change the chips lifespan in any drastic way. power limit and boost are monitoring amperage and load. It is aimed at intelligently controlling power consumption, something nvidia really needed to focus on after the bad image fermi gave them.

 

[alcoholbob]

All the Kepler and maxwell cards I've owned have a hardcoded max temp of 87C regardless of what you put in the temperature limits. When you hit 87c it automatically throttles up to 100% fan speed regardless of your fan profile.

 

[Techhog]

slide your power target to max

also your temp target to max.

This will keep you from throttling

Oh, I didn't even notice that. Yeah, you need to max your power target to get anywhere. It's a huge bottleneck with these cards. If the max power target in the standard vBIOS were 125%, 1600MHz overclocks would be surprisingly common.

 

[yhellothar]

Wow thanks for the reply guys, and cheers for the explanation ocre.

Well, I feel a bit more confident in pursuing slightly higher speeds on the GPU now, and what you're saying makes sense, especially about the locked limits EVGA would've set.

I'll go fiddle a bit more, and hopefully, I can get this to a 1.6GHz or so OC

Will report back!

Think I'll stick around on this forum too, lurked a lot of answers in the past from here, and it's the only forum out of 4 that I tried, that I actually got replies from.

Cheers guys ^_^

 

[yhellothar]

Boo - Crysis 3 and Shadows of Mordor seem to be a little unstable - this is despite 3DMark running correctly. This usually takes place after a couple of minutes though, which is probably why it's not showing on the benchmarks.

Maybe I'll dial it back a bit and try again then..