Need some help overclocking a 3 titan beauty

[jambon2006]

Hey guys,

I just recieved my dream rig today( with mainly 3 watercooled titan a 3970x@4,8ghz 24/7, a 32g dominator 2400mhz Ram@1866mhz (can't get more meh)), and there is a slight disapointement. Company building it told me the 3 titans would be OC'd to 1284 as they get 1284mhz in enigine valley, but in gpu-z the gpu clock is shown as 965, which is far from what they told me. They only used MSI afterburner.
Now it appears enigine valley is far off with what they say whenever there is 2+ cards, so i'm guess i'm only OC'ed at 965.
As a result my 3dmark 11 score is only 2602 - that's windows 8 so it's expected to be lower apparently.

Now, the 3 cards are watercooled with 720mm worth of rads with a loop of their own, so i think i should be able to push them a bit further than 965mhz. With that setting the cards don't go over 45° in crysis3 sessions - i think that leave me some room to OC more, am i right?


My goal is to have a 24/7 OC on those cards, and i'll only be doing gaming, won't wander in benchs for days - not because i dont find it interesting, just won't have time to do both biggrin.gif

What should i do to overclock the cards so i can have a "stable daily overclock" and have a good 3k mark 11 score as well.
They said they used MSI afterburner, but from reading forums left and right the OC with this thing is a bit ****ed because of GPU boost, and the only "proper" way to do it is to flash the bios. Is that right ?

If it is what's the best flashed bios i can get? Is it possible to flash it and reverse the flash if the card burns out or something(i've got 3 years warranty on the whole rig). Is there a way to have the card stables at around 1100Mhz non stop (so my 3d mark score goes up, and in games aswell) without flashing the bios - which would be my prefered way to go obviously

Hope you can help a noob get better ! looking forward to your replies

cheers

 

[ViRGE]

Jambon, are you sure they were quoting the base clockspeed and not the maximum boost clockspeed? A 1284MHz base clockspeed would be highly unusual, even for Titan. Whereas that number makes perfect sense as the maximum boost clockspeed for an overclocked Titan.

 

[blackened23]

Hey guys,

I just recieved my dream rig today( with mainly 3 watercooled titan a 3970x@4,8ghz 24/7, a 32g dominator 2400mhz Ram@1866mhz (can't get more meh)), and there is a slight disapointement. Company building it told me the 3 titans would be OC'd to 1284 as they get 1284mhz in enigine valley, but in gpu-z the gpu clock is shown as 965, which is far from what they told me. They only used MSI afterburner.
Now it appears enigine valley is far off with what they say whenever there is 2+ cards, so i'm guess i'm only OC'ed at 965.
As a result my 3dmark 11 score is only 2602 - that's windows 8 so it's expected to be lower apparently.

Now, the 3 cards are watercooled with 720mm worth of rads with a loop of their own, so i think i should be able to push them a bit further than 965mhz. With that setting the cards don't go over 45° in crysis3 sessions - i think that leave me some room to OC more, am i right?


My goal is to have a 24/7 OC on those cards, and i'll only be doing gaming, won't wander in benchs for days - not because i dont find it interesting, just won't have time to do both biggrin.gif

What should i do to overclock the cards so i can have a "stable daily overclock" and have a good 3k mark 11 score as well.
They said they used MSI afterburner, but from reading forums left and right the OC with this thing is a bit ****ed because of GPU boost, and the only "proper" way to do it is to flash the bios. Is that right ?

If it is what's the best flashed bios i can get? Is it possible to flash it and reverse the flash if the card burns out or something(i've got 3 years warranty on the whole rig). Is there a way to have the card stables at around 1100Mhz non stop (so my 3d mark score goes up, and in games aswell) without flashing the bios - which would be my prefered way to go obviously

Hope you can help a noob get better ! looking forward to your replies

cheers

As virge mentioned, it sounds like your cards are fine. You are probably confusing your base clock with the boost clock. Just FYI, boost clockspeeds are variable depending on the temperature and power limit of your cards, and on the GPU power demanded by the game. You won't reach maximum boost clockspeeds if you exceed your temperature/power targets, or if using a 3D application that can't utilize all of the available GPU power. For instance, since Unigine is extremely demanding, it will more often than not utilize the maximum boost so long as your card is cooled well and has available TDP to spare. However, if you fire up an older game like Dead Space you will not get maximum boost clock speeds because the game doesn't need that much power. Hence, the boost clockspeed is partially dependent on how demanding the application is.

I'd imagine that your cards are capable of hitting 1284mhz, but keep in mind boost is just that, a boost. It isn't a 24/7 clockspeed. As mentioned - it is a variable clockspeed depending on many factors, including how much power your 3d application demands.

 

[tweakboy]

NOISE NOISE and more NOISE.......

It matters what your room temp is, you can slow down the fans..

 

[jambon2006]

Alright, so i can probably get some better score in 3d mark pushing the base clock speed but what i'm really looking for is the boost clock speed - I won't be benching at all (only gaming)so you guys are saying I should be satisfied by these results?

What's up with unigine valley being off with clocks and showing higher than it should be, you guys noticed this aswell ? Saw that on another forum ,any other way i can check the max boost speed ?

 

[ViRGE]

The boost clock is adjusted in lockstep with the base clock. For every MHz you add to the base clock, you add another MHz to each boost clock step. So increasing the base clock will increase the boost clock. However it's very likely that your builder has already squeezed out much (if not all) of the overclockability of your cards, so I would caution you against expecting too much more. With that in mind I would say yes, you should be satisfied with those results.

As for checking the max boost speed, the easiest way to go about it is with GPU-Z or MSI Afterburner. Just have them log your clockspeeds while running your game/application and check the logs when you're done.

 

[jambon2006]

Ok think i just realise i completely skipped the difference between base clock and boost clock, thanks a lot for pointing that out

If i compared to guru3d overclocking guide (http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_titan_overclock_guide,2.html) they reached 1000mhz coreclock which accounts for a 1100~1176MHz boost clock, so either uningine valley has really wrong values or they did something particular, i'm going to go with the uningine valley stuff.
I have to check mhz with cpu-z during valley you're right.

If i see they're really not that high i think i'll just try and use that guru3d guide, it seems pretty straightforward. If i see some bad score or issues in games i guess i'll have to look for some more infos with the bios thing.

thanks !

 

[Grooveriding]

If you have three Titans that are boosting to 1284 I would be very happy with that and not worry about it. I have never seen anyone get a Titan stable at that sort of speed without voltage mods.

 

[ViRGE]

Just so we're clear here, there are typically 3 values thrown around.

Base clock: The base clockspeed. The clockspeed of the card should not fall below this value (unless you're running something crazy like FurMark).

Boost clock: This is the typical clockspeed that a part boosts to in a typical workload, as defined by NVIDIA. This is typically several steps (step = 13MHz) over the base clock. It's neither a maximum nor a minimum, it's just a guideline. Most cards will usually reach at least a couple of steps (if not several steps) beyond the official boost clock.

Maximum boost clock: This is the highest clockspeed/boost step that a card can reach for any given settings, and is largely dependent on the card. This isn't always sustained, since boosting is based on temperatures and power consumption. Water cooled cards remove the temperature factor (and thanks to the laws of physics, reduce power consumption slightly), but it can still be difficult to sustain depending on the workload.

I don't know anything about Unigine, but the 1284MHz number is probably the maximum boost clock.

http://images.anandtech.com/doci/6760/Overvolt.jpg

 

[jambon2006]

If you have three Titans that are boosting to 1284 I would be very happy with that and not worry about it. I have never seen anyone get a Titan stable at that sort of speed without voltage mods.

Yea, but when i compared the 3d mark results to other 3 titan systems, it seems rather on the low end - if not really low end, so my bet is it's valley being off and that i'm actually at something like 1000 clock boost on pair with the 965 base clock.

I've alos found this guide http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013..._gtx_titan_overclocking_review/3#.UeFa2UH0GSo which basically the same than guru3d one, since i'm on water what should i set the cpu fan speed to? Auto ? Max?

 

[Grooveriding]

Are you running Valley and monitoring your reported clocks while in the benchmark ? Valley incorrectly reports clock speeds. Use something like the EVGA Precision or MSI Afterburner overlay while running valley to see your correct clocks while the benchmark is running.

 

[jambon2006]

Will do that when i'm back home then come back to you, i'm off the pc for the next 4 days :'(,.

thanks everyone !