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tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
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81
Help me make sense of this and which one should I be monitoring?

vPO1BmW.gif
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
Ok at stock intel speeds (turbo to 3600) running the prime 95 test its hitting 70 degrees. Something is definitely up and I hope you all can help me solve this problem. Could it be thermal paste not working correctly? I used the tuniq x2 instead of the mx 4 supplied with the i30.
 

lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
That GPU-Z shot doesn't include any load values, only idle values, so it's not useful. But when you do actually run a test like looping Heaven bench for a few minutes, you should pay attention to:

- When overclocking: GPU Core Clock - confirm the clock frequency is indeed what you set it to in Afterburner
- GPU temperature - make sure it stays below 80C or so
- GPU load - confirm it's mostly 100%
- VDDC - this should change whenever you adjust voltage in Afterburner, but it won't show the exact same reading. What you set in Afterburner is a nominal value, while VDDC is the actual voltage supplied (though I'm not 100% sure if GPU-Z is accurate in this respect, but it should still display changes to voltage)

And if you use HWinfo64 you should also see VRM temperatures, depending on whether your graphics card supports it.
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
That GPU-Z shot doesn't include any load values, only idle values, so it's not useful. But when you do actually run a test like looping Heaven bench for a few minutes, you should pay attention to:

- When overclocking: GPU Core Clock - confirm the clock frequency is indeed what you set it to in Afterburner
- GPU temperature - make sure it stays below 80C or so
- GPU load - confirm it's mostly 100%
- VDDC - this should change whenever you adjust voltage in Afterburner, but it won't show the exact same reading. What you set in Afterburner is a nominal value, while VDDC is the actual voltage supplied (though I'm not 100% sure if GPU-Z is accurate in this respect, but it should still display changes to voltage)

And if you use HWinfo64 you should also see VRM temperatures, depending on whether your graphics card supports it.

Hwinfo is locking up at checking ide and sata.
 

lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
Not sure what's up there. :S

Is the INF driver up to date?

What's happening with your GPU overclocking? Just saying it "does not seem to like overclocking" is not very descriptive. What settings did you use, how did you test, were GPU-Z readings OK ... Then we could actually try to figure out what to do
 
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tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
whenever i increase the core clock to like 1150 it freezes heaven benchmark and when i do increase the voltage little by little it still does not help. i cant find a way to monitor the voltage because the windows key does not work while in heaven.
 

lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
1150 is a pretty high clock, not ALL 79xx cards are guaranteed to get there at reasonable voltages. How high did you go with voltage and how high were the temperatures? If too high, try 1100MHz instead.

What I do is I run Heaven in windowed mode but at my monitor's native resolution. It stresses the GPU just the same as in full screen mode, but you can ALT+TAB your GPU-Z on top of it and look at the sensors while Heaven is running.
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
iG5f6pR.gif


This was the graph before it froze at 1100 by benchmarking at 1920 by 1200. the 500 was 1100 (atop). the temp was at 70. could not catch the graph fast enough at peak as i was side tracked by the freeze.
 
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lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
What voltage were you at (in Afterburner)? I needed to increase my card's voltage to get 1100 stable.

70C is low enough that you have room to increase voltage.
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
What voltage were you at (in Afterburner)? I needed to increase my card's voltage to get 1100 stable.

70C is low enough that you have room to increase voltage.

seems to be idling at 50 degrees now, times is pretty cool too. I love the pc but overclocking issues in slightly making me regret it. does powering a 1920 by 1200 and a 1920 by 1080 monitor affects it?
 
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lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
50 degrees is kind of high for just idling. What does it settle at if you do absolutely nothing with it for a few minutes? Having a browser window open isn't equal to idling since browsers use GPU acceleration.

I'm not sure what you mean by the monitor question. Does overclocking benefit you when gaming at 1080p? CPU overclocking doesn't really, not until you upgrade the GPU in 1-2 years. GPU overclocking does benefit you.

Given the 70C GPU load temperature I'd still try to find a stable voltage for 1100MHz.

As for the CPU, I don't know what's up. It should definitely run cooler. But even so, I think a 4GHz overclock could be done at acceptable temperatures.
 
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tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
the monitor question is if their are two displays connected to the graphics card and both are actively being used does it cause the gpu to work more. Also I'm not against overclocking but whenever I see the benchmark freeze at an increase in the core clock I lose hope for a bit because to me it does not seem that to cause such a problem. The gpu is my main concern, I want it to have a stable over clock similar to what you have in your sig to leave it alone.
 
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lehtv

Elite Member
Dec 8, 2010
11,897
74
91
Yes, if it's driving two displays it won't downclock and downvolt properly. To avoid that, you can connect the secondary screen to the integrated GPU.

A benchmark freeze is a very expected symptom of the overclocking process. All you have to do is add more voltage and/or back down on the clock speed to get it stable. It's a trial and error thing
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
Yes, if it's driving two displays it won't downclock and downvolt properly. To avoid that, you can connect the secondary screen to the integrated GPU.

A benchmark freeze is a very expected symptom of the overclocking process. All you have to do is add more voltage and/or back down on the clock speed to get it stable. It's a trial and error thing

Yea the idle temp went back down to 38 (its going down more). Will try to over clock later tonight and report back as I need to get this right :).
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
did the bios switch from 1 to 2, so boost clock is 1000mhz. The temp has reached 76 degrees (probably would have increased the longer I played sleeping dogs). Keep in mind that I never altered the voltage, the card or something increased it from 1.175 to to 1.2.
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
need some assistance every now and then my screen flickers slightly, not a full screen flicker but a subtle one near the bottom of the screen.
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
I did the bios switch on the card but now I can't change the voltage in the case of, if its not stock 1.175 when idling its 1.20 when under load. Not even setting it to 1.175 in msi afterburner and turning off ccc overclock helped it to not ramp up to 1.2. The switch boost the core clock to 1000 and the memory clock to 1450. Boosted it up to 1050 keeping the memory clock as the same which seems stable but today while playing sleeping dogs ( seems pretty demanding}, I was seeing graphical or display distortions.
 

mfenn

Elite Member
Jan 17, 2010
22,400
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www.mfenn.com
If you're seeing artifacts, that means the clock is too high. Every GPU has its limits at a given voltage. You could try putting the old BIOS back so that you can tweak the voltage again.
 

tg2708

Senior member
May 23, 2013
687
20
81
If you're seeing artifacts, that means the clock is too high. Every GPU has its limits at a given voltage. You could try putting the old BIOS back so that you can tweak the voltage again.

Its a switch on the card itself, when it was at 1 it was 950/1425 at 1.175 and at 2 it is 1000/1450 1.175 but 1.200 at load. I increased the core clock to 1050 which seemed fine until i saw the graphical screen tearing issue or whatever its called while playing sleeping dogs for like the 10th time after the clock was increased. I also played it for quite a bit in each session. The game seems rather demanding too.