So how does one OC a 680GTX?

[ViviTheMage]

So what are the safe numbers people have been doing successfully?

 

[Ferzerp]

Mine does in the 1250 Mhz range pretty easily. I've not pushed it beyond that. I haven't had time to really mess with it, and haven't touched the memory much either (I think it's sitting at 3100 Mhz right now).

I leave adaptive vsync on, and if it's sitting at 60 fps, it's clocked lower. If it dips below, it clocks up higher to compensate.

 

[Imouto]

As far as I know that's an Issue with the GPU Booster throttling back that causes the app and/or the driver to crash.

Lots of trouble, when we look at the time spent on long-latency frames. What happened to the GTX 680? Well, look up at the plots above, and you'll see that, very early in our test run, there was a frame that took nearly 180 ms to produce—nearly a fifth of a second. As we played the game, we experienced this wait as a brief but total interruption in gameplay. That stutter, plus a few other shorter ones, contributed to the 680's poor showing here. Turns out we ran into this problem with the GTX 680 in four of our five test runs, each time early in the run and each time lasting about 180 ms. Nvidia tells us the slowdown is the result of a problem with its GPU Boost mechanism that will be fixed in an upcoming driver update.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/22653/5

 

[Ferzerp]

You are obviously an expert after reading a few reviews. The guy with firsthand experience obviously must be wrong, because the review you read doesn't explicitly say "it will crash if you try to clock it too high". It's not like that's the same exact behavior of every chip on the planet with an adjustable clock speed.

 

[Imouto]

I'm just trying to understand it lol. Don't get so angry over this.

I don't know if it's caused because of the GPU Boost throttling or what. It makes no sense to have no stability when you set the offset too high but it does fine limiting the very same apps at lower speeds. As I said Nvidia ensured to have stability across all the frequency and voltage combinations.

nvidia was very clear that partners must install power measurement circuitry, must guarantee stability over all clock&voltage combinations, must mention both base and boost clock in their messaging, must enable dynamic oc and can only incresae oc base and boost by the same percentage

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2581204&postcount=25

It looks like something fixable at driver level but I don't know.

 

[ViviTheMage]

Interesting that a driver could fix that, and not say, a firmware upgrade.

 

[Ferzerp]

One thing that I've also noticed that is odd, is that the driver can lose awareness of the true power utilization until a reboot. I don't know if it is anything except a display issue, but my power usage got locked at 31% (It was using more power, because the clocks were still going up, and the GPU was under heavy load. It did this in games and also 3dmark). After a reboot, it was again reporting correctly.

 

[Imouto]

If you set the offset at +100 and your card limit the frequency for Heaven for example at 1070 Mhz why in the world would crash setting the offset higher?

Doesn't make sense for me unless the GPU Boost isn't working properly or the whole system is a big flop and it's based in some arbitrary limits set for all cards.

 

[Grooveriding]

Just slide the power target all the way to 132% then set your gpu and memory offset. The memory seems to handle being clocked fairly high, but I've read that setting it too high seems to limit core clocks at times. Maybe taking power away from what could be put to the core ? No idea.

One of mine can do 1300 (+200 offset), the other one takes a dump at anything over 1235 (+135 offset).

These cards are freaking nice, night and day from my 480s. They're so quiet, but really fast. From the little bit of play I've done with them overclocked, they're faster in BF3 than my previous setup which was stock 580 tri-sli performance.

I can run BF3 @1600P with 4xMSAA, ultra, HBAO now. On my 480 tri I had to dial down to 2xmsaa and I was getting lower frames than I am using 4xmsaa on these 680s. :thumbsup: I run a frame cap of 65 in BF3 and I would get dips on my 3 480s, these 680s are locked @ 65 in what gameplay I have done so far whereas my prior setup got dips using lower MSAA settings.

 

[Imouto]

Grooveriding can you please log the overclocked frequency with Afterburner while playing BF3? I'm interested about the max frequency and if it is capped under or over the offset.

If it's topping under the offset then no matter how much you increase the offset it shouldn't crash.

If it's topping above the offset then I'm starting to think that these cards are seriously voltage starved.

 

[Grooveriding]

Grooveriding can you please log the overclocked frequency with Afterburner while playing BF3? I'm interested about the max frequency and if it is capped under or over the offset.

If it's topping under the offset then no matter how much you increase the offset it shouldn't crash.

If it's topping above the offset then I'm starting to think that these cards are seriously voltage starved.

I've had a couple TDRs (crashes) playing with using too high of an offset. At least I assume that is what caused it, hopefully. Never have had TDRs before.

I'll track some BF3 next time I play. Actually precision seems to be a reskinned Afterburner, but it does not include the feature to log to a file, at least I can't find it.

 

[Imouto]

Both are based on Rivatuner. Just fire up Afterburner at the same time and take a screenshot of the log screen.

If you don't touch anything else in Afterburner you shouldn't have trouble. I use Trixx to OC and Afterburner to keep track of what's going on.

 

[Ferzerp]

You have two people now who own these cards telling you that if they try to clock too high they crash. Why do you refuse to accept this and pretend the card magically will never clock high enough to crash no matter what you set it at?

Your understanding of the way these cards work is fundamentally flawed.

The only thing that limits the clocks is TDP and temp. TDP doesn't go up until it first clocks itself high, nor will temp. If I set it at 1600 Mhz, if it needs to, it's going to try to dial in that speed, and if that speed crashes he card, it's going to crash.

Also not sure where you are coming up with this "heaven benchmark only goes to 1070Mhz". I have mine set on 1230 max for normal use. It clocks up to 1230Mhz (which puts it around 110% default power usage). Once temps go up (since my fan curve is set very quiet), it clocks back down 15 Mhz to 1215Mhz and stays that way the whole time. I could keep it higher if I didn't have my fan set so low.

 

[Ferzerp]

Just slide the power target all the way to 132% then set your gpu and memory offset. The memory seems to handle being clocked fairly high, but I've read that setting it too high seems to limit core clocks at times. Maybe taking power away from what could be put to the core ? No idea.

One of mine can do 1300 (+200 offset), the other one takes a dump at anything over 1235 (+135 offset).




These cards are freaking nice, night and day from my 480s. They're so quiet, but really fast. From the little bit of play I've done with them overclocked, they're faster in BF3 than my previous setup which was stock 580 tri-sli performance.

I can run BF3 @1600P with 4xMSAA, ultra, HBAO now. On my 480 tri I had to dial down to 2xmsaa and I was getting lower frames than I am using 4xmsaa on these 680s. :thumbsup: I run a frame cap of 65 in BF3 and I would get dips on my 3 480s, these 680s are locked @ 65 in what gameplay I have done so far whereas my prior setup got dips using lower MSAA settings.

Groove, have you messed with the voltage adjust at all? I haven't touched it.

 

[Grooveriding]

Groove, have you messed with the voltage adjust at all? I haven't touched it.

I tried moving it up to 1.21 but it goes back to 1.75. I don't believe you can adjust it on the ref card, it has something to do with gpu boost. If you look on the back of your caed, that tiny daughter board near the end is the pwm control. Almost looks as if it is designed in a way to make it easy to change the design back there.

 

[RussianSensation]

I tried moving it up to 1.21 but it goes back to 1.75. I don't believe you can adjust it on the ref card, it has something to do with gpu boost. If you look on the back of your caed, that tiny daughter board near the end is the pwm control. Almost looks as if it is designed in a way to make it easy to change the design back there.

Groover, how are your temps at load? Exceeding 70*C? If so, see if you can get higher Boost if you ramp up the GPU clocks to 85% fan speed. Also, I am pretty sure all reference 680s at the moment have locked BIOS, meaning no manual voltage tweaking. Where is the EVGA unlocked BIOS?

You are going to appreciate the 300W+ lower power consumption on these puppies in the summer.

 

[chimaxi83]

Wow is it annoying to see the clocks jump around on this thing lol

My clocks are as follows:
Idle clock - 324MHz
Base clock as reported by GPUz - 1131MHz
Base clock as reported by Precision - 1006MHz
Boost clock as reported by GPUz - 1184MHz
Boost clock as reported by Precision - 1059MHz

My Precision settings are:
Power Target 132%
GPU Offset +125MHz
Mem Offset +475MHz
Voltage 1.175V (highest allowed, let's you go up to 1.215V but hitting apply drops it back down)

Despite the clocks listed above, it has gone as high as 1260MHz for short bursts. Load temps hover between 68-70C on auto fan, but if I manually max the speed, temps are low 60's.

The clock varies wildy, but at least I can see real time power usage as it relates to the cards TDP. Gets close to 132% and you can see the clock throttle down, and boost back up once power usage drops. Interesting that power usage varies even as GPU utilization stays pegged at 99%, rendering the same scene. I've seen power usage vary from ~85-132% during usage, which has been only benching so far.

 

[Carmen813]

If I clock my offset too high BF3 crashes out. Happens at around 130 for me.

 

[tviceman]

These cards are freaking nice, night and day from my 480s. They're so quiet, but really fast. From the little bit of play I've done with them overclocked, they're faster in BF3 than my previous setup which was stock 580 tri-sli performance.

I can run BF3 @1600P with 4xMSAA, ultra, HBAO now. On my 480 tri I had to dial down to 2xmsaa and I was getting lower frames than I am using 4xmsaa on these 680s. :thumbsup: I run a frame cap of 65 in BF3 and I would get dips on my 3 480s, these 680s are locked @ 65 in what gameplay I have done so far whereas my prior setup got dips using lower MSAA settings.

I'll be interested to read if putting them on water will make a difference with the sustainable max overclock.

 

[chimaxi83]

I'll be interested to read if putting them on water will make a difference with the sustainable max overclock.

Going to be putting my MCW82 on the card, so I should have some findings soon :thumbsup:

 

[ViviTheMage]

sweeet, thanks for some starting points

 

[Ferzerp]

Furmark seems stable at +132% power, +130Mhz GPU, +400 Mhz memory for me. It peaks around 128% power usage, and appears to run around 1215Mhz the whole time (seems that it throttles in 15Mhz increments) once temp goes past the mid 70's.


I know no one puts stock in 3dmark, but this will give you an idea of what those settings give me in 3dmark11. I don't really have time to benchmark any games at the moment.

http://3dmark.com/3dm11/3056206

 

[Ferzerp]

I tried moving it up to 1.21 but it goes back to 1.75. I don't believe you can adjust it on the ref card, it has something to do with gpu boost. If you look on the back of your caed, that tiny daughter board near the end is the pwm control. Almost looks as if it is designed in a way to make it easy to change the design back there.

I did some testing, and it seems that it works like this:

If you leave the voltage alone, it will adjust itself between 0.987 and 1.175
You can adjust the voltage, and it will set that voltage, up to 1.175V

What I didn't have time to check, is if your set voltages are the floor, or the absolute voltage. That is, if I set it to 1.05, and it decides it needs more, will it go up as needed (up to the cap of 1.175)? This seems to suggest that, while you can change voltage, it really gains you nothing, currently.

 

[chimaxi83]

Yea I'm pretty sure adjusting the voltage does absolutely nothing with these cards. When I first benched, left voltage alone, and was able to hit +130 on the core. Adjusting voltage did nothing for stability in 3dmark11 or Heaven, I wasn't able to go higher than 135 or so and stability was hit or miss. Trying to find the limit of the RAM.

 

[Imouto]

@Ferzerp

I'm just saying that this system isn't working as intended or it's a huge turd for overclockers because it's based on arbitrary factory set caps and don't squeeze all the card's potential.

I don't think that this system is pushing the card more than traditional overclocking would do.

For stock and mild overclock it's great (so it's for me) but for overclockers it's just frustrating and no fun at all.