OC question

[Terepin]

I got my new GTX 970 and I'm wondering how overclocking works on it. Because according to Inspector, when I add voltage, I should get almost 1.6 GHz on core.

But it never reach it. Maximum gain it gave was 20 MHz. Is this normal?

[EdKiefer]

Originally Posted by Terepin

I got my new GTX 970 and I'm wondering how overclocking works on it. Because according to Inspector, when I add voltage, I should get almost 1.6 GHz on core.

But it never reach it. Maximum gain it gave was 20 MHz. Is this normal?

I never use inspector but looking at pic, what makes you show almost 1.6 is the 160+ offset you have on core not the voltage.
The voltage will most likely give you 2 bin's higher on clock and approx 40mv+ tops .
I would recommend first try with no voltage ,and shoot for 1500 , see if thats ok .
After you find stable max, then move to memory , anything from 7600-8k might work , but long term might be closer to 7600 .
the voltage slider is a target voltage amount, it might not go to amount you set it or stay there . your biggest limitation is TDP limit of 110 but 1500/7500 should stay under it .

PS: don't expect 1600/8k to be long term stable, it might pass a bit in BM but for hr's in game it probably will need to go down a bit .

[Terepin]

I got 1.5 stable. I'm just wondering why it shows estimated max 1593 MHz.

[EdKiefer]

Originally Posted by Terepin

I got 1.5 stable. I'm just wondering why it shows estimated max 1593 MHz.

because thats the approx it will boost in game , your card will boost to 1367 stock(well it can vary per card but around that ) .
PS: with 0 voltage and you move it towards 87mv+ does that boost estimate keep going up at each step ?
If so that is wrong, I guess it can't read bios limiters . Also as I said your biggest issue is TDP , you want the lowest voltage so keep TDP down, plus these cards don't need a lot more to get high OC .
Out of gate there 1.218v

[Terepin]

Originally Posted by EdKiefer

because thats the approx it will boost in game

Nope, it never reaches that speed. Not even remotely. And TDP is issue, of course, but how the hell is Inspector calculating max speed value is a mystery to me.

[DeathAngel74]

You might try kepler bios tweaker, dunno if it will work on the maxwell gen-2 cards. It works fine on my 750 gtx maxwell gen-1 card.

Couldn't resize the image, hence the spoiler. Hope this helps.

 Click to show spoiler

Edit:
Try overclocking on Performance level 1 P0. Looks like you are in power save mode from pcie interface @ 3.0 1.1 16x and the 135MHz and 324MHz on the core. Voltage looks really low, 0.837V, should be at least 1.137V-1.187V. Like you said, its a TDP issue too. Not enough power or voltage to support 1.6GHz.

Another big image....

 Click to show spoiler

[Terepin]

I'm overcloking with AB.

[DeathAngel74]

I apologize, I thought you were using Inspector to OC.

[Terepin]

Nope. I just wanted to show that most interesting value.

[EdKiefer]

currently KBT while it will seem like it can edit some parts of bios as of right now,
Only signed bios by manufacture can be flashed , this might change, I don't know .

On inspector you would have to ask the developer of it .

Edit: I tried latest inspector and it does match my in game clocks with what is says is est max boost , that is with 0 voltage.

Yes, it is what I suspected as you raise voltage slider Inspector just keeps raising what it thinks would be max boost.
Problem is the bios has caps on voltage and it varies per card and model .
MSI9xx gaming are limited to 1.260v or 40mv on slider (you might need to go above that to keep max ) .

[Terepin]

Originally Posted by EdKiefer

Yes, it is what I suspected as you raise voltage slider Inspector just keeps raising what it thinks would be max boost.
Problem is the bios has caps on voltage and it varies per card and model .
MSI9xx gaming are limited to 1.260v or 40mv on slider (you might need to go above that to keep max ) .

This is what I wanted to know. Thank you.