My First 980ti Overclocking Experience...

Discussion in 'Videocards - NVIDIA GeForce' started by A M D BugBear, Jun 21, 2016.

  1. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,387
    Likes Received:
    627
    GPU:
    4 GTX 970/4-Way Sli
    Never owned a 980ti until just very recently, was thinking about doing a step-up with evga but sadly their 1080 hybrid is not on the list, hopefully later, :)

    Anyways, My final overclock and stable speed is roughly around 1490mhz(both gpu's), and memory frequency @ an effective rate of 8200+mhz, Is this any good?

    My temps were like around 49-50 C during some test run.

    Fast card but man the backplate where the gpu/vrm's are at, runs very hot, I even put a 140 fan a lil over where the vrm's are located to keep the vrm's on both cards cool, blowing right towards the heatsink themselves(VRM Heatsink), on the side of the card.

    I have gotten up to 1500+mhz on both gpu's but it became unstable in the long run.


    Here are my msi afterburner settings.

    Core Voltage +87
    Power Limit 110%
    temp. limit(gpu priority) 91
    Core Clock +99
    Memory clock (mhz) +600.

    Memory @ 625+ is where it shows instability, @ 600+ flat seems perfectly fine...

    This is on a stock Evga's 980ti hybrid bios.


    Ran some 4k benchmark with high settings with a certain game, nothing flunked for like about 30+ mins or so.

    I might do more test run with slightly lower voltage to see if its stable.

    Overall, I think alright experience with theses cards.

    I think not to bad, considering the performance is like a hair off of a stock 1080 @ this point give or take, runs alot cooler too to boot, :)

    But still looking at the 1080 hybrid for step-up, if it will become available during step-up, not on the list yet.

    I'll post some benchmark scores later...

    Very fast card, absolutely no doubt about it.
     
    Last edited: Jun 21, 2016
  2. Xuanzang

    Xuanzang Master Guru

    Messages:
    250
    Likes Received:
    21
    GPU:
    ASUS TUF 7900 XTX
    It's a pretty nice overclock. I got mine stable at 1495/8120 with stock bios/volt.
    The backplate gets really hot here too. :nerd:
     
  3. archie123

    archie123 Guest

    Messages:
    2,475
    Likes Received:
    17
    GPU:
    Aorus 1080ti Extreme
    Id say thats very good for sli , i had my card at 1480 but when i went sli i had to drop a tad below 1450 to keep them stable
     
  4. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,387
    Likes Received:
    627
    GPU:
    4 GTX 970/4-Way Sli
    I was looking into a modded bios that someone made at overclock.com.

    I used the evga 98ti SC version with much higher power target and tdp.

    Man, I never had such an experience with gpu's before, I thought both of my 980ti's were bricked 100%.

    Soon as I started up the system, right when the mobo's bios does it thing, the evga hybrid logo, the white led on the card, went black.

    I could not get into windows, so I had to put the card into another slot and use a good working gpu, a lesser one, in the main grey slot.

    I used the same certification bypass nvflash that I used to flash the bios with, I tried reverting back to my stock bios that I backed up(thank goodness), and it won't go through, I was getting some error code's during flashing but in the end it says flash successful but apparently it did not go through smoothly.

    I was doing alot of forum looking up on this topic, but to cut the long story short, I looked up another verison of nvflash with that cert. bypass thingy, and thank god it went through, and both of my card's are like new again, I thought 100% the card was totally bricked, I was going to do a return through amazon but I canceled it, I said I'll try it one more time and finally got it back to life.

    Word of caution, be extra careful on upgrading to a modded bios, and yes I took a peek inside the bios to see what changed were made, seems alright, but be very careful.

    I was going to mod my own factory bios that came with the card rather then using someone else's bios.

    I think the overclock I got now is good, I could beef up the core voltage to 1.3 but I don't know how much of a gain I could achieve from 1490mhz stable, probably not awhole alot.

    All in all, this was one hell of an experience, was ready to send the cards back, in box too, but took them out and tried one more time to bring it back to life, thank goodness I did.

    Speaking of 1.3v, I know this is kind of off topic here, but anyone used 1.3v on same card I am using, if so, what kind of overclock did you all achieved??

    Also, just to let everyone know, I did remove the stock thermal paste and used the thermal grizzly paste, I was amazed to see some high quality, thick memory and vrm thermal pads being used, unlike others I have seen, some ultra thin, thermal material kind, theses were nice and thick, I was very surprised.

    Just be careful when taking the shroud apart, some screw holder from the inside can come loose and the screw holder is not totally secure and they can come off, one of the downfalls about this card but not many would change thermal paste anyways, especially for this card.
     
    Last edited: Jun 22, 2016

  5. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,387
    Likes Received:
    627
    GPU:
    4 GTX 970/4-Way Sli

    I was trying to change the speed individually for theses cards instead of syncing them, but sadly for some odd reason, the gpu for both is staying nearing almost identical, I can't change them individually, they are still like syncing each other, even though sync similar gpu's is unchecked, according to msi ab graph, it could be other way around.
     
  6. signex

    signex Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    9,045
    Likes Received:
    297
    GPU:
    RTX 2080 Ti
    Heard this card is a beast when it comes to cooling, sadly i don't have room for that radiator as my CPU cooler is pretty damn huge.
     
  7. AsiJu

    AsiJu Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    8,774
    Likes Received:
    3,354
    GPU:
    KFA2 4070Ti EXG.v2
    Good that you got the BIOS problems sorted!

    If you see a modded BIOS you'd like to try, open it with MBT and see what changes have been made.

    Then dump your original BIOS, make a copy of it for modding and make the needed changes to that BIOS and try it out.

    This way you still have the cards own BIOS, just with modified values. It's very risky to directly flash a third-party BIOS, as you saw ;)

    PS: yeah that's a very solid OC you have on those bad boys. I don't think you'd gain anything from 1.3 V except possibly fried VRMs...
    980 Tis don't usually benefit from very high voltages but may in fact begin showing diminishing returns as VRMs become unstable. I think.
     
  8. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,387
    Likes Received:
    627
    GPU:
    4 GTX 970/4-Way Sli

    Under load, msi ab shows 1.218V on both cores, that's with the voltage slider to +87.

    I also notice that, once yo uraise the voltage slider, it works accordingly with your core clock overclock slider, everytime you increase the +mv, the core speed goes up, is this natural?
     
  9. Agent-A01

    Agent-A01 Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    11,628
    Likes Received:
    1,119
    GPU:
    4090 FE H20
    Yep its normal but quite annoying. Dump your bios here and ill mod it for you. Won't have any issues because you're not flashing a different cards bios on yours
     
  10. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,387
    Likes Received:
    627
    GPU:
    4 GTX 970/4-Way Sli
    You know whats kinda of funny, I de-synced similar gpu's, and I tried upping the core speed on gpu2(the one that runs more cooler), I tried bumping up to +150 on the core, this brings it up to 1540mhz, it seems stable but I stopped and checked the ab graph, it still says 1480mhz?? yet, if I go any further, it flunked right away, this tells me that overclocking is working, despite the graph ain't showing properly.

    I need to do more further testing, thats prettie insane, 1540mhz, prettie darn good. I'll be back later, thanks alot.
     

  11. SplashDown

    SplashDown Maha Guru

    Messages:
    1,131
    Likes Received:
    406
    GPU:
    EVGA 980ti Classy
    I got mine @ 1521 & 1.21v temp stays under 73c. I got ram up pretty high on mine too 8000 just stopped there didn't try for anymore I just wanted to see if 8000 would be stable, it's got the Samsung chips in it. I figured with 384bus it was kinda redundant. I'm waiting on new King Beast ram, be here tomorrow then I'll see what it'll do then.
     
    Last edited: Jun 22, 2016
  12. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,387
    Likes Received:
    627
    GPU:
    4 GTX 970/4-Way Sli
    Ok, I tried +150 on second gpu, it flunked very shortly after I did firestrike extreme, I went down to +140mv on second gpu, it seems stable but here comes the odd part:

    My firestrike extreme score for gpu1(+99) and +140 on gpu2 is 15200

    I lowered the +core clock speed on 2nd gpu, and my score improved, I guess due to instability, I lowered it down to where I had it before, +99 on both gpus, score improved to 15500.

    I also wanted to try even further, down-clocking the core clock a bit to +79 on both gpu's, again score improved to 15700+.

    I need to do further testing, it seems that a certain clock speed then from there on it, it loses performance, I'll give heads up later.

    Sort of like messing with ram latency, you might think your system is stable but actually losing performance if its set to low or vice versa.

    So take note on this guys, You might achieve your highest overclock but you may even actually losing performance in the long run, be sure to do some benchmark run and go from there.

    brb in a bit.
     
    Last edited: Jun 22, 2016
  13. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,387
    Likes Received:
    627
    GPU:
    4 GTX 970/4-Way Sli
    Ok some updates here:

    The last post that I posted, that particular testing, that's when the gpu's were not synced obviously, This time, I wanted to see what my score would be if I synced them, at +99 for both gpu's, and +600 memory, and guess what again??? My score improved this time to like 15900+, nearing 16000 in firestrike extreme.

    Theses scores is with NO ThrottleStop, as I always use this program to achieve the best possible speed's while cpu's are under load for my xeon cpu's, and yes they do improve somewhat.

    So I haved achieved a more higher overall score if both gpu's are synced to +99 rather then not syncing them at +99, very interesting.

    I'll do some more. Man this is fun, lol.


    UPDATE:

    Ok, I did downclock both gpu's to +79 along with sync similar gpu's, score is 15566.

    So apparently, the gpu's gives better performance syncin' them rather then not at max overclock speed, even if both gpu's at same speed, this is interesting.
     
    Last edited: Jun 22, 2016
  14. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,194
    Likes Received:
    213
    GPU:
    GTX 1070 | GTX 1060
    Very good overclock especially with SLI. Maybe if you had 1 980 Ti You could get to 1500mhz core clock.
     
  15. AsiJu

    AsiJu Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    8,774
    Likes Received:
    3,354
    GPU:
    KFA2 4070Ti EXG.v2
    Yea that's normal like Agent said, the Boost increases a bit when voltage increases.

    Sometimes you may need to account for this if you're pushing for a max overclock ie decrease core offset slightly when increasing voltage to keep the same/target clock.
     

  16. A M D BugBear

    A M D BugBear Ancient Guru

    Messages:
    4,387
    Likes Received:
    627
    GPU:
    4 GTX 970/4-Way Sli
    Ok, I modded my stock bios and upped the voltage parameters to:

    1.281v to 1.3v.

    My max core clock stable now is 1500mhz but memory had to come down from msi ab from +600 to +575 to help stabilize the gpu's.

    So far, seems very stable, did a test run for firestrike, got better score with the 1500mhz +575 memory, this is when 2 gpu's are being synced.

    normally, @ 1.3v is watercooling zone, but since the gpu is being liquid cooled and a 140mm fan blowing on both cards on the side where the vrm heatinks are, I gave it shot, yes the backplate is running hot, all that heat transferring to the blackplate, the actual vrm heatsink, is kinda warm, not brutally hot, this is while the 140mm fan is blowing right next to it.

    So far, so good. 2 gpus @ 1500mhz @ 1.3v and memory @ 8150mhz(effective clock rate).


    Temps on the hotter one, gpu1, is about 48-50 C, the second gpu is in the med 40's and slightly thereafter, during load of course.
     
    Last edited: Jun 27, 2016

Share This Page