3xx.xx Drivers Limiting OC

I honestly don't know what to think now.

If I go by benchmarks or fraps, anything over 1000 makes no measurable difference. If I go by the point at which it crashes from pushing it too far, it's 100% consistent with 296.10. e.g. at 1050 everything runs fine, at 1070 things crashes after 5 mins. In both cases the clocks are reported to be at 1000, and the fps remain equal for any clock over 1000.

It's as if it does allow the overclock, but doesn't let those extra gpu cycles to be actually used for graphics processing.


I'm hoping this is the result of a deliberately botchy method of implementing the lockdown by righteous minded engineers who have cunningly, and slyly, left scope for 3rd party software to workaround it relatively easily.

 

Id just like to point out that Afterburner set the OC and it shows as overclocked but take note of the core speed in the hardware monitor. Or even look at the stats on the right in Kombuster.


EDIT:

This is odd. I just installed 306.23 and my card does not seem to be throttling and holding my oc back at a max of 797Mhz and working fine at my oc of 850Mhz.


Will keep an eye on it.

 

What made you think that it was? And didn't you start this thread saying 1000mhz was the limit anyway?

My next move is to play about with Quadro drivers and/or try flashing my card as a quadro or anything else and see what happens. I'll report back at some point this weekend...

 

the 1000Mhz was with a 550ti I have since moved to a 480GTX

This was throttling at anything over 797Mhz but is not doing that with the latest drivers and im able to OC past 797Mhz

 

Nothing weird at all about this.
Do you really wonder why your 580 doesn't post when you set an 680 device id? :stewpid:
Fermi and Kepler are very different chips so there's no way this could have worked. And i even doubt that you can run an 500 id on a 400 card or vice-versa as that's GF100 vs GF110.

Do yourself and the support division of your graphic cards manufacturer a favor and don't use nvflash.exe again.

 

Yes, thanks idiot. I had no problems flashing back so no problem there. And yes it does surprise me that a different device id doesn't work properly, as all I'm changing is 4 hex values, the rest of the bios is mine. I'm not trying to flash a 680 bios on it, now that would be stupid.

 

Ok, flashing to a different id, any id, is a total no go.

It seems the device id is stored 'elsewhere' on the card and if there's a mismatch the card fails to POST.

I assume this to be true as I'm only asked to type out YES in caps when I first flash to a different id, but it doesn't ask me to do that when I subsequently flash back to my original bios. Nvidia have obviously put in a system to prevent users from 'upgrading' their cards via flashing on GTX580s.

So, uhh, dunno what to try next, maybe give those latest quadro drivers a go and see if that changes things. Will report back...

 

Quadros are a no go. That's what I have on my other computer right now. Still can't OC my 580 Classified past 1000MHz.


Also, there's a way to force mismatch IDs when flashing Bioses. I've done it before with a Gigabyte and Asus card. Its in this thread somewhere
http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?p=3433513#post3433513

 

Thanks, but I've already managed to flash to a different device ID using the -5 and -6 options. The flash goes successfully, but upon reboot, no screen is displayed and I get a bios error code indicating a fault with the video card. I am able to blind flash back in this state though as I've said previously.

I'm only trying this flashing based on the assumption that if the drivers thought my card was a 680, it would let the clocks go past 1000mhz.

And yeah, the quadro drivers make no difference.

 

Ok so I re-installed 296.10 driver and I could overclock to 800mhz without voltage bump. I could also overclock it further than with the new 3xxx.xx drivers. I just have one problem. I would like to import the SLI profiles from latest drivers to the old (296.10) driver. Also another thing I noticed is that my Physx score went up in 3dmark 11

So hope anyone can help

 

Nope, The Core is limited at 1ghz but the shader still increases with the 3xx drivers. Most applications read from 1/2 of the total shader clock, that is why they say it has gone over 1ghz when it hasnt.

The reason why you get a bit more performance and driver will crash is you're pushing the shader a little, that is all. The core is definitely not going past 1ghz, I have confirmed this myself with the 29x drivers and the 3xx drivers, max oc, difference past 1ghz etc. Try 29x and 3xx at 1ghz then both over 1ghz, then try max oc with both aswel, you will come to the same conclusion.

 

My 670 is totally a very poor overclocker compared to my 470... I stopped bothering. -_-

 

my card has been running at the same 1200 mhz clocks its had on it since the original drivers. Which card are you using? Not a gtx 480 I assume cause there's no way your hitting a 1000 mhz on that unless you have some extreme cooling on it.