GTX 970 Owners Thread

What is your stale oc? And is it with stock volts?

 

At the moment I'm testing 1,5 GHz +36mV, 7200 MHz VRAM. I'm pretty sure that the core is stable, memory causes TDR or solid colour crash at 7300 MHz. That being said I'm not 100% sure if it's the core.

 

I found this too.. ocing memory past 7400 can get dicey. Mind you, ocing the memory really won't give as huge of an increase as the core obv., so if you can get your core closer to 1500 without much overvolting you're laughing.

 

Hmm.... It looks like the problem is GPU OC and not VRAM, memory could probably do much more. I must to do some testing....

By the way, Firestrike is pretty poor reliability test.

 

Interesting.

Whats your Heaven or Valley results ?
Mine were very close

 

Heaven and Valley generally run better on Kepler cards apparently.

I've been doing some testing and it turns out that memory wasn't the issue. It looks like ~1450 MHz with little bit voltage and 7600 MHz memory is stable, at least in Firestrike demo (extreme preset but 1080p, looping). If this is stable, I'll stick with these settings for now. I'll need to confirm the stability with real games.

 

Ah ok, cool.

I just went straight to core 1274mhz = Boost 1489mhz and 7900mhz mem straight of the bat with mine (based on what id seen with reviews etc) stock voltage, just upped power/temp target to 110% in Inspector.

Its stable in everything so far, Heaven, Firestrike, BF4 for 3 hours, Crysis 3 for 2 hours.

Will get round to fine tuning eventually.

 

1450/7800 here, stock volts. Stable. So similar to what you get.

 

It just got delivered. Now my kids can have my 7970.

My plan now is to get another 970 and then a 1440p monitor over the next few months. Hopefully I'll be set for couple of GPU generations before upgrading again.

What would you guys say the best benchmark is to test overclock?

 

Nice to get these oc's with no voltage increase

Did you dial down your clocks then abit. I thought you were running at tad higher ?

I havent had any issues so far, but wondering if to bother to go higher tbh.

 

Yeah, I benched at 1525/8000 and a tad above that, but dialed it back to 1450/7800 for 24/7 usage.

 

My MSI 970 got delayed by 2 weeks!

Wondering now if I should try to buy from other place and at same time maybe change MSI to some other brand.

So what is "best" at the moment? ASUS strix, Gigabyte?
Seen so many complains about MSI that I think im skipping that.

 

wrong thread

 

If you have the space, go gigabyte. If not, go strix

You'll do well with both, I'm sure.

 

Ye im sure they are powerful but im worried about all other issues and noise.
Like MSI seems to have tons of coil whine and fan issues.

At least some video review I saw about gigabyte he said it was very quiet etc so should be good that way.

 

well I cannot comment on the MSI, but I can on the G1. I have had them for a week now and they are pretty darn quiet during regular idle. This is with fan speed at 35% (lowest locked by bios) and RPM at 1632.

once the bios gets unlocked it should be able to set fan speed at 0 up to say, 40c+, and it will still stay pretty cool, much like other cards. But for now, its a great option.

Game play with SLI is still very respectable. My top card runs about 3-7c hotter (depending on power input) and other factors obviously.
If you have a decent amount of cooling into the case, I imagine your temps would be even better (I only have 2 fans on my h100 exhausting. NO other incoming air as I wish for silence)

As for coil whine, I only really notice it during benching. During gameplay, its pretty much not there at all that I've noticed, though I've only had the chance to play a couple games (Wolfenstein NO, Elite Dangerous, and a bit of Grim Dawn) and none of those games are really pressing the cards at all haha

 

*** Important for People with CPUs older than Ivy Bridge ****

I found this important nugget of info on Overclockers regarding users (like myself) who are SLI-ing 970/980 and using older CPUs (think 25,26,2700k)

This explains some of the lower GPU Scores during the Firestrike benchmark. I have not personally tested this theory yet, but it makes sense to me why Firestrike for us will seem low, even with a heavy overclock on the CPU.

 

My card does actually have coil whine issues (tssssssssss). Even with v-sync on so I'm considering returning it.

Why on earth did they do that? That's pathetic considering that GTX 780 Windforce idled at ~770 RPM. That's way too much for idle and can't be silent. My MSI goes up to ~1200 RPM under 100% load.

 

Agreed.. I am eager for bios unlocking primarily for the ability to do away with this silly fan profile. Same thing with MSI on my GS60 Notebook.. the fan doesn't need to be as high as it is at all, but there you have it.

Also, just ran a couple runs to see how high I could push the GPU in Valley. I was able to get it stable-ish hitting around 1530 with power @ 112% and +12 to voltage. After that, even with more power, I start to see some issues.
What was good though, was I heard little to no noise.. only the fans. No coil.

Also, for people who are still on the fence about which card to buy, there is a great breakdown of features/power usage/overclocking that I found. I will update my OP with these links.

http://www.overclock.net/t/1516121/gtx-970-comparison-strix-vs-msi-gaming-vs-gigabyte-g1

 

For my GTX 970 SLI setup, I've been doing some more game Benchmarks and uploading the videos to YouTube.
My latest benchmark is Metro Last Light with everything maxed including SSAA and physx enabled at 2560x1440.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar8NxX152HI&list=UUwEZgvHItRzIDIhmJWtVchw