Are the 970's / 980's voltage locked?

[Michaeljcox24]

I couldn't touch the voltage on my old 690 (which was gutting considering the rad space I have)

I've noticed however, that voltage control can be unticked on this new 980 in afterburner, and has three settings (extended / standard / reference)

Can you up the voltage on the 970's / 980's or not? Or is it like on my old cald whereby no matter how far you moved the slider it made no difference.

It's a Manli card with XSPC Razor block.

Ta.

 

[almighty15]

You can but the cards don't really benefit from voltage, you'll only gain a small amount of Mhz.

The cards benefit more from an increased TDP but to be honest it's more of a silicon lottery with these.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

I was looking for stability at the 1480-1500 Mhz in some of the more demanding games.

 

[almighty15]

They should do that easily without voltage added to be honest, what 970's do you have?

 

[Michaeljcox24]

It's the reference 980, company called 'Manli'. Stable on benches but AC Unity spazes out at 1480+

 

[Silent_Scone]

I just wrote a fairly long winded post, then this prehistoric message board kicked me out for some reason.


Long story short, if the card is reference then the PCB is under what is now known as the Greenlight program. The card is volt limited (in this case to 1.25v) Nobody is sure why this is (who's cared to divulge on the scene), but it's presumed to be a driver limitation as there is no physical reason why the voltage regulator on the board won't do it. These boards are made by a company called Flextronics.

If you want to overclock, you want to buy a 980 which is of AIB partner design and has it's own voltage regulator, like the ASUS Strix Digi + or the EVGA Classified.

happy shopping.

 

[Michaeljcox24]

I just upped it to +87 in Afterburner, and instead of running at 1.218, it was stable at 1.262.

 

[almighty15]

You could BIOS mod it to allow more voltage and power but gains are minimal.

If you run GPU-Z and play a game it will tell you what's limiting he cards performance.

 

[Silent_Scone]

I just upped it to +87 in Afterburner, and instead of running at 1.218, it was stable at 1.262.

87mv+ on reference design will get you 1.25v after LLC

 

[Michaeljcox24]

Ah.Ok then. So I assume reference voltage is less than 1.25 ?

 

[Silent_Scone]

Reference allows for 1.25v, that's it.