GTX 1070 overclocks terribly under water

[LuckyBenski]

Hey all, built my first water cooled PC recently and have a reference 1070 (EVGA SC originally). With my current setup temps cap out at like, 52-55 depending on how much noise I'll tolerate.

I'm using Fire Strike to benchmark, as Furmark draws maximum power and the power limit crushes the maximum boost clock.

I'm working on the overclock but struggled to get it over +75. Just squeezed +80 out of it, so I'm tweaking it when I have time. I can't get the boost clock over 2000, and I feel like I've tried everything.

Does my card just suck, or am I doing something wrong? I've heard GPU boost 3.0 manages voltage, clocks and power so tightly that it's hard to improve with overclocking. Certainly clocking the memory too high lowered my benchmark scores. Also, lowering the voltage boost limit actually improved the clocking, I assume because it made it harder to reach the power limit capping.

Help?

 

[Minstadave]

Does sound like you’ve got a bit of a lemon tbh.

I’m not sure if the modded BIOSes with an increased power limit might get you further. They obviously come with a significant element of risk/warranty issues.

 

[LuckyBenski]

Does sound like you’ve got a bit of a lemon tbh.

I think I'm just a bit sad about the fact I've gone to water but GPU Boost 3.0 stops me reaching a ridiculous overclock! Tempted to BIOS mod it just to see how far I can push it. But then the build is for silence rather than performance...

 

[Minstadave]

I think I'm just a bit sad about the fact I've gone to water but GPU Boost 3.0 stops me reaching a ridiculous overclock! Tempted to BIOS mod it just to see how far I can push it. But then the build is for silence rather than performance...

All the recent Nvidia GPUs aren’t thermal limited and don’t really respond to voltage. Overclocking has got really boring.

 

[LuckyBenski]

All the recent Nvidia GPUs aren’t thermal limited and don’t really respond to voltage. Overclocking has got really boring.

Yes it kind of has. If I get a block for my 970, I have all the gear spare to do a second loop in my old build. Tempting just to play with it.

Or I could spend more time playing games!

 

[RanxZy]

You simply lost in the silicon lottery this time, I'm usually an expert at that

I got lucky for once, as the 1070 Armor OC I have boosts to 1940-50MHz at 45c (had a Kraken G10 and Corsair H90 AIO laying about so put it to use). Sits at 2100MHz no problem just by upping the core offset. Run it at stock though, because the performance increase is marginal with +150MHz on Pascal.

 

[Habakkuk]

Did it overclock terribly on air as well?

 

[LuckyBenski]

Did it overclock terribly on air as well?

Annoyingly, I bought it for this build so I only gave it a few minutes on Furmark to make sure it was stable at full power draw. I got it second hand in good condition so I'm wondering if it was sold on for this reason. Maybe just paranoid.

 

[MasterOC]

Looks like you have a poor car Not exactly sure to memory in what stages of temps it declocks from mempry but 50 than 60 and then 70 c have the biggest incremental drops and then every other degree drops it slightly more . Keeping my 1070 under 60c generally keeps me at 2012mhz on the core but will dro0 to around 1940 upto 80c voltage isnt liniar , found that + 32mv on one of my maxwell cards helped where as 40 mv wouldnt for example . Nvidia also have stupidly restricted power limits .

 

[Rroff]

Without a modded firmware it will drop to ~2025MHz at some point due to the power limit anyhow.

With Pascal cards once you are boosting to ~2GHz and mostly holding the clocks there is pretty much no tangible performance difference any how.

 

[Bluntwrapped]

55c sounds quite hot if it’s a full cover block?

 

[LuckyBenski]

55c sounds quite hot if it’s a full cover block?

This is with minimal fan speeds - I built it for quietness. CPU and GPU are generally within a degree of each other and my fans hardly leave their idle speed. I could choose to ramp them up if I like but it's a very safe temperature considering that's under full stress test.

It's also a hybrid block - Alphacool Nexxxos, but full cover or not wouldn't make much difference to the core temp reading.

 

[Bluntwrapped]

This is with minimal fan speeds - I built it for quietness. CPU and GPU are generally within a degree of each other and my fans hardly leave their idle speed. I could choose to ramp them up if I like but it's a very safe temperature considering that's under full stress test.

It's also a hybrid block - Alphacool Nexxxos, but full cover or not wouldn't make much difference to the core temp reading.

You’re looking around 40c with a fullcover EK block. The core boost is pinned to temperature so the lower you can get the core the higher it’ll clock. That said, core isn’t everything. VRM temp/throttling likely has its its part to play too.

 

[LuckyBenski]

You’re looking around 40c with a fullcover EK block. The core boost is pinned to temperature so the lower you can get the core the higher it’ll clock. That said, core isn’t everything. VRM temp/throttling likely has its its part to play too.

Why would I be looking at 40? Surely its dependent on what rads I have, fan speeds, ambient temperature, CPU... I could peg it at 40 if I wanted moderate fan noise but ideally I'll take silence.

I'm told 50° is the bottom temperature for clock-temp interaction but I'd love more information...

 

[Rroff]

Why would I be looking at 40? Surely its dependent on what rads I have, fan speeds, ambient temperature, CPU... I could peg it at 40 if I wanted moderate fan noise but ideally I'll take silence.

I'm told 50° is the bottom temperature for clock-temp interaction but I'd love more information...

Depends on the card/core/firmware some of the cards seem to act a little differently to others and/or some AIBs seem to be running slightly tweaked behaviour - some cards definitely drop a speed bin once they go over 40C.

Mine 90% of the time boosts to 1911MHz regardless of temperature until it hits around 78C when it starts dropping speed bins depending on load/voltage, occasionally it will start fluctuating slight once it hits 66C for some reason but only about 10% of the time.

I've seen other 1070/1080 that always drop a speed bin at 50C then again at 60C and then finally stabilise at 80C with some small fluctuations up and down depending on load, etc.

I definitely don't get any higher boost on mine by dropping to 40C or lower infact the only thing that really makes any difference is if I very slightly increase the voltage manually I can get it to hold a 20xxMHz boost - it will go slightly higher but at times drops to 202xMHz due to "power" reasons regardless so isn't much point on my card going any higher voltage trying to hit like 2.1GHz as it just works against the power limit :s

 

[LuckyBenski]

I noticed that too, I get highest Fire Strike score and clocks with no voltage boost, but full power. Shame I can't just control it manually. I should stop obsessing over number and go play games haha.

 

[Rroff]

Honestly with Pascal they are usually boosting out the box pretty close to the long term max clock, unless you are shooting for a world record the biggest tangible gains come from what you can do to keep it boosting stable close to those peak clocks - otherwise you will likely see some small fluctuation over say 30 minutes of gaming into a small slope off before it stabilises at around 10-15% down on the performance average over the first 30 minutes or so.

 

[Bluntwrapped]

With Pascal, temperature is everything.

Lower temp = lower voltage per bin. You’ll only get so much out of the default curve - 2025mhz or so tops depending on the card. If you want to push for 2100mhz+ it has to be done manually. Again the cooler the core, the easier this will be to achieve.

 

[Rroff]

The exact behaviour seems a bit different core to core - mine from about 8C to 66C shows no difference if I can get a boost and hold it at <40C I can also do it upto 66C and for the most part that holds true upto 78C - 78C is where things go funny even 1C over and it starts dropping loads of bins depending on what it is doing and throwing up IIRC rel. voltage reason for dropping the boost. Aslong as I keep it under 78C I can bump the voltage up very slightly and sit at just over 2GHz until I hit the power limit which brings it back down to essentially 2GHz at times (usually 2025MHz).

 

[nashathedog]

Is it an ICX or ACX card,

There were problems with EVGA's ACX cards when Pascal released but I don't know whether the problem was just the cooler or if something on the pcb had to be redesigned as well,
Maybe someone else knows more about it?