980ti throttling?

[Dangerous_Dave]

Hi all,

I have a Gigabyte 980ti Windforce OC, that I've been trying to push for 1.5GHz with. The card has an excellent ASIC quality (83.9%), and seems ready to overclock, except that when I check MSI Afterburner, it is only hitting 1.5Ghz+ occasionally, and most of the time sitting around 1.4GHz. Even my old low ASIC 980ti with 6+8 pin power connectors sat at a higher clock speed than that under load!

I've tried bumping the power limit, but it will only go up to 104% for some reason.

Any advice on what the problem might be?

Cheers

 

[Skynet5]

ASIC is one of a number of forces that determine how to overclock. It is far from the only influencer and also not to be singled out and charged for etc like some companies do. Shame on them.

Basically high ASIC means less voltage leak, which in turn means less voltage required therefore = can be cooled on air pretty well.

What could be the problem? You might be hitting temp limits, volt limits and power limits stopping you get at a constant 1500+

Look in afterburner at all the limits (turn the monitoring on for them) and see them flip between 0-1 and see your downclocks happening.

temp limits are crappy so water cooling helps - I got an AIO on my msi 6g for this purpose...

voltage and power limits will need a bios flash.


Don't forget...it may not be any of the above, and the frequency is just too high within the chip.

 

[Dangerous_Dave]

Gigabyte Windforce OC is the model.

I've been looking at power limit, and that seems to stay in the high 90s (I assume I have up to 104% allowance?). The temperature is mid 70s max, but throttling is happening well before that.

 

[Skynet5]

Not sure. If I recall increasing the power to 104% gives you 4% more...but still when viewing it, it only goes to 100%.

Check the actual limit flags (these are different and are either 0 or 1) in MSI AB. That tells you exactly when you hit a limit.

Temps in mid 70s might be 3 drops of 13mhz...1 in 50,60 and then 70s

 

[Dangerous_Dave]

Fairly sure it's hitting the power limit. Why'd they give this card such a crappy power limit? It has 2x 8-pin PCI-E power connectors, and a 5% lower power limit than my old reference 6+8-pin card. Where's the logic there?

 

[Dangerous_Dave]

Yes - it was the power limit. Upped it to 112% and it's now sitting around 1480MHz.

 

[DarkBahamut]

That's not always true. The '100%' power limit on 3rd party cards is often set to a higher wattage figure than ref cards.

My MSI 780 which had an official TDP of 250W actually had a 100% power limit set at 280W for example, then you could set it 3% higher than that figure (so 288W max).

Are you increasing the voltage while your overclocking?

 

[Dangerous_Dave]

100% was 260W (which is 104% of 250W), so overall I think it was just slightly below the 109% of the value for the reference board. This leaves me wondering why this card can only do about 1400MHz with the same power that the reference card was doing 1450MHz, despite having a much higher ASIC quality.

 

[tyler_jrb]

100% was 260W (which is 104% of 250W), so overall I think it was just slightly below the 109% of the value for the reference board. This leaves me wondering why this card can only do about 1400MHz with the same power that the reference card was doing 1450MHz, despite having a much higher ASIC quality.

Higher ASIC does not always mean higher clocks. I had a 63% ASIC ref Ti that would do 1510mhz. More than the one I had at 74%.

It's unlikely the power limit and more the card itself. You can always custom flash it if you want to give it an even higher limit and or more voltage but that is up to you.