GTX 980 throttling but not hitting power/temp limits

WDeranged · 29 Sep 2015 at 22:57

I wanted a couple more FPS in GTA V so I decided to do some overclocking. I'm not pushing too hard (110% power limit, 1467mhz GPU, 8ghz RAM) and I can run 12hr burn sessions without a crash but today I noticed the card throttling down and I had to reboot to reset the clocks.

Max power consumption is 105% and I don't see any temp or power limits kicking in, anyone know what's going on?

Joe! · 29 Sep 2015 at 23:03

Do you have GPU-Z? See what is under "Perf limit (?)" on the sensors tab when it is throttling.

WDeranged · 29 Sep 2015 at 23:21

I managed to force the card to throttle by pushing my overclock further than normal, the PerfCap Reason graph is all blue until the throttle kicks in and it turns to grey...no idea what this means though

Joe! · 29 Sep 2015 at 23:25

Hover over it, it tells you.

WDeranged · 29 Sep 2015 at 23:31

The blue bit is VRrel and the grey bit is Util. It looks exactly the same if I stress test my card (blue) and then stop (grey).

WDeranged · 30 Sep 2015 at 14:15

I've upped the power/temp limit to 125% and I haven't seen the card clock down so far, still wondering if anyone else has any experience with this.

WDeranged · 30 Sep 2015 at 16:58

No, still throttling at 125% power limit. Perfcap reason in GpuZ still reads grey for 'util'.

MrMD · 30 Sep 2015 at 18:04

What games is this happening in?

Util means utilization,when GPU-z shows this it means the card is not being 100% stressed,so the clocks are dynamically reduced to save on power.Its normal behavior

Run heaven/firestrike and check GPU-z to see what your clocks are at when running them as they will put your gpu at 100% load

WDeranged · 30 Sep 2015 at 20:07

MrMD said:
What games is this happening in?

Util means utilization,when GPU-z shows this it means the card is not being 100% stressed,so the clocks are dynamically reduced to save on power.Its normal behavior

Run heaven/firestrike and check GPU-z to see what your clocks are at when running them as they will put your gpu at 100% load

Thanks for the reply. It's happening after running Kombustor for a while, I haven't seen it happen with Heaven yet but the card is definitely being 100% loaded.

Dirk Diggler · 30 Sep 2015 at 20:30

It's throttling on power limit.

WDeranged · 30 Sep 2015 at 20:36

String said:
It's throttling on power limit.

That's what I assumed but I can't actually find evidence for it when I look at the sensors in Afterburner or GpuZ.

Dirk Diggler · 30 Sep 2015 at 20:43

It will either be temperature or power. If the temperature is below 65, the it's power.

darket · 30 Sep 2015 at 20:44

WDeranged said:
Thanks for the reply. It's happening after running Kombustor for a while, I haven't seen it happen with Heaven yet but the card is definitely being 100% loaded.

As said before its throttling on power limits/voltage.

You won't see it in Heaven as its not really much of a gpu stress test, Kombustor on the other hand will cause the card to throttle as will Furmark, these two programs are pretty much the reason Nvidia forces strict limits in the drivers and are pretty useless for any kind of stress testing with modern gpu's.

Try maxing the voltage slider and power limit slider and test again.

WDeranged · 30 Sep 2015 at 20:58

darket said:
Try maxing the voltage slider and power limit slider and test again.

Maxing both sliders eventually gives me a driver crash with these settings. Maxing power limit alone doesn't crash but it also doesn't stop the throttling.

I should probably just back off my gpu overclock a bit but I don't feel though I'm pushing especially hard, the RAM is at 8ghz but it can take another 150mhz before artifacts appear.

darket · 30 Sep 2015 at 21:03

WDeranged said:
Maxing both sliders eventually gives me a driver crash with these settings. Maxing power limit alone doesn't crash but it also doesn't stop the throttling.

I should probably just back off my gpu overclock a bit but I don't feel though I'm pushing especially hard, the RAM is at 8ghz but it can take another 150mhz before artifacts appear.

Thats the thing , generally if you up the power limit you're going to need more voltage, however the core might not like the extra voltage, Maxwell overclocking is all about balancing.

You might need to back off the overclock a little to find a place where its happy to have a higher power limit and not throttle.

Dirk Diggler · 30 Sep 2015 at 22:07

WDeranged said:
I should probably just back off my gpu overclock a bit...

This.

You'll lose 1-2fps if you're lucky. :cool:

WDeranged · 1 Oct 2015 at 01:15

I'm sure you guys are right about the power limit as my max temp is 73c, I'll do some more experimenting. The only thing that confuses me is why I don't see any power limiting in Afterburner's monitors, also power usage doesn't go over 108%.

Dirk Diggler · 1 Oct 2015 at 08:00

It will throttle at around 70C also, so it could be one or the other.

Jinjur · 1 Oct 2015 at 08:36

Wait.....a 980 will throttle at 70 degrees c?

I am pretty sure I dont see that with mine....could (more than liklely) be wrong

J

WDeranged · 1 Oct 2015 at 16:35

Jinjur said:
Wait.....a 980 will throttle at 70 degrees c?

I am pretty sure I dont see that with mine....could (more than liklely) be wrong

J

I've seen other people say these cards throttle at low temps so I just decided to test this. I forced my fans to run at 25% and I didn't see any throttling until it went past 83c, even then the card only dipped volts by .025 and bumped 20-30mhz off my overclock.