How was my GPU overclocked previously?

[MatteRB26]

So about 2 years ago I acquired an MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G that a friend found for me. He mentioned that it was overclocked already, which I believe it is, but as far as I've always understood it, component overclocks rely on the motherboard or software such as Afterburner to keep the overclocks?

Now I've just googled the stock speeds for the card and I found that the stock speeds should be 1,279 MHz boost for the main clock, and 1,753MHz for the memory. However, ever since I've had the card and checked the speeds of it myself, they've always been 1,506MHz for the card and 3,000MHz for the memory.

This is quite a large difference from the written stock speeds, so I'm just curious about how the overclock could possibly have been done? If it's reliant on the BIOS or software, there's no way it should be keeping those speeds after I bought it - or even after I upgraded my motherboard!

 

[subbytna]

I had a custom BIOS on my 970 that ran it at 1500 speeds. Was a great card. Even modded it myself to add copper heatsinks on the VRM's. Looked like a golden hedgehog had babies on the card

 

[MatteRB26]

I had a custom BIOS on my 970 that ran it at 1500 speeds. Was a great card. Even modded it myself to add copper heatsinks on the VRM's. Looked like a golden hedgehog had babies on the card

From what I've recently heard - it sounds like my card had custom firmware on it to get these speeds. Don't think there was any fancy heatsink work though, I'd like to see what the hedgehog babies looked like!

 

[subbytna]

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/msi-gtx-970-gaming-4g.18868108/

pics in there

EDIT : You perhaps don't have members market access yet, check here instead. Not the best pic but you can see the heatsinks

https://imgur.com/Rm6NIIr​