NVIDIA GTX 970 OWNERS THREAD

almighty15 · 27 Oct 2014 at 11:15

Scramz said:
So, are the custom bios' helping you guys get more out of your benchmarks?

For me yes, no boost clock fluctuations any more, head room has improved only by around 50Mhz but every thing is just rock solid now and it holds the clocks much much better.

But I have poor cards.

Mal X · 27 Oct 2014 at 11:23

Amatsubu said:
Yep, I've heard coil whine is not exclusive to any brand but people say the Asus is a bit less likely to suffer it (though that may be down to the MSI card being a lot more prevalent on the market).

A lot cooler? Really? There shouldn't be more than 2-3 degrees of difference between them...

What about overclocking? Is the Asus any good? Since you have both and know their pros and cons, which one would you recommend? The 6fps difference Mal X mentioned seems quite a lot.

i must be lucky then because my card is dead silent, maybe because the overclock isn't that high

6 fps difference applies to my card only, i.e mine is 6fps slower than if i turned the settings up again............i have no idea how the Asus compares to the MSI in FPS.

my overclock is approx only 50% on 1080p, so mine is backed off a long way, dont let that fool you it's still extremely powerful and if i want more power it's just a case of adding another card

it's only backed off for stability, it games fine at max OC, it's just me being cautious

Benihana · 27 Oct 2014 at 11:51

Just went for the Gigabyte Windforce, was about £80 cheaper than the G1 in Denmark and seems to get good reviews. Same custom PCB as the G1, but 2 heatpipes vs 4 and a lower stock overclock. Some people are still hitting 1500/8000 though so fingers crossed.

I know my current system will limit it, but that just means more upgrades soon

ianbeany · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:04

almighty15 said:
Custom BIOS for my palit cards

- SLI voltage problem fixed

- Stock RAM clock at 8Ghz

- Boost disabled

- TDP raised so never bump into power restrictions

They FLYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.............

Any chance of you sending me your bios mate?

Ive raised the power limit which has helped a little bit but Im not sure how to go about disabling boost and changing voltage.

Ayahuasca · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:06

Your bios sound spot on almighty, will likely be similar to the skyn3t bios when those are released.

Jinjur · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:10

Hey guys,

Not having much luck OC'ing my G1.

I'm looking for game stable rather than bench stable. BF4 continually shats out the "device removed" error every time I think i have a good OC

Any advice?

J

almighty15 · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:24

ianbeany said:
Any chance of you sending me your bios mate?

Ive raised the power limit which has helped a little bit but Im not sure how to go about disabling boost and changing voltage.

Sure thing matey but I'm work atm so it won't be until tonight, remember that my cards are under full cover water blocks so it might not be ideal to flash it to an air cooled card.

Ayahuasca said:
Your bios sound spot on almighty, will likely be similar to the skyn3t bios when those are released.

It'll do for now but it's been the case of at least 30 flashes and driver re-installs to get it where it is now.

almighty15 · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:29

Jinjur said:
Hey guys,

Not having much luck OC'ing my G1.

I'm looking for game stable rather than bench stable. BF4 continually shats out the "device removed" error every time I think i have a good OC

Any advice?

J

Load up GPU-Z and see what the reason is for perf cap, that should give you a good idea on what to do.

ianbeany · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:39

almighty15 said:
Sure thing matey but I'm work atm so it won't be until tonight, remember that my cards are under full cover water blocks so it might not be ideal to flash it to an air cooled card.

Cheers buddy, much appreciated.

Should at least give me a rough idea how to go on, hopefully i'll be able to tweak it a bit to suit my card.

almighty15 · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:41

ianbeany said:
Cheers buddy, much appreciated.

Should at least give me a rough idea how to go on, hopefully i'll be able to tweak it a bit to suit my card.

Are you using Keplar BIOS editor or the Maxwell one to tweak your cards BIOS?

Gibbo · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:42

Hi there

Price match service:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18632637

Nelly · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:49

Anyone got this issue at all >> http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=27116962

Obviously a driver issue, but wondering if it effects people with other brands of 970's.

Amatsubu · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:51

Mal X said:
i must be lucky then because my card is dead silent, maybe because the overclock isn't that high

6 fps difference applies to my card only, i.e mine is 6fps slower than if i turned the settings up again............i have no idea how the Asus compares to the MSI in FPS.

my overclock is approx only 50% on 1080p, so mine is backed off a long way, dont let that fool you it's still extremely powerful and if i want more power it's just a case of adding another card

it's only backed off for stability, it games fine at max OC, it's just me being cautious

Thanks for the help, Mal. The reason I prefer the Asus to the MSI is the single power connector (the less cables, the better), all-metal construction and a backplate (I don't think having 4 memory chips totally exposed and prone to damage is a good idea, especially in a supposedly premium product). I also plan to go SLI somewhere down the road, so having less power connectors is definitely a nice bonus.

Plus, my build is almost entirely black (case, cables, everything) and the card should match my Z97-Pro;p It seems monstruous though, I may have to buy a different case because it might not fit in my Thermaltake A90;/

Ayahuasca · 27 Oct 2014 at 12:52

Nope but I use a constant fan speed anyway

ianbeany · 27 Oct 2014 at 13:05

almighty15 said:
Are you using Keplar BIOS editor or the Maxwell one to tweak your cards BIOS?

I raised the power limit with the kepler one a few days ago. Ive downloaded the Maxwell one today but haven't used it yet.

almighty15 · 27 Oct 2014 at 13:12

ianbeany said:
I raised the power limit with the kepler one a few days ago. Ive downloaded the Maxwell one today but haven't used it yet.

Best thing for you is to download the Gigabyte G1 BIOS from techpowerup BIOS database and just copy the power table from thatc ard to yours.

That's all I did I've never seen a 'Pwr' limitation since.

Scottland · 27 Oct 2014 at 14:13

Is there much feedback on the Gainward 'Phantom' card yet? I can only find 1 or 2 reviews, but it seems like it has a decent factory OC with a supposed quieter cooler.

PurplePhoenix · 27 Oct 2014 at 14:24

Has anyone SLI in MATX case yet ?

Thinking of buying one MSI then wait for the water blocks to add in a 2nd.

facboy · 27 Oct 2014 at 14:57

Jinjur said:
Hey guys,

Not having much luck OC'ing my G1.

I'm looking for game stable rather than bench stable. BF4 continually shats out the "device removed" error every time I think i have a good OC

Any advice?

J

i'm finding game stable much, much harder. in fact i've had d3 crash with a paltry +50 offset! basically i'm running into the old 'low utilisation/low voltage' problem.

essentially when you o/c with a core offset, it does more or less exactly what it says and adds said offset to every clock speed in the boost table (or that seems to be the effect at least).

the practical upshot of this is that say you have a card that has a base clock of 1126 and is perfectly happy boosting to 1250 at stock, which the voltage table says needs 1.2v. now you add a core offset of +200 so now the boost clock is 1450, still at 1.2v. The base clock will be 1326. Happily passes Heaven, Valley, Firestrike, Furmark, you name it. Then you fire up D3 and boom, driver reset.

What's happening? D3 is 'low utilization', so your GPU doesn't need to go full boost to run it, it can just run it at the base clock. In fact, it can run it below base clock it's so undemanding. This is where you run into problems. The GPU says, 'oh i drop a few boost bins and i'll run this at -77' (6 boost bins of ~13mhz). so it goes into it's voltage table and looks up what the voltage required for 6 boost bins below the base clock is...1.05v. So it tries to run 1326 - 77 ~= 1250mhz with 1.05v. But at stock 1250Mhz required 1.2v! So the GPU is severely undervolted and it crashes.

This affects different cards differently I'd assume, as some are going to be happy running much lower voltages at higher clock speeds, while others are not. Hopefully it's something that can be fixed with a driver update, but it existed apparently on the 780s so I wouldn't hold your breath. The other solution is to use something like k-boost and always run at max clocks and voltage. of course the other other solution is not to o/c, which is not very appealing but what i'm settling for at the moment.

Blackwhite · 27 Oct 2014 at 14:58

Amatsubu said:
Yep, I've heard coil whine is not exclusive to any brand but people say the Asus is a bit less likely to suffer it (though that may be down to the MSI card being a lot more prevalent on the market).

A lot cooler? Really? There shouldn't be more than 2-3 degrees of difference between them...

What about overclocking? Is the Asus any good? Since you have both and know their pros and cons, which one would you recommend? The 6fps difference Mal X mentioned seems quite a lot.

Temps are 8C less on MSI when Overclocked and 4C less on stock clocks.
Also Asus is louder than MSI for me.
OC wise is very similar but........ Asus has power Limit set up lower at 170W vs 200W on MSI cards and under load Asus boost is dropping down from 1578 to 1550 MHz.Also I have much better Fire stike score on MSI (even with lower clocks) than on Asus.
MSI OC 1558 MHz/7600 and Asus 1578/8000 - score different was nearly 300 better on MSI.