Nvidia GTX 980 Owners Thread

Vimes · 9 Feb 2015 at 15:11

Awahwah said:
Not yet, but I was just about to investigate LED's to use. The face-plate just unscrews, so easy enough to do.

Please keep us posted if you do, including pics for those thickies like me

Arcane · 9 Feb 2015 at 15:39

MasterOC said:
Just bought two kfa2 980 soc. Just reading up on some Temps . Are these generally fine then in SLI ?fan Sound isn't really an issue tbf as long as dosnt keep throttling , I'm running I an air 540 so assuming it should be fine . My two 970s generally throttled down 1 13mhz increment

They're hot. I've been playing around at the weekend with different fans etc (3 x 120, 2x140) to see what works best. The top one idles mid 40s and hits 79 during heaven (gpu fans at 100%), bottom one around 10-15 cooler. These SOCs are quiet though so the 100% things not a problem. 540r owner too.

MasterOC · 9 Feb 2015 at 16:32

Arcane said:
They're hot. I've been playing around at the weekend with different fans etc (3 x 120, 2x140) to see what works best. The top one idles mid 40s and hits 79 during heaven (gpu fans at 100%), bottom one around 10-15 cooler. These SOCs are quiet though so the 100% things not a problem. 540r owner too.

@ what clocks or is that at stock ?

handsomejesus · 9 Feb 2015 at 16:50

Neil79 said:
KFA2 GeForce GTX 980 SOC Gamer 4096MB on it's way, 970 GTX G1 has an RMA number based on the VRAM scandal and will be returned once the 980 GTX arrives.

Gutted

I did the exact same thing.. My 980 SOC has gone back today due to coil whine though

Still deciding whether to wait for AMD 300.. or Reference OCUK 980

blasterbolt · 9 Feb 2015 at 16:59

Vimes said:
When it is all done and dusted you will be ok(ish) with your choice.

just waiting for the next fubar when Windows 10 arrives and we find that neither the 970 nor the 980 is truly DirectX 12 compliant - lol

Don't tempt fate

Arcane · 9 Feb 2015 at 17:23

MasterOC said:
@ what clocks or is that at stock ?

Stock Clocks.

Midlife Crisis · 9 Feb 2015 at 18:06

+1 for wanting an LED mod please

baz2963 · 10 Feb 2015 at 07:53

Just swapped out a 970 to a 980 .. same reason as everyone else etc ...

Do I need to bother with wiping/reinstalling driver, it seems to be the same for each card ?

Thanks

Awahwah · 10 Feb 2015 at 08:13

I did, just for completeness.

Midlife Crisis · 10 Feb 2015 at 08:29

I did a clean install, it may well have been alright but for the time it takes just uninstall everything nvidia before you swap the card, just in case it will save you some effin about

Bluntwrapped · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:12

I've spent the last week or so getting my head around my reference 980. The last few days I have been testing and tweaking my own Bios to force the boost clock to 1505 and mem to 3800.

One thing I've realised - some of the custom Bios's circulating are a lot of nonsense so if you're thinking of flashing make your own.

I have found no real benefit to adding voltage. All it does it increase the speed of the card hitting the power target. Also with the voltage above 1.225v my memory clock is unstable anything above 3650.

I have increased the TDP of the card to 340000 with a 100% power target. Completely stable with the above clocks @ 1.225v and undervolted slightly to 1.218v. I'm assuming there is no problem with running 1.225v with a higher TDP/Power target.

Will do more testing tonight but from what I've found unless you're pushing for massive clocks keep the voltage at stock otherwise it really does more harm than good.

JamesM · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:14

Did you increase the power supplied from the PCI connectors?

Dirk Diggler · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:16

Bluntwrapped said:
I've spent the last week or so getting my head around my reference 980. The last few days I have been testing and tweaking my own Bios to force the boost clock to 1505 and mem to 3800.

One thing I've realised - some of the custom Bios's circulating are a lot of nonsense so if you're thinking of flashing make your own.

I have found no real benefit to adding voltage. All it does it increase the speed of the card hitting the power target. Also with the voltage above 1.225v my memory clock is unstable anything above 3650.

I have increased the TDP of the card to 340000 with a 100% power target. Completely stable with the above clocks @ 1.225v and undervolted slightly to 1.218v. I'm assuming there is no problem with running 1.225v with a higher TDP/Power target.

Will do more testing tonight but from what I've found unless you're pushing for massive clocks keep the voltage at stock otherwise it really does more harm than good.

I found that even upping volts in Afterburner would cause instability when I'm nearing my maximum overclock.

ICEx21 · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:31

Folks I'm just about to hit the button on a OcUK reference 980s for sli and was wondering if anyone has had low gpu usage issues? If so how did you resolve this?

Bluntwrapped · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:34

JamesM said:
Did you increase the power supplied from the PCI connectors?

Nah I left both at stock and upped the power supplied from both rails to compensate. Haven't had any issues but I'll maybe boost the PCI power slightly and drop the rail down a bit tonight.

Bluntwrapped · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:40

String said:
I found that even upping volts in Afterburner would cause instability when I'm nearing my maximum overclock.

It doesn't seem to effect my core clock much but causes my ram to become unstable above 1.225v. It took me a while to figure that one out lol.

SS-89 · 10 Feb 2015 at 09:40

Bluntwrapped said:
I've spent the last week or so getting my head around my reference 980. The last few days I have been testing and tweaking my own Bios to force the boost clock to 1505 and mem to 3800.

One thing I've realised - some of the custom Bios's circulating are a lot of nonsense so if you're thinking of flashing make your own.

I have found no real benefit to adding voltage. All it does it increase the speed of the card hitting the power target. Also with the voltage above 1.225v my memory clock is unstable anything above 3650.

I have increased the TDP of the card to 340000 with a 100% power target. Completely stable with the above clocks @ 1.225v and undervolted slightly to 1.218v. I'm assuming there is no problem with running 1.225v with a higher TDP/Power target.

Will do more testing tonight but from what I've found unless you're pushing for massive clocks keep the voltage at stock otherwise it really does more harm than good.

You're probably noticing instability at higher voltages due to the increased pcb, vrm and memory chip temperatures. I noticed the same thing back when I had a reference EVGA 980 SC in that voltage barely seemed to help my OC and higher voltages caused instability. However, on my current cards I've noticed that increased voltage does actually help to improve clocks and is probably down to the cooling solution on it (includes full coverage of vrms/memory chips etc.)

Also I found the only way of really controlling voltage would be at bios level. Due to the way boost states work I found that afterburner voltage adjustments aren't clear or precise enough. I simply edit the bios with an additional increment of voltage at the highest boost state (74) and that works a hell of a lot better than afterburner.

Also your point re custom bios is correct. This is especially true on custom pcb cards as the components, power delivery etc can be completely different. I flashed an EVGA Bios on my old 970 g1's and it caused all manner of artifacts, when I copied the same settings into a version of the G1 bios, flawless. The maxwell bios tool is fairly easy to understand once you've done it a couple of times.

If any fellow inno3d ichill owners want a copy of my game stable and benching bios versions let me know.

JamesM · 10 Feb 2015 at 10:11

My SOC has arrived, solid looking piece of kit, very nice.

Looking forward to having a play tonight to see what it can do.

Will have a look at the BIOS later tonight as well.

Vimes · 10 Feb 2015 at 10:23

JamesM said:
My SOC has arrived, solid looking piece of kit, very nice.

Looking forward to having a play tonight to see what it can do.

Will have a look at the BIOS later tonight as well.

Don't forget to consider flashing it with the latest BIOS if your fans are at 52% idle

JamesM · 10 Feb 2015 at 10:26

Vimes said:
Don't forget to consider flashing it with the latest BIOS if your fans are at 52% idle

My card won't ever be idle