Overclocking MSI 980ti - What am I doing wrong?

[DomBruv]

Okay so this has been going on a long time and I keep getting mix signals from people when asking for help.

Some people say I should leave it that I'm not going to gain anything and others say it should boost my performance by at least an extra 20%

Now my issue with this is every-time I overclock my GPU it either performs worse (in heaven benchmark) or crashes one game in particular which is Fortnite even if i go +5 core +10 mem (but I think this is down to a conflict between Afterburner and the game and not too much load on on system as it seems to be the only game that will crash)


So anyway here's the deal


I've tried overclocking the GPU by increasing the Core +30 and memory +50 which seems to make things worse, I've tried doing it with power limiter set to max, still worse.. I've tried with the power increase turned off. I've tried doing a clock something like +100 core +400 memory which runs stable but yet again seems to be worse in performance.

What am i doing wrong here?

Spec:

Ryzen 5 1600x (which overclocked beautifully to 3.85)

16GB DDR4 RAM 2400 clocked to 2600

550W Corsair PSU < Is this the issue here?

X370 K7 Gaming Motherboard

7 Fans in the system next to a window (pretty sure I haven't got cooling issues and never seen temps go above 80c)



Thanks for any advise or input.

 

[BS Dave]

What does it boost to already?

 

[DomBruv]

What does it boost to already?

Aren't they all set to a default clock from the shelf? MSI 980ti 6GB

EDIT: At the moment due to me giving up on Afterburner I use the generic software you can download with the MSI cards which gives me a OC profile - 1279 MHz / 1178 MHz / 7096 MHZ (OC Mode)

 

[BS Dave]

It could be your power supply like you say. Also at 80 degrees your card will have started to throttle.

You could try leaving the cpu at stock to give you more watts to try to establish if the card is crashing due to not enough power. You could also try knocking a few volts off the core. In afterburner what does it say load volts are??

 

[BS Dave]

I would be tempted to forget the overclocking profile and start from scratch in afterburner with the stock profile. Too many volts ain’t a good thing with maxwell. For ref my 980ti does 1500/8000 in stock volts (under water though) at 50 degrees max

Stocks volts are 1.193 under load

 

[DomBruv]

It could be your power supply like you say. Also at 80 degrees your card will have started to throttle.

You could try leaving the cpu at stock to give you more watts to try to establish if the card is crashing due to not enough power. You could also try knocking a few volts off the core. In afterburner what does it say load volts are??

I have tried before overclocking CPU and it made no difference, my CPU didn't require me to increase any VCORE vaults to get to the clock anyways.

My PSU is less than 3 months old but I guess that doesn't make a difference.

and like I say 80c is the highest I've ever seen it go in the middle of summer with me running GTA on high settings 1440p ultrawide lol

 

[DomBruv]

I would be tempted to forget the overclocking profile and start from scratch in afterburner with the stock profile. Too many volts ain’t a good thing with maxwell. For ref my 980ti does 1500/8000 in stock volts (under water though) at 50 degrees max

Stocks volts are 1.193 under load

Sorry this makes no sense to me?
I have tried time and time again to try clock with msi afterburner but it does nothing. The only thing that seems to work is this tacky MSI software.

 

[BS Dave]

It’ll still use more watts overclocked. I’m just saying if the gpu still crashes when you up the clocks with the stock cpu you can rule out the gpu crashing because of lack of power.

 

[DomBruv]

It’ll still use more watts overclocked. I’m just saying if the gpu still crashes when you up the clocks with the stock cpu you can rule out the gpu crashing because of lack of power.

It has never crashed in any testing software or game (apart from fortnite) it has never blue screened even when I've pushed 100+ core 400+ mem.... its the point that it performs worse once overclocking, even when i do it just a little.

and like i say i believe it to be the actual game that hates afterburner or anything, i know the game crashes when i have teamviewer open... I think this is down to the super stricked anti cheat service that is running to run this game.

 

[BS Dave]

Ok dude. But loads of other people use afterburner without issue so maybe the issue here is you.

Edit ok. Well read up about gddr5 error correction.

Also just do one at a time to start with

Google 980ti overclocking guide. What I was trying explain about the volts thing is the more volts you give it the sooner it will hit the power limit and start to throttle. Therefore lower volts can sometimes allow for higher clocks.

 

[DomBruv]

Ok dude. But loads of other people use afterburner without issue so maybe the issue here is you.

Edit ok. Well read up about gddr5 error correction.

Also just do one at a time to start with

No doubt the issue is me as the title says "What am I doing wrong" lol

And yes loads of people do use it, just like me and I haven't had problems with it in the past. I also don't have issues with running any games on it currently.. apart from one, so what does that tell you? Its the game!

 

[Marine-RX179]

No doubt the issue is me as the title says "What am I doing wrong" lol

And yes loads of people do use it, just like me and I haven't had problems with it in the past. I also don't have issues with running any games on it currently.. apart from one, so what does that tell you? Its the game!

Could well be, as I have issue with Killing Floor 2 where the game would just crash on start if I have MSI Afterburner running in the background

 

[Danny75]

Aren't they all set to a default clock from the shelf?

No. Each card auto-boosts differently depending on the quality of the chip, regardless of the clock stated. So someone may add +100 Core but max speed could still be less than someone who adds +50, due to difference in auto-boost. If I were you, I'd start from scratch and remove any overclock, and run a stress test to see what the speed is, and report back. Just saying "I added +XXX" means little these days because of that.

As for Fortnite, I've found it likes to go over the power limit set, so setting it too high could cause issues. Your mileage may vary though.

Afterburner and Rivatuner need updating regularly with Windows 10 and all its big updates. Some issues are solved that way, uninstall (AB + RT) and clean install if needed, as just updating doesn't always do the trick.

 

[Radox-0]

Use GPU-Z or Afterburner to see what your card actually is running at in terms of clock speed as mentioned. Maxwell, with boost 2.0 while not as agressive as pascal with boost 3.0, will always usually run at higher clock speeds when temps are in check then what the base and quoted boost clock speed list.

With that said +30- MHz does seem low, but without knowing what your card is actually doing, hard to judge how its actually clocking.

 

[agnes]

For reference, my EVGA 980 ti sc+ ACX 2.0 won't go past +100 mhz on core and +150 on memory. Personally, these third party cards are just not worth the extra performance for the heat they put out.

Stock cards, sure.

 

[Gripen90]

When I ran 3 way SLi with 3x MSI GTX 980Ti 6GB reference cards on air, I managed to overclock them 25% on the GPU, 1000@1250MHz base clock and Vram 1750@1945MHz, power target set to max and voltage set to +84mv. They ran like this without issues till I replaced them with 1080Ti's 2 years later.
I got a pretty good boost out of it compared to "stock" cllock speeds, - around 20% more performance overall.

 

[mof]

If it's a hassle then I wouldn't worry about it. The gains in games probably won't be that noticeable.

I've also found that benchmark scores went down with overclocking e.g with 980 ti (sli)

Core clock Voltage(mV) Benchmark score
+0 +0 4127
+50 +0 4170
+60 +0 4123
+60 +10 4167
+70 +10 4199
+80 +10 4187
+90 +10 4217
+100 +10 4208
+110 +10 4198
+120 +20 4203
+120 +20 4252

The benchmark score can go up or down even with the exact same settings on the same hardware. I don't think this means there's anything wrong with the system.
I don't what the cause was. Could be needing extra volts. Could be power limit. Could be the temps
for you. Maybe you increase your fan speed using afterburner or EVGA precision.

When you're running a game or a benchmark use the afterburner monitoring to see what your boost clock is (without overclocking)
Click on detach and scroll down to find core clock. OR you can use the on screen display (OSD) look in settings to find the key to turn it on/off.
Your boost should be higher than a reference card already.

Also try leaving memory at default and just do the core to start.

 

[DomBruv]

If it's a hassle then I wouldn't worry about it. The gains in games probably won't be that noticeable.

I've also found that benchmark scores went down with overclocking e.g with 980 ti (sli)

Core clock Voltage(mV) Benchmark score
+0 +0 4127
+50 +0 4170
+60 +0 4123
+60 +10 4167
+70 +10 4199
+80 +10 4187
+90 +10 4217
+100 +10 4208
+110 +10 4198
+120 +20 4203
+120 +20 4252

The benchmark score can go up or down even with the exact same settings on the same hardware. I don't think this means there's anything wrong with the system.
I don't what the cause was. Could be needing extra volts. Could be power limit. Could be the temps
for you. Maybe you increase your fan speed using afterburner or EVGA precision.

When you're running a game or a benchmark use the afterburner monitoring to see what your boost clock is (without overclocking)
Click on detach and scroll down to find core clock. OR you can use the on screen display (OSD) look in settings to find the key to turn it on/off.
Your boost should be higher than a reference card already.

Also try leaving memory at default and just do the core to start.

When running these tests what do you do to the memory? e.g. +120 +20 4252

 

[mof]

I didn't adjust the memory for those tests. I only changed the core clock and the voltage.
I don't have that much overclocking experience but I've read that it's best to O.C the core
first on it's own and find out how high you want to go first and then try doing the same for
the memory and then you can try them both.

 

[Sin_Chase]

Most 980Tis over clock to about the same before they need more voltage, which you can't unlock unless you have an exotic hardware modified card.

I've got a 980Ti Classified under water and it goes to about 1520 core.

80 Deg C isn't scorching but you are certainly getting into the realms of throttling power limit to control temps.

Have you unlinked Temp and Power Limit and set preference to Power Limit?