ref card. My 74 is 1281mv.
I see what you mean about voltage locked now. Everytime I look at the Bios Tweaker it usually gives me a headache figuring it out again.
However its not really limiting my overclock to what I like to achieve. At the moment its doing 1429mhz with 1.19v which I think is pretty good.
Altering the slider in Afterburner only lets me add +87mv which shows as 1.23v max so its possibly Afterburner first limiting me.
Ah so same as me. Yeah the clock boosts to 1478mhz for me on heaven but that is using the clock offset slider in AB. What that does is force the clock up but not the voltage to match that bin. Potentially making it unstable as voltage control seems based on meeting tdp and obeying that voltage table. So your actual boost is based on the boost bin the card boosts to. This sets the card default boost mhz but most importantly sets the voltage based on the temp or power. If power gets limited the card drops volts based on this. If your voltage drops below min for that boost bin your boost speed drops.
Now all AB does is add on some mhz to your default boost. So if your card makes it to entry 68 - 1341mhz with 1.212mv and you set AB to +150 you get 1491mhz but still 1212mv. So if you follow me the reason why overclocking is so lottary based is only part down to cards and more down to the way we overclock. Adding +mhz in AB doesnt add +mv and i think even if you add +mv the card still has to obey power/temp and as soon as it throttles the card is using the voltage table regardless of how much +mv you add in AB making your overclock suddenly unstable.
Long story short you do need to edit your bios to get highest stable clocks and if you do i suspect all 980ti could reach 1500 if they can stay in temp target as power target can also be adjusted.