Gigabyte G1 Gaming 970, only +25 Core Voltage

I believe it is Nvidia "safety measure" preventing the card from overvolting too much.

Also experienced this on mine. I haven't pushed it quite as high as yours clock wise, but it's just as stable at its stock mV than with a slight increase.

Honestly I've only increased it by about 25mV for peace of mind.

Absolutely no throttling either.


Also I'm a little bit concerned. What voltage levels does everyone have their 970's out of the box? Most of the people I've seen are just a notch over 1200mV.
The default for this one was 1175mV.
Currently running 1200mV. Never seen it go near that with the various monitoring tools.

Dang, and there was me feeling all giddy.

I wouldn't mind seeing if someone can set up a few thermal cameras and/or temp probes on these things. My tiny brain can't comprehend that they're handling this much without effort.

What programs besides afterburner have you tried to monitor the levels?

That works. Mainly interested in overclocked VRM and memory temps but I suppose with the added voltage of the Gigabyte OC edition it would be about the same.

I'm mainly concerned about the memory and the single VRM phase that delivers it. Slapping 800-1000MHz on top of default frequencies (Effective rates... duh) has got to be cooking something right? =/ Surely.

Anyway this is getting off-topic I guess. My bet would be just plain ol' lack of support in its current form. I mean, GPU-Z still lists it as having 32 colour rops. Either that or it is genuinely the limit for the OP's card, those clocks are about as high as I've seen anyone go so far so it makes sense that going further would be difficult.

Silicon lottery I guess.

It does seem awfully odd that you're not reaching the maximum TDP potential of your card. That would vary by how lucky you get but with that high of a clock it's strange things aren't going higher. Mine topped out at 108% under Heaven.
Have you tried using Furmark and seeing what it gets up to in that? It's not a good representation, but it tends to push the TDP wall as high as it will go.
You're also absolutely certain things aren't throttling down to that level?

It's difficult to answer your questions when there isn't much of a logical answer to begin with. 1500MHz on the core and 8000MHz on the effective memory frequency is, as I said, about as high as I've seen anyone go to date; give or take a few MHz. I would put it down to a software bug more than anything else, personally.

Have you also tried returning to default clocks and running the same tests? Does the power usage push past 89% with that?

Finally, correct me if I'm wrong (I used ASUS's GPU-Tweak utility to overclock mine as opposed to Afterburner), is that slider not suggesting the maximum allowed voltage? That would explain why it isn't using that amount under load.
The only other idea I have on that front is GPU Vdrop/Vdroop.

I wouldn't worry about Furmark. The whole point to that program is to go balls-to-the-walls. To the point where both AMD and Nvidia auto-detect the executable and throttle accordingly (Which probably explains why engine clock drops significantly while running it). Or that's what I'm told anyway.
I only ran the 1min bench a few times with it but saw mine go as low as high 900MHz. It kinda decreases the more you run it, almost as if the cards know what they're in for.

Heaven maxed out is about as stressful as things are going to get for now. Even trumps maxed Crysis 3 as far as gpu load goes, for me anyway. Valley is just under it, despite being more recent.

Here's something interesting - Your card boosting up past its set boost rate, heck, past 1500MHz (Which is very good). That'll be a testament to the Gigabyte version. I have mine listed at 1295MHz in GPU-Z and the highest I've seen it boost is 1447. Fair play to that card.
These kinds of clocks are knocking on the 980's door really.

In short. No crashing or no artifacts = No worries. I would say watch the temps but..... Duuude, 145w TDP card and a Windforce cooler, they are so not going to be an issue.

Edit: Try 3DMark11 too.

If you watch the reader in the Furmark bench itself you'll notice that it will frequently trip over the maximum power target you set. Usually by about 1-4%. This will most likely cause it to throttle back, couple that with deliberate throttling and it's very explainable. Though I can't speak for everyone else.

Put it this way, when I was experimenting with my OC, I stuck with the same clocks and changed nothing but the power target limit - 120 on one run and 110 on another. It would always trip over the line, it's what the program is designed to do.
I say a real world benchmark is the best way to test. Furmark is only useful for a quick double check that it doesn't crash with your OC.

If you go through a 3DMark11 run drop the final score here :F It would be interesting to compare when we both essentially have the same CPU, what with the 4.5GHz overclock n' stuff.

Ah crap, I haven't ran Firestrike yet :F I just ran the general 11 one.

I'll drop a result tomorrow. 2am here and I require lots of beauty sleep to maintain my dashing good looks.

Right then.
First thing's first - Firestrike is bleedin' demanding.

Anyway, here's how the scores played out.

Firestrike:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/4439138

3DMark11:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/8845775

I gave it about 8 runs in total. Something interesting is that GPU-Tweak would dial back the voltage to 1213mV if I attempted to go over that, upon clicking Apply. That fits in line with what you were saying in the OP and what the first poster said about Nvidia voltage limits. Some 980 and previous 700 series cards have/had voltage points on the card itself to which you could use to get around these limits.

I adjusted a few settings from my original overclock but eventually came back to 1205mV and 110% on the power limit. Firestrike did use up to 118% of the TDP with the power limit raised, but there was no observable difference in stability. Considering everything else but Furmark used up to 108% I dialled it back.

Notice the obvious, with your higher clocks the graphics score on both tests is higher for you despite our similar processors.

Both scores can change up or down each time you run them I noticed.



I wouldn't worry too much about Piledriver's lack of oomph. The review that you linked to gave nearly a 1000 increase evidently down to the CPU alone, as you said it's an extreme edition processor. The results page on the 3DMark website has a handy comparison tool, according to it, both your score and my score beats a machine with an i7-4770k and GTX Titan. Now theoretically this should be obvious, with these clocks the 970 is coming awfully close to a reference 980, the Titan was only slightly inbetween the 780 and 780TI - the 980 is about 10% above the 780TI.
It's not ideal, it's a bit sucky to have a card slightly limited by the CPU, but It's really not that bad.

Either way it appears people with Piledriver chips and 970's are getting very similar scores going by the same comparison method. I can sleep easy knowing that.

Finally, I have to ask because it bugged me - During one of the graphics tests in Firestrike, the one where the female is walking on what I can only describe as a street, there's a bit at which a robotic bug creature appears behind her very near to the end of that test - Does your screen flash black once or twice during this part? It's very very fast, probably less than a second, but it has me wondering.
I'm not particularly ready to jump the gun and lower the OC because of it, no crashes or artifacting in every benchmark and real-world game, I'm not about to drop it for a few flashes, I just find it interesting.

According to my over clock and using cpuz, gpus, 0 evga precision 16 my gtx970 g1 is running at 1556mhz and about 4gig mem and I see voltage at 1.2 all the time with the occasional peak at 1.43. I also noticed in heaven and valley bench mark it shows gpu core at 1673 but im guessing that's something to do with cpu, I don't really know cause im a noob at this, I just love my overclock. All air no special cooling never higher that 72 and I think a score of 1600 in heaven is respectable situation lol. Hope that helps