Gigabyte Xtreme Gaming GTX1080 Waterforce, Afterburner and Presision X OC won't OC core clock.

I have set an agressive fan curve to keep pushing the temps down. my card has a water block/radiator and a fan.

My custom curve is:

0 deg = 30%
30 deg = 40%
40 deg = 60%
50 deg = 90%
60 deg = 95%
70 deg and higher = 100%

At 100% my rig sounds like an aircraft taking off, and I only have 1 fan instead of 3, inside the radiator. I get 27 deg at idle on the desktop, I don't recall getting more than 40 deg on most games, except deus ex mankind divided, where it is 48-50 deg. that game flogs my gpu, even more than Resident Evil 7 (except RE7 gives almost constant 120fps on my 120hz monitor), and I am lucky to push the 60fps mark maxed out, and boy does my fan make one hell of a racket. Thank god I have THX speakers, so I can crank the sound (although I can't do that at night as the neighbors would call the cops).

My CPU is a different story.

I don't have it Overclocked at all. it is running at stock 4.0-4.4Ghz and never gets past 4.0Ghz on any benchmark. I have an older air cooler (Noctua NH-L12) that I have had, for some time, and has been in 2 cases, my old Baby Tower and now my Full Tower, and plan on upgrading it to the Corsair H115i ASAP, because I B.S.O.D. the instant my CPU hits 50 deg. which can happen in only 2 mins at constant 100% CPU Usage (something that happens too much when I make custom filters in Filter Forge 6, for my Doom Texture pack Project) so upgrading the CPU Cooler is the next on my list to keep CPU temps nominal and hopefully enable me to OC the i7-4790k to around the 4.5-5Ghs mark.

But back to my GTX1080's OC issue. Both Presion X OC and Afterburner OC the memory clock, but no matter what I try to do with the core clock, it is only 1759Mhz.

I also discovered another driver related issue. I found that there is a bug with the Pascal cards and the nvidia control panel's power management option.

If I select "Prefer Maximum Performance" then my core and memory clocks are stuck at 1759Mhz and 10400Mhz respectively when idling at the desktop. I had 29 deg at this idle if my rooms's ambient temp was taken down to 18 degrees with my ducted air conditioner. When my aircon was set to 20 deg, my GPU's idling temp was 32 deg.

I changed that to "Optimal Power" and now, on idle my core and memory clocks are at 291Mhz and 810Mhz and my idling temp is down to 24 deg with my rooms ambient temp at 20 deg, then when I kick in a game the clocks, these clocks go up a lot. I am yet to try afterburner and precision OC again, as I have a theory that this driver bug is what was hindering the OC programs. Another question I would have is does the fact of my CPU getting too hot, due to the Noctua NL-L12 no longer being up to scratch, could this also be affecting the boost quality of the GPU? It will be some time before I can afford to get the Water Cooler for my CPU.

One thing for sure, changing from "Prefer maximum performance" to "Optimal Power" in the NCP's power management setting, has allowed my to get better temps from my GPU when idling at the desktop.

I did some research and found that this bug has been an issue since the first GTX1080 hit the shelves, and Nvidia has not done anything to fix it, and it is unlikely Nvidia care about fixing this in the future either. My research also makes me wish to avoid the "Adaptive" setting in the Power Management section of the Nvidia Control Panel as people have stated it added stutter, similar to the stutter the GTX970 would get when it hit the 3.5Gb Ceiling, due to poor memory design by the manufacturers. My guess is in "Adaptive" power mode the drivers could suddenly cut a large percentage of power to the GPU causing a stutter.

a new issue I discovered is when running programs and games and checking my GPU speed it never goes past 1759Mhz. my settings are 1839/1978 (+80Mhz) but my clock readings are always at 1769Mhz no matter what I do. I can't seem to resolve this and I think it's why Precision OC and Afterburner would not push my clocks past 1759, as it seems that 1759Mhz is as high as my Core clock wants to go. I am getting very frustrated as I want to get my core clock to 2100Mhz or higher but 1759Mhz seems to be this cards physical max, no matter what my settings are. It seems like there is a hardware clamp preventing any software from raising my clock past that 1759 ceiling.

EDIT: I have got things running better than ever now. I only use Gigabyte's software for the fan curve and to increase the power limit to 150% and use afterburner for the rest. on Resisent Evil 7 I got 2,250Mhz on the core and 10,500Mhz on the Memory clock.

Thanks for all your info. ATM I use both Gigabyte's software (for the power limit raise, the fan curve and the LED) and Afterburner (to raise the Core clock and memory clock) I never touch the voltage and leave it locked on Afterburner to avoid touching it by accident. mucking with voltage is nothing more than a sure fire way to fry a GPU IMHO. and as I payed $1,199.00 (Yes I am Australian and got hit with OzTax) I don't want to fry it as when overclocking past the one-touch settings in Gigabytes program the waranty is voided. I'll have to see if I get a stable OC with 10.9Ghz Memory clocks and tweak the core clock to 2Ghz while alt-tabbed out of a game to see the result in real time. I wonder if it would be stable if I left my core clock as is (2.250Ghz) and boost the VRAM to 10.9-11Ghz via Afterburner, or will Nvidia's drivers fail me again and crash.

EDIT: Resident Evil 7 (maxed out at 1080p) heated my GPU to 43 deg when I had the clock at 2,150Mhz and the VRAM at 10,902Mhz Is that a good temp or a bad temp. (RE7 has 99% GPU Usage) I still can't confirm if this OC is stable as when i had driver crashes by upping the core and VRAM in Gigabytes software some game engines handled it better than others. On a more gentle OC (+50Mhz core +200Mhz VRAM) RE7 ran fine but Battlefield 1 crashed the drivers within 10 seconds of starting a level.

On my current settings Battlefield 1 crashed. I was trying to play the Gallipoli campaign as here in Australia it's ANZAC day, and I have many frends that served in the military so I wanted to play it as a mark of respect for those that went to Gallipoli and never saw Australia or New Zealand again. I will lower the clock to +50Mhz and maybe go easier on the VRAM, as getting it to 10.9Ghz is a very high number and I am thinking the Drivers aren't up to the task, maybe I lost the silicon lottery when it comes to large overclocks. Hopefully every time the drivers crash due to the OC being unstable, that I am not lowering the lifespan of my GTX1080.

also thanks for the warning about the drivers and creators update. Luckily for me I don't have my rig infected with the Windows 10 virus, but instead use Windows 7 pro x64. But when Windows 7 loses support and no longer gets security updates I would then be forced to have the Windows 10 virus.

It wouldn't surprise me if MS remotely deactivate Windows 7, 8 and 8.1 when support is dropped, leaving the OS as non-genuine to further force people to change to Windows 10 solely and not do a Windows 7 and Windows 10 dual boot. This would suck as there are still lots of apps and games I use that won't run on Windows 10 at all, and will either insta crash or malfunction.

I would prefer a Windows 10 and Windows 7 dual-boot, when I have no choice to have windows 10, so I could still use the apps and games that windows 10 hates, probably having both OS's on two seperate SSD's to avoid file conflicts. So I hope when Windows 7 gets it's support dropped, that Microsoft doesn't remotely deactivate my Windows 7 key.

I am very happy with my GTX1080 (I would be even happier if Nvidia could get their drviers right, as it sucks to have such great hardware let down by poor drivers) and hopefully will be able to get a GTX1080Ti or a second 1080 (which would require a new mobo, and CPU and RAM that is compatible with the new Mobo, the z97-k only has 1 x16 Pcie 3.0 slot, so is incompatible with SLI) assuming I have space in my full-tower for a second radiator as I am getting a Water cooler for my CPU that has a radiator 2 times the size of the one my GTX1080 has, unless my cpu cooler has long enough water pipes to shift my HDD cages back and shove in the front of my case (Fractal Design Define XL-R2 full tower Sound Proofed ATX Chassis).

I've been a member of Team Green since 3DFX shot themselves in the foot, by stopping licencing their voodoo3 chipset to other manufacturers and charging extreme prices for them, effectvely going out of business. My fist card was the RivaTNT. The card Nvidia used to redeem themselves after the epic fail that was the Riva128. I was impressed as it had 32Mb of VRAM and 32bit color, where my previous card the Voodoo Banshee only was capable of 16bit color and only had 16Mb of VRAM. it was also dirt cheap comared to the Voodoo3 (which was 6x more expensive because fo 3DFX's shddy business model, that bankrupted them).

I also had a GTX970 (4Gb Gigabyte GTX970 G1 Gaming) and it was when that powered my rig that the drivers started to go downhill FAST! I think I will go the GTX1080Ti one day, although I usually go a few years between GPU's so I would probably get a GTX2080Ti.