falconpunch

Honorable
Jul 4, 2012
13
0
10,510
Hey guys. Long story short, I am having problems playing Starcraft 2 with my 560 Ti (exact card here). The problem is every so often, my screen would flicker, and sometimes the game would crash. Through a decent amount of time, research, and testing, I came to the conclusion that the problem has to do with the fact that my card came factory OCed. Please trust me on this.

Base core clock speed should be 822 MHz.
My card came overclocked at 832 MHz.

I have downloaded MSI Afterburner and simply went to decrease the core clock to 822 MHz. (I should note that even though I set it at 822 MHz, the graph on the right shows that it is at 823 MHz, and I cannot get it to exactly 822 MHz.) I didn't change any of the other values, though the shader clock automatically went down from 1665 to 1645 MHz. Exact settings can be seen here:
sRVKc.png


The above settings allow me to play the game smoothly, but there is one major problem... the core clock speed goes back to 832 MHz during a game of SC2, causing the same instability problems described above. I have no idea what causes this, but my first guess would be the voltage? Keep in mind that I have never OCed anything before, so this is all brand new to me. I just got out of two games after SC2 crashed on me due to this, so I am asking here for help. After I finish writing this, I will try lowering the voltage about 10 mV, and see if that does anything.

In the meantime, I would like to ask you guys what may be the cause of my core clock speed going from my settings of 822 MHz, back to the factory settings of 832 MHz? Is there a way I can permanently set it to 822 MHz? Is it a good idea to lower the voltage a little bit since I downclocked the core clock? Any other ideas for me? Any other tips on downclocking?

Thanks for reading!

Computer Specs:
- i5-2500k
- ASRock Z77 pro4-m
- 2x4gb ddr3
- MSI N560GTX-Ti-M2D1GD5/OC
- 120gb ocz agility 3
- 2tb 5400 rpm
- Corsair CX600
- DVD+RW
- Windows 7 64 bit
 

El Tigre

Honorable
Jul 10, 2012
771
0
11,160
I really don't understand why a 10 mhz OC would hurt it when these cards hit 950+ core for reference cards and over 1000mhz core for the aftermarket ones stable. This baffles me. It may be you have a defective card.

Try doing a clean reinstallation of the latest driver. Also make sure your game has the latest patch if there is any. Check to see if the GPU has any BIOS updates too.
 
Your card is faulty for sure. I would contact the warranty. My gtx 560 Ti is stable at 1015 MHz core clock at winter, thought atm I'm running it at 975 MHz due to high ambient temperature.

Anyway, if you don't want to contact the warranty just yet, try increasing the voltage to 1030 mV. It might help.
 

falconpunch

Honorable
Jul 4, 2012
13
0
10,510
Is there a program or something I can use to test the GPU to see if it is indeed faulty?

edit: Also, I realized something that I'm not sure has any impact on my situation.. But it appears that I have both my video card AND my onboard graphics enabled. I downloaded MSI LiveUpdate, which is supposed to scan my hardware for bios updates, but apparently it scans the onboard graphics (HD 3000) instead of my gpu... should I disable onboard graphics? Will it help?
 

falconpunch

Honorable
Jul 4, 2012
13
0
10,510
Just a quick update. I changed the core clock to 900 MHz and voltage to 1087 mV as suggested by another person on the MSI forums. And so far I have had a lot of success. However, at one point, the settings jumped back down to 832 MHz and then the problems started over again. This happened only once out of like 2 hours, which is pretty good. I'll continue testing this out, but I hope this shows that my card is not faulty.
 

falconpunch

Honorable
Jul 4, 2012
13
0
10,510
Dammit, computer crashed a few times. Once while just surfing the web. And another few times when playing Starcraft. I didn't notice the GPU reaching super high temperatures, max I saw was 66C. Gonna give furmark a try, but can anyone give me any preliminary thoughts on what may be happening that would cause my computer to crash?