i cant overclock my gtx 980 by much. need help

[john12]

Hi,

I just bought a reference Gigabyte gtx 980. i paid nearly $1000 for it in here.

tried to overclock it based on what the reviews on the internet clock it to but i cant get it clocked by much

i can only increase up to +167mhz on core and +270mhz on memory and any more than that i get white snow dots and artifacts in games.

i tried to maxing out the voltage and power limit but still doesnt make any difference. the artifacts and white snow dots still appear.

why is that?

its not heating issue. and my CPU is a stuck i5 at 3.30ghz.

is it because of my PSU or driver issue?

thanks.

 

[Silas Woodruff]

Bad luck, overclocking any card means you need luck in the GPU lottery.

By the way if you had gotten a GTX 970 instead and overclocked it, you would had GTX 980 performance at a lower price.

 

[john12]

what do you mean luck?

all the other people and reviews can overclock it to 1500mhz core and 8ghz on the memory.

i cant do that.

why i get white snow and artifacts when i overclock higher?

can you please tell me the reason why and what are the factors.

 

[Breaz]

what do you mean luck?

all the other people and reviews can overclock it to 1500mhz core and 8ghz on the memory.

i cant do that.

why i get white snow and artifacts when i overclock higher?

can you please tell me the reason why and what are the factors.

By luck he means some chips overclock like mad with hardly any voltage other wont do hardly anything no mater how much voltage you apply.
looks like you got bad luck man sorry man.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Whenever you buy hardware - its always 'luck of the draw' if you get something that clocks well as no hardware is ever 100% identical even though they roll off the same production like and manufactured by the same process.

 

[john12]

so your saying it cant be me?

it cant be my hardware such as power supply?

 

[FreedomEclipse]

what make/model is your power supply? I hardly doubt that it would be the issue though as you'd be suffering from crashes & freezes if your PSU was inadequate

 

[Breaz]

try overclocking the gpu only then the memory only see what it does that's what I would do.

 

[the54thvoid]

what do you mean luck?

all the other people and reviews can overclock it to 1500mhz core and 8ghz on the memory.

i cant do that.

why i get white snow and artifacts when i overclock higher?

can you please tell me the reason why and what are the factors.

Not everyone can overclock to 1500Mhz - you're getting confused with OC and boost.

Run the render test through GPU-z and switch to sensor tab. Or run a heaven benchmark in window mode and keep GPU-z open with the sensor tab displayed.

Your actual clock speeds will be displayed where I have circled in red. Your overclock does not factor in boost so you might find you are boosting above 1400Mhz. When people say they are overclocking to 1500 Mhz what they mean is the boost is hitting that speed. The overclock will be below that.

And as stated, it's luck. My Classified 780Ti runs at 1216 stable but needs 1.21v. Some run at 1300 stable at 1.18v. It's all a big lottery with overclock.

You are not guaranteed to get a gfx card (or cpu for that matter) that will overclock well. Not even when you buy one that is meant to. A graphics card is only guaranteed to run at the core clock it is advertised as having. Overclocking is not guaranteed as some people believe it is.

 

[eidairaman1]

Full specs please

Hi,

I just bought a reference Gigabyte gtx 980. i paid nearly $1000 for it in here.

tried to overclock it based on what the reviews on the internet clock it to but i cant get it clocked by much

i can only increase up to +167mhz on core and +270mhz on memory and any more than that i get white snow dots and artifacts in games.

i tried to maxing out the voltage and power limit but still doesnt make any difference. the artifacts and white snow dots still appear.

why is that?

its not heating issue. and my CPU is a stuck i5 at 3.30ghz.

is it because of my PSU or driver issue?

thanks.

 

[DarkOCean]

Hi,

I just bought a reference Gigabyte gtx 980. i paid nearly $1000 for it in here.



thanks.

damn! where do you live, on mars?

 

[john12]

damn! where do you live, on mars?

no. i live on Earth. in this country where i live things are expensive. there are versions of GTX 980 that cost $1400 or more. they are non-reference cards.

my one is cheaper because its reference card.


I need help. i want to be able to milk my GTX 980 to death. i want to be able to overclock it to death so that i can get free performance out of it.

free frame rate.

i will post my full specs soon.

meanwhile, please advise what would be the factors when getting white dots during gameplay. although not heavily.

i left the core clock on stock and increased the memory clock to +420mhz. i still see a few white dots here and there.

should i just ignore those white dots? is it safe?

 

[rtwjunkie]

The white dots you are seeing are artifacting. Youve reached the limit of your GPU chip, more than likely. Possibly the memory chips are at their limit. And no, it's not safe to leave it high enough that you have artifacting.

When they talk about luck, you have to understand, chips are cut from a big piece of silicon, and there are going to be places where it is perfect, others really high quality, and down to average. It's luck of the draw what piece of the silicon pie you get.

As to how much performance you want, and framerates, how much more do you need? What resolution are you at? Because for just about everyone, the stock performance of a 980 should be way more than enough framerates at maximum picture quality. It IS after all, the top GPU at the moment.

 

[newtekie1]

all the other people and reviews can overclock it to 1500mhz core and 8ghz on the memory.

Even W1z's 980 didn't get to 1500MHz core, his reference 980 only made it to 1350MHz core. He didn't make it to 8GHz on the memory either, he only got 7.8GHz.

 

[john12]

The white dots you are seeing are artifacting. Youve reached the limit of your GPU chip, more than likely. Possibly the memory chips are at their limit. And no, it's not safe to leave it high enough that you have artifacting.

When they talk about luck, you have to understand, chips are cut from a big piece of silicon, and there are going to be places where it is perfect, others really high quality, and down to average. It's luck of the draw what piece of the silicon pie you get.

As to how much performance you want, and framerates, how much more do you need? What resolution are you at? Because for just about everyone, the stock performance of a 980 should be way more than enough framerates at maximum picture quality. It IS after all, the top GPU at the moment.

my monitors resolution is 1920*1200.

thats the maximum res i play at.

my CPU is i5 2500k at stock 3.30ghz.

is my CPU bottleneck for the video card?

 

[RCoon]

is my CPU bottleneck for the video card?

Depends on the games you play entirely. In most cases, no it will not bottleneck, in edge cases, where the game engine is only capable of utilising a single core, or if it's entirely CPU orientated (mathematical stuff, like RTS games etc), then it may cause a bottleneck, yes.
For what it's worth, I don't overclock my GPU, but it boosts to 1450mhz core all by itself through the boost function.
My advice is to stop overclocking the memory entirely. Leave the memory at stock, whack up the voltage and boost voltage option (in evga precision, or MSI Afterburner), and OC the core only. Keep GPU-Z open on the side, and it will tell you what boost clocks to expect.

 

[rtwjunkie]

@john12: I'm not sure. At that resolution, most of the load would be on your GPU. You should be able to easily clock that 2500k up to 4GHz easily (again, silicon lottery limited), but that is not going to necessarily give you more frame rates. Where it will mostly help is increase your minimum frame rate. But the artifacting is your GPU, so overclocking the CPU won't help. It's not even defective unless the artifacting happens at stock voltage and stock speed.

 

[Breaz]

you have no worries with a bottleneck and at 1920*1200 a 980 is not worth overclocking you will not see the gain with naked eyes. Sure more fps but a 980 is already way past what you eyes can distinguish.

 

[Silas Woodruff]

you have no worries with a bottleneck and at 1920*1200 a 980 is not worth overclocking you will not see the gain with naked eyes. Sure more fps but a 980 is already way past what you eyes can distinguish.

Dude you really need to watch this:

+There are a lot of people who can see the difference between high fps like 120 and 60fps, well maybe not everyone can but I sure see a pretty big difference in how smooth it looks and feels.

Skip to 5:45 for the important stuff and closely follow what he says from there.

 

[xvi]

my monitors resolution is 1920*1200.

thats the maximum res i play at.

my CPU is i5 2500k at stock 3.30ghz.

is my CPU bottleneck for the video card?

It depends on the game, but I'd say that's a pretty good match. Even games that are a little more CPU dependant should still do well. It'd probably be worth seeing how high you can get it without adding voltage just for some insurance. That higher resolution is going to push the CPU/GPU balance back towards the GPU, but it shouldn't be much more than 1920x1080.

 

[64K]

I think you were given sound advice not to leave the GPU overclocked to the point where it's artifacting. Isn't that distracting to you while gaming anyway?

OP I've read through the thread and I may have overlooked it but what Hz is your monitor. If it's 60 Hz and you're always getting higher FPS than that at stock clocks on your GPU then more FPS will not add anything because it's already beyond what your monitor can display anyway.

 

[eidairaman1]

If you damage your gpu that it causes artifacting at stock clocks dont come here crying. Put the card back at stock and leave it youll thank us for it. Besides you dont need an overclock anyway, maybe 3 years from now...

 

[荷兰大母猪]

Why you paid around 1000 bulks for gtx980? Because of the scalpers on Amazon?

 

[newbsandwich]

this article from [H] might help with the 980 OC. They found bumping the Power limit up didn't really help like it has in the past.

http://hardocp.com/article/2014/10/...overclocking_video_card_review/4#.VEVGohD_7Aw

 

[erocker]

i will post my full specs soon.

Needs to be the first thing you post if you want help.