Looking for an overclocking guide for MSI GAMING gtx 970

[Ed_1]

my MSI 970 coil whine is about same as the 660ti it replaced .
there not much you can do, it does tend to get slightly quieter the more it runs .

Well running stock clocks and voltage will of course help a bit too, the more you stress the VRM/chokes the more it can happen .

RMA a card for coil whine can be hit an miss depending on how bad it is .

 

[EarthDog]

your 980 PT is 240'ish watts (depending on version) and most go to 120% on slider, 970 go 110-112% but again % is misleading as depends on bios 100% value set .

On temp, this is on MSI 970 , I forget if like G1 or strix does it , its not the full temp limit, which is default 80c (raising slider it goes to 91c ), that is the hard temp limit but there is one at 65-67c which drops clocks small amount , like 10mhz , its not bad but I try and keep temps in the 60'ish range .
which is not hard on these cards .

My card hits a power limit at around 108% with slider at 110% , I only run it at like 1484 24/7 so far, there really no reason in real games to push it to limit IMO .
but at that setting the max I get in spikes is like 100-101%, but avgs 90's . that is in BF4 for example .

Its 165W card... The 970 is 150W...we are talking stock bios so the % is accurate.

I haven't seen the temps drop at 65C on my card...(Galax 980 SOC).

 

[jonathan1107]

my MSI 970 coil whine is about same as the 660ti it replaced .
there not much you can do, it does tend to get slightly quieter the more it runs .

Well running stock clocks and voltage will of course help a bit too, the more you stress the VRM/chokes the more it can happen .

RMA a card for coil whine can be hit an miss depending on how bad it is .

mine's pretty bad considering it's doing it even at low fps... but only under stress... doesn't do it at idle

 

[64K]

Its 165W card... The 970 is 150W...we are talking stock bios so the % is accurate.

I haven't seen the temps drop at 65C on my card...(Galax 980 SOC).

I'm not sure where you are getting these wattages but W1zzard benched the Asus GTX 970 Strix and got peak consumption defined as (Peak: Metro: Last Light at 1920x1080, representing a typical gaming power draw. Highest single reading during the test.)

And for the reference and MSI GTX 980 Gaming card

 

[EarthDog]

That is the board power/TDP of the card... 150W and 165W. Not sure why is testing is off compared to others that were always in the ballpark...perhaps the samples he had are super leaky.

EDIT: That is peak... which is a split second reading versus average is 12 /s across the length of the benchmark... those results (average) are a lot closer to reality. Add the 10-15% to that and you can see where I am coming from. I would easily run 2 980's overclocked to their limit and a intel hex overclocked on a quality 700W PSU. Its also a heavily overclocked over reference card as well.

Anyway, sorry again OP... trying to help out in your many many threads, but we keep going OT trying to get facts on the table.

 

[64K]

That is the board power/TDP of the card... 150W and 165W. Not sure why is testing is off compared to others that were always in the ballpark...perhaps the samples he had are super leaky.

EDIT: That is peak... which is a split second reading versus average is 12 /s across the length of the benchmark... those results (average) are a lot closer to reality. Add the 10-15% to that and you can see where I am coming from. I would easily run 2 980's overclocked to their limit and a intel hex overclocked on a quality 700W PSU.

I see. You were talking about average power consumption. Thanks.

 

[EarthDog]

Yep.. there is enough headroom though in a 700W unit for those meager peak differences anyway.

 

[Ed_1]

Since we were talking oc , i was talking max TDP , a MSI 970 gaming power target (from bios) is at 100% = 200w, and with power slider max its 220w .
these are maxes, and peaks not avg, but that is the issue cause once you trip it, it down clocks and you will have to wait for it to come back, if it comes back .

For gaming, just set the voltage to 0 and run it at 1450-1500 or so, going higher your not going to see more than a few fps , even that is plenty .

 

[EarthDog]

Ed_1, we may need to take this to PM.. AFAIK, the 100% power limit is its TDP/Board power, which is not 200W, it would be 150W as described all over the interwebs.

 

[Ed_1]

ok, this is my last post on this , no need for PM . were talking OC'ed here not stock clock .

All I am going to say is this, if you put voltage slider to 40mv+ (which is max, no different than 87+ ) your for sure going to hit power limits when you get to the upper 1400's , this is on 970 MSI, if you had EVGA you be hitting it even lower and they don't even go up in voltage as the MSIgaming and G1 .

here link for power usage when OC , not that it matters as my point was hitting power limit .
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014...0_gaming_4g_video_card_review/10#.VFqSgCgextk

 

[EarthDog]

It varies by card man... but ok.

 

[jonathan1107]

so quick question: I noticed the gtx 970 seems to do well @ 2560x1440 but I still have to turn some settings down or off...

Do you guys think I should grab another gtx 970 to make sure I can max out everything? Especially considering I'm using a 120hz monitor. Keeping a constant 120fps seems really hard in some games...

I'm thinking even 2x gtx 980 might not enough @ some point in certain games lol...

your thoughts?

 

[m&m's]

As you already know, you wont be able to max out every games at 1440P@120FPS even with SLI, but it should give you a bump of around 67% in frame rates.
Take a look at W1zzard review: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_970_SLI/1.html
It's up to you, is this worth $350-400?
BTW, slam another set of 8GB in it, some games are getting real RAM hungry...

 

[jonathan1107]

As you already know, you wont be able to max out every games at 1440P@120FPS even with SLI, but it should give you a bump of around 67% in frame rates.
Take a look at W1zzard review: http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_970_SLI/1.html
It's up to you, is this worth $350-400?
BTW, slam another set of 8GB in it, some games are getting real RAM hungry...

you mean a "ram stick" or you mean a gpu with 8gb memory?

 

[Asylum]

He means ram stick.

You have 8gig and that is plenty for now so don't worry about that.

Another 970 should set you up fine for 120 locked for most games now.

 

[EarthDog]

so quick question: I noticed the gtx 970 seems to do well @ 2560x1440 but I still have to turn some settings down or off...

Do you guys think I should grab another gtx 970 to make sure I can max out everything? Especially considering I'm using a 120hz monitor. Keeping a constant 120fps seems really hard in some games...

I'm thinking even 2x gtx 980 might not enough @ some point in certain games lol...

your thoughts?

My thoughts are do you NEED 120FPS locked? Do you know why you want that in the first place? With respect, I have seen in this and other threads you want specific things but for reasons you are not sure of or that or false... So before you make that jump to SLI, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons.

 

[jonathan1107]

yup I'd want 120fps for the same reasons I'd want 60fps constant... perfect fluidity...

I told myself this: If I get another 970, I'll probably always either be able to: 120FPS @ 1080p, or at least 60FPS @ 2560x1440 (sometimes even more)

 

[m&m's]

You have 8gig and that is plenty enough for now most games but some do need a little more to run stable at max settings so don't worry about that if you don't play those games?

8GB wasn't enough here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-your-thoughts.206920/#post-3188907
We are on the edge and 8GB soon wont be enough to play newer games on max settings.

 

[Asylum]

8GB wasn't enough here: http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/call-of-duty-advanced-warfare-your-thoughts.206920/#post-3188907
We are on the edge and 8GB soon wont be enough to play newer games on max settings.

That's not a game, that's an interactive movie, who plays that crap anyway.

 

[m&m's]

That's not a game, that's an interactive movie, who plays that crap anyway.

It all comes to what the OP plays and seriously, someone that is willing to spend $400 on a second GPU can certainly buy 80 bucks worth of RAM.

 

[jonathan1107]

I'm opened to all suggestions. It's just gaming on a high end PC is quite expensive. I've already invested over 4000$ in this PC. My latest upgrades cost me about 1100$...

I reallllly do wanna buy another gtx 970 but my wife is going go kill me... And I'm not kidding, she would kill me lol...

So I guess I'll wait and ask my family to pitch in around Christmas time and maybe cut down the price in half...

 

[jonathan1107]

Well here I am almost a year later with 2x MSI gtx 980 ti 6gb gaming oc edition.
I'm now gonna go ahead and run a bunch of benchmarks and try to see what kind of Clocks I can get stable.

will report back here for the sake of people curious to know the OC steps differences between the 970 and the 980 ti
Thanks again for all your help. It's been years now I've used the techpowerup forums and it's a wonderful ressource for Geeks like me