Discussion GTX 680 Lightning/Power edition overclock and bios discussion

[Jimboss99]

Hi everyone, I recently acquired an MSI Power edition(Lightning) GTX 680,
I didn't win the silicon lottery with this one, but I may have won the memory lottery:

OC:
1163/1175MHz Core @ 1.175V
3881MHz (7762) Memory @ standard voltage

I've seen people get this card to over 1200MHz so have I just got a bad chip?
Finally this memory clock good for this card? My 1050 ti defaults at 7008MHz!

Thanks, Responses appreciated!

 

[fagetti]

I love the 600 and 700 series, i had 670 x3 windforce and 780 lightning which was a beast, also msi 780ti.

When you stress card and check max boost with gpu-z what is max core clock you get during it ? 1175?

EDIT: look post #331 this is my gtx 670 windforce score in 1080p high setting superposition, and few posts back from 1080p medium : https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/toms-hardware-superposition-benchmark-thread.3141511/page-14
you can benchmark your gpu easily with this one to see if there is any gains or you are you getting unstable and losing score

 

[fagetti]

What are your specs? mainly what Power supply you have.

 

[fagetti]

I always used LN2 bios when i overclocked my 780 lightning. Close your computer and turn power supply off with button then look for LN2 bios switch on your graphics card : https://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/msi-geforce-gtx-680-lightning-review,25.html

its 2nd / 3rd picture on this thread. Switch it to LN2 and then turn your computer back on, you now should have voltage limit up to 1.212v from the normal 1.175v voltage limit.
Open MSI after burner options, then press mark in unlock voltage monitoring and unlock voltage control, then select from the dropdown menu which has 3 options , choose "Extended MSI", save and after you might need to restat your pc. After doing it and you still wont see unlocked voltage follow below:

This wont work if you have other than these below listed :
80.04.09.00.F8
80.04.28.00.3A (unlocked LN2)
80.04.09.00.3A (unlocked LN2)


1.) Open GPU-Z and look where it says "BIOS Version"
2.) Click the "i" Info icon on the main AB screen and it'll tell you the BIOS version you have


EDIT: here is instructions if you want to get the voltage unlocked and you dont have then right LN2 bios : https://www.overclock.net/forum/69-nvidia/1280007-official-msi-gtx-680-lightning-owners-club.html
Remember whatever LN2 bios you use all thermal throttling functions are disabled and you can increase power limit to max, remember always set power limit to more than 150% so atleast that wont bottleneck you,

 

[fagetti]

ps i wouldnt go that high with memory it might degrade the card in the long run and wont give anywhere near the performance than core oc , compare to other people results with memory overclock, nobady went over 7400mhz but had stable 1400mhz on the core.

EDIT: just drop it to 3500 mhz max (7000mhz total) until you get your core max stable

 

[Jimboss99]

Hi fagetti,
Thanks for the information!

My psu is the Coolermaster g750m bronze rated 750 watts, I have a z77 motherboard and i7 3770 and 16gb ram

I tried out both bios the card came with and they are both nearly identical - they are:
Left switch: 80.04.47.00.43
Right switch: 80.04.47.00.16
In msi afterburner both are named 'MSI NGTX680 POWER EDITION'

I actually already read the post you mentioned 'https://www.overclock.net/forum/69-nvidia/1280007-official-msi-gtx-680-lightning-owners-club.html ' and I got my info off there, and I gathered that the 80.04.09.00.F8 bios was the only bios with voltage control

So yesterday I actually tried flashing the 80.04.09.00.F8 bios to the gpu in ln2 bios mode but the picture went all funny and I had to re-flash the original. I thought that that bios allowed voltage control.
Then I tried the 80.04.28.00.3A bios and it worked! But I could not change the voltage past 1.175v but I might try it again and let you know of the results.

And about the memory, I don't know about your 780 lightning but my 680 lightning has temperature sensors on the memory (and vrm) and the memory never went past 62 degrees Celsius when overclocked. I did not over-volt the memory and the thermals I think were ok, so how come it would still degrade? I thought over-volting and high temperatures degraded components?



Thanks again for your time and information and I'll let you know if I get anywhere with it!

p.s. I might edit the name of this thread to account for bios information

 

[fagetti]

I have sensor in my 780 lightning for for vrm but not memory, i not get that high vrm temps with 1.212-1.25v and i also had other voltage settings which i never changed.
Try to uninstall msi afterburner and then download Evga precision , its similar to msi afterburner and i used it for my 780 lightning. You might need to unlock its voltage from the options, and then use the slider on the left side and move it to 1212. If even that wont get you 1.212v we figure something out. Use 100% fan speed after 65-70c so you wont get any thermal throttling.

 

[fagetti]

You CAN go above 1.212v for the voltage with other tricks but i wont suggest it until you use few weeks to find best stable overclock for your core clock at this voltage. Dont tweak memory voltage if there is a option leave it default and always drop down your mem clock to default or something like 6000-7000mhz at the maximum so you can find your stable core clock and after that you can start doing the memory. Its important to benchmark alot when you oc memory since long before artifacting you already start to lose points in benchmarks, after you hit your limit do -25mhz on the memory and leave it there.

EDIT: none of my cards degraded even when i was at 7600mhz for ram some period of time but i have read about heavy vram overclocking causing slight degration over time.

 

[Jimboss99]

Success!!!! I tried out the 80.04.28.00.3A bios again and I can now change/increase the voltage! So this is what I found out:

With my original Power Edition bios, I could change the voltage slider in Afterburner but the voltage stayed at 1.175V regardless of the slider value under load.
(About 1110MHz default core clock with 1163MHz oc stable).

With this new ln2 bios the frequency under load defaults to 1201MHz @1.154V but is unstable, as I could only achieve 1163MHz before with 1.175V!
So for now I just reduce the core clock by (-)30MHz and I get 1163MHz @ 1.154V which so far has been stable.

So later on I will increase the voltage to see what clocks I can get. I will be cautious though.
I can raise the voltage from 1.154 to I think 1.254 with the +100mhz voltage on the slider but i'll try 1.2V.



And yeah, I have 3 voltage settings I can change: Core, Memory, Aux1, (Aux2 greyed out).
I had a quick search and for a CPU, Aux voltage is the PLL voltage. PLL is the voltage for the circuitry for the clock generator for the gpu, So I presume the higher the clocks, the clock generator will require more voltage too?

About memory, I wasn't planning on increasing memory voltage anyway because it could definitely cause some degradation so I'll leave it as is.
And I'll do my overclock with that method and I'll post later on with my results.

Thanks again!

 

[fagetti]

I would not suggest touching memory and aux voltages. I used to read alot when overclocking 780ti about these voltages and some people did fry theyre cards when tampering with those.
You could try lowering your memory clock to default before you oc the core, it can cause instability.
What are your temperatures under load just curious? expecially gpu and vrm? Gtx 680 lightning will start to throttle boost clock ALREADY around 70c degrees, its a minor throttle but still i would set it 100% fan after 65-68c to not lose any core clock. VRM temperature needs to be way higher but i remember having it below 90c all the time, 100% fan speed helps with that issue too. Also replacing thermal paste with something like NT-H1 or Gc gelid extreme will probably drop the values by 10c even. You dont need to replace thermal paste if your temperatures are fine though.

 

[fagetti]

Nvidia max safe limit is 1.212v so i would leave it there unless you have very low temperatures under load, you could get instability going above it otherwise. I remember having an issue where moving the slider in msi afterburner didnt actually change the voltage in reality so i downloaded EVGA precision and did voltage testing with multimeter and had in reality 1.2v. Might of been issue with 780 lightning only, i remember flashing new bios and it resolved the issue.

Download gpu-z hwinfo and hwmonitor and look sensors for gpu voltage and see if your really getting 1.212v under load when you set it in these. You might get different results after 1.212v since its not supported value but until that point it should show the right one.

 

[fagetti]

You should be getting better results with 1.175v though than only less than 1200 mhz. More like 1300mhz even. Just double check your not either thermal throttling and the voltage is correct in all of these programs.

 

[Jimboss99]

I must have a terrible card, I tested it for a long time and I eventually got to 1.250 volts and the card would work at 1256MHz but not any higher. I tested at stock memory clocks and overclcoked. The memory is fine at +500mhz.
I tried both heaven and valley benchmark dx11 ultra but after a certain amount of time they both crashed to desktop higher than 1256MHz.
The gpu max temp was 63 degrees Celsius with 100% fan, VRM never went past 58 degrees Celsius and the memory never past 53 degrees Celsius.
Do you think there could be a problem with the card or that it is a real bad one?
I might go back to the original power edition bios because I know that that is stable. The extra 90MHz overclock isn't worth 1.25V for me!
Thanks again

 

[fagetti]

What power supply you have btw? I remember getting bad clocks on 670 oc when i had really bad power supply. Temperatures are not the problem, throttling starts at 70c+ and that is with little increments.

If you in reality had 1.25v on the core your temperature would be way higher with that air cooling, im not convinced that its actually supplying that voltage. Try uninstalling msi afterburner and downloading Evga precision and setting voltage slider to 1.212v (on the left side) and run then benchmarking on 100% fan setting.

EDIT: i remember having this exact issue with voltage with my 780 lightning

EDIT2: check what was the max TDP you where hitting when doing benchmarking? If your power supply is the problem then "furmark" would show that really quickly since that draws most wattage from all benchmarks, however if your psu is not quality i wouldnt risk trying it.

 

[Jimboss99]

My PSU is the Cooler Master G750M Power supply. It should be OK, it provides enough power and it is bronze rated almost reaching silver rated.
https://www.eteknix.com/cooler-master-g750m-semi-modular-power-supply-review/6/ review of this PSU

Afterburner, GPU-Z and HWmonitor were showing the same voltages of 1.24-1.25v when I applied the overvolt in Afterburner.
I tried Precision X1 but it shows zero milli-volts and the voltage doesn't change when I move the slider. This is with bios 80.04.28.00.3A . Not sure what to do now...
I'll try afterburner again and check the max TDP at 1.15 volts and the supposed 1.25 volts to see if it actually changed the voltage.

 

[Jimboss99]

I just tried furmark and I'm pretty sure the voltage is changing:

TDP goes from 95% to 105% from 1.15V to 1.2V and the tempererature rises dramatically reaching 69 degrees Celsius from 64.
It was quite cool to see, when the TDP went past 100% the perfCap reason changed to power limited, I changed the power limit from 100% to 133% and it went back to the original reason.

I'll keep testing

 

[Jimboss99]

EDIT: turning MSAA off in furmark causes the core clcok to drop to 1150MHz whatever I do, and the voltage drops to 1.15V. If I put MSAA 8x on, the voltage changes to 1.248V with 1.241MHz core frequency. I checked gpuz and the memory controller was fully loaded. The TDP was about 75% with msaa on and 105% when off. Can you explain this? is it because the memory is bottlenecking the core clock?

OK that's it now. I went back to the original power edition bios and it gives me the exact same options as the ln2 lightning bios.
For both bios I could load Unigine Valley at:

1280MHz max voltage but crashed in a few seconds,
1267MHz for a few minutes,
1254MHz after 6 minutes and eventually crashes

The max I could get was 1241MHz stable at the max voltage on the slider - states 1.248V.
The max I could get on stock settings was 1163MHz - States 1.148V

The memory what at +500MHz for both benchmark runs:

Almost a 10fps increase!

 

[fagetti]

I would keep it at 1.212v for 24/7 use if you want to use it longer period of time. However im not certain about higher voltages since its lightning edition it could stand way more than worse quality cards. If the fps difference is worth the extra voltage go for it, there are mods to get it even 1.35v but that would be high risk.

I ran my 780 lightning 6 months with 1.212v and another 6months at 1.25v didndt see any performance decrease. But every card is different. Nvidia states 1.212v is the highest safe limit.