GTX 970 Crashes with OC - Do I need more voltage?

[Tehuti]

After almost a year of reading about OCing my card, I finally decided to do so. I have an MSI GTX 970 4G and have been playing a lot of ARK Survival Evolved as of late. Before now I never seen a purpose to OCing as I could nearly max my other games with max fps but since OCing I've seen upwards of a 10 FPS difference in ARK which is amazing as it breaks that laggy 30-40 fps barrier.

My issue is I keep getting a grey screen in ARK which causes the video driver to crash, so says the game. Nothing negative seems to happen to the card, it's just these crashes. I ran Heaven and Firestrike for 45 minutes or so and both were fine with no artifacts or oddities.

My most recent OC I crashed on took an hour or so, but was +190 Core Clock and +350 Memory Clock on Afterburner. Roughly 1438 MHz core and 3900 MHz Memory I believe. At first I had the core and memory up a little higher and I crashed within 10 minutes. I'm curious if it's better to lower it to 180/300 to be safe or if I should go with a voltage bump as I've left the voltage untouched.

I'd really like to get to 1450-1500 MHz on the GPU if possible with the memory around 3500 at least as I feel this would truly optimize my game, but I'm a bit iffy on voltage changes and I'm wondering if the grey screen would still occur as I read it's related to memory.

I will say the card has never gone over 65C and the Power Limit seems to cap around 87 or 88.

Thanks.

 

[mcnumpty23]

used to have the same card

you can max out the voltage wont be a problem it only allows adding a tiny bit of voltage any way---87mv or something going from memory

i used a modded bios to get more voltage once i water cooled mine so could get 1600mhz out of it

 

[Tehuti]

used to have the same card

you can max out the voltage wont be a problem it only allows adding a tiny bit of voltage any way---87mv or something going from memory

i used a modded bios to get more voltage once i water cooled mine so could get 1600mhz out of it

Cool, I think I'll try maxing it and testing. Does a voltage bump usually fix these crashes?

 

[junkeymonkey]

dude you may of just fell on the unlucky side of ''luck of the draw''' some cars are great overclockers , and some are not if can do any at all .

you say ''I think I'll try maxing it and testing'' may give some help then may crash faster ??

''I'd really like to get to 1450-1500 MHz on the GPU '' yup , I'm sure a lot of guys would too thing is all your guaranteed is what the cards clocking was speced from the manufacture

 

[Tehuti]

dude you may of just fell on the unlucky side of ''luck of the draw''' some cars are great overclockers , and some are not if can do any at all .

you say ''I think I'll try maxing it and testing'' may give some help then may crash faster ??

''I'd really like to get to 1450-1500 MHz on the GPU '' yup , I'm sure a lot of guys would too thing is all your guaranteed is what the cards clocking was speced from the manufacture

You're certainly correct. I keep reading these things. I don't see the harm in trying out a little more voltage given that I never have and that many people claim voltage = further stability when overclocking. How will I know unless I test it? I have noticed in GPU-Z that I get a PrefCap Reason: VREL which is associated with voltage, so perhaps it is indicating that it needs more voltage. If I do get crashes I will be reverting back to stock.

 

[aquielisunari]

dude you may of just fell on the unlucky side of ''luck of the draw''' some cars are great overclockers , and some are not if can do any at all .

you say ''I think I'll try maxing it and testing'' may give some help then may crash faster ??

''I'd really like to get to 1450-1500 MHz on the GPU '' yup , I'm sure a lot of guys would too thing is all your guaranteed is what the cards clocking was speced from the manufacture

You're certainly correct. I keep reading these things. I don't see the harm in trying out a little more voltage given that I never have and that many people claim voltage = further stability when overclocking. How will I know unless I test it? I have noticed in GPU-Z that I get a PrefCap Reason: VREL which is associated with voltage, so perhaps it is indicating that it needs more voltage. If I do get crashes I will be reverting back to stock.

Prior to voltage the power limit is usually raised. 110%

 

[junkeymonkey]

'' Prior to voltage the power limit is usually raised. 110% '' that depends on the card and the bios it uses

like this msi 970

Board power limit
Target: 200.0 W
Limit: 220.0 W
Adj. Range: -50%, +10%
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/163522/msi-gtx970-4096-141009

to this MSI gtx 970's

Board power limit
Target: 151.2 W
Limit: 160.3 W
Adj. Range: -34%, +6%
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/162823/msi-gtx970-4096-140910-1

thing is you don't need to adjust that slider to acheve that it will auto boost the % if needed

I tested that here with my 980ti [just below the best answer ] with the slider at 100% it still grabbed that extra 10%

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3384521/gpu-power-limit-issue.html


so like here you see 151.2w x 6% [.06] = 160.272w that's all that card will do with out a bios mod [not recommended ]

Board power limit
Target: 151.2 W
Limit: 160.3 W
Adj. Range: -34%, +6%

same math for this card that's the bios set limit 200w add 10% = 220w the limit allowed

Board power limit
Target: 200.0 W
Limit: 220.0 W
Adj. Range: -50%, +10%


now what will help is turn up the cards voltage if it allows 1.1930v is the stock voltage of my card but in evga precision x I can increase that to a max of 1.230v and that helps stabilize a overclock [a lot]

but still its all in the limits of whats set in any cards bios and can vary from card to card on what the manufacture allows

you could get and learn how to do a bios edit and then risk the flash , but that's all your own doing

good luck

 

[mcnumpty23]

used to have the same card

you can max out the voltage wont be a problem it only allows adding a tiny bit of voltage any way---87mv or something going from memory

i used a modded bios to get more voltage once i water cooled mine so could get 1600mhz out of it

Cool, I think I'll try maxing it and testing. Does a voltage bump usually fix these crashes?

sometimes it will some times it wont--try it and find out

as said sometimes you just get a card that wont overclock too well

 

[junkeymonkey]

like they say its a lot of that luck of the draw , don't feel too bad cause I never seem to fall on the right side of that ,and get the short end of the stick [as far as a high 24/7 stable under everything I run to the max with out something causing a down clock or crash ,ect...

luckly I do get average good cards as far as out of the box stock boost clocking , but have got some poor one s as well that would barely do the speced min..

 

[mcnumpty23]

like they say its a lot of that luck of the draw , don't feel too bad cause I never seem to fall on the right side of that ,and get the short end of the stick [as far as a high 24/7 stable under everything I run to the max with out something causing a down clock or crash ,ect...

luckly I do get average good cards as far as out of the box stock boost clocking , but have got some poor one s as well that would barely do the speced min..

i must be getting all the good luck you arent lol

nearly always got a great overclocker for cpu and gpu

hit 5ghz rather easily on this 7700k

and 2100mhz boost on my gtx1070 again with very little effort not even needed a modded bios this time

 

[junkeymonkey]

thats what they all say