[SOLVED] GTX 980TI poor performance after OC

[Da3m0na]

Hello, I have Gigabyte GTX 980Ti G1
After playing with msi afterburner (stock BIOS). I had stable OC
With:
+87mV
+130% power limit
+110 Mhz core
+400 Mhz memory

Then I tried with +450 Mhz memory and the PC froze. I rebooted, reverted to the last stable OC profile, but since then the GPU underclocks to 600-800 Mhz during load. Temps are around 50-60. Tried to revert to the default settings with no success. Rebooting the PC or reinstalling the drivers with DDU didn't help either. Do you thing the GPU got damaged or something? It's still somewhat ok, gets 250(max) fps in rocked league for example, but the performance is a lot worse than before (in heavy load).

 

[Darkbreeze]

That card comes highly overclocked right out of the box. You probably shouldn't even mess with overclocking it further to be honest. This is a five year old graphics card and while it was pretty much top of the line THEN, it's far from it now. If you need more performance than that card delivers out of the box then you probably need to bite the bullet and upgrade to something newer. In truth, that card only offers performance now that is about equal to or less than an RTX 2060 Super, much less anything from the 200 series that's tiered higher or anything from the 300 series, period.

What are your FULL hardware specifications?

 

[Da3m0na]

Sorry, my full HW spec is:
PSU: Be quiet Straight power 750W
MB: MSI Z270 Gaming Plus
CPU: I7 6700k (not OC)
RAM: G.SKILL 2x8GB 3200 Mhz

I've overclocked every single card I've had in the pat 12 years and i've never had such issues with stock BIOS. I've checked that other people easily clocked this GPU to similar specs too. I was just wondering if is permanently damaged.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, here's what I'd try.

Power off. Switch off the PSU on the back of the PSU (Or unplug it from the wall, one or the other, and this is rather important).

Remove the graphics card completely.

Attach the video input cables to the motherboard, for use with the integrated graphics.

Remove the CMOS battery for five minutes. DURING those five minutes, press the power button that you normally use to start the computer, for 30 seconds, continuously. Then reinstall the CMOS battery.

Turn the PSU switch back on (Or plug the PSU back in to the wall outlet) and then power on the system. Boot into Windows. Once in Windows, download the latest copy of the DDU (Or skip that if you already HAVE the latest version). Now, while holding down the shift key, select the option to restart the system from the start menu startup options. You will begin to shut down and then you will be prompted for several actions. Follow the actions necessary to change startup behavior by booting into safe mode. (Or simply rapid fire spam the F8 key when you first start up the system so that it brings up the safe mode options to begin with, and then boot into safe mode.)

Once you are back in Windows, IN safe mode (Only. Don't run the DDU while in the normal desktop environment. It's a waste of time as it does not remove all of the necessary registry entries that way) then run the DDU and select the "graphics card" and "nvidia" options. Run it and then restart. Once you've restarted, download the latest version of the Nvidia driver package and then shut down.

With the power off and unplugged from the PSU, or the switch on the back turned to the "0" or off position, reinstall the graphics card including all required PCIe auxiliary power connections and move the display input cable back to the graphics card. Boot into Windows. Install the latest Nvidia driver package that you already downloaded. Restart the system and then see if you still have the same problem.

If you do, then it's probable that you either HAVE damaged the card, or you have a problem with the power supply. Probably ALSO worth going and checking to see if you have the most up to date motherboard BIOS version installed as well.