GTX970 running at low clock in benchmarks

[Mandarb]

Hi everyone

Yesterday I received my Zotac GTX970 (ZT-90101-10P), and I was running it through a couple benchmarks that I ran my old ASUS HD6950 (first generation, runs as HD6970) through before, so as to see the improvement.

I noticed that the GTX970 basically never runs at the base clock speed of 1076MHz, and only during a couple moments in the Firestorm test does it start to tap into the boost clock. Anywhere else, it runs at around 800MHz.

For Furmark, it runs at around 830MHz, never going higher, keeping at 51fps.

Anyone else noticing such behaviour with their GTX970/980?

I'm running the latest Nvidia 344.16 drivers.

The rest of my system consists of i7-2600k, ASUS Sabretooth P67, Corsair SSD, 16gb DDR3 1333MHz CL9, Seasonic X-660 PSU. Yes, my ram isn't the fastest, but it shouldn't totally kill off performance. The PC is 4 years old and that ram was pretty good performance/value back then (Corsair CMX3).

Is this just normal that the card isn't running at full speed in benchmarks, or is this just because the card is just fresh out and firmware/drivers aren't optimised yet/buggy?

 

[Ninjawithagun]

First off, make sure that the 6-pin PCI-E power connectors are properly secured to the card. Next, check that those same cables are properly secured to the power supply (if you have a modular power supply that is). If that checks out, it may be a faulty 12V rail. Try reconnecting those cables to a separate 12V rail if possible. If you have the right equipment, run a diagnostic test on the power supply to see if you received any fault indicators. Worst case scenario, your card or power supply are defective and will need to be replaced. Also, try installing the GTX970 into a second computer to verify whether or not the GPU reaches optimal operating clock speeds.

 

[Kari]

what kind of temps are you getting? maybe it's overheating and throttling...

 

[Mandarb]

It's definitely throttling. I get better marks now, cooler/paste obviously settled in. It runs at full base clock in games, 60 degrees celsius in Borderlands 2, for example.
It's either capping for temp in furmark, or capping 200fps in that icestorm 3D Benchmark.