Low Heaven Benchmark Scores EVGA GTX 670 4GB?

[argo49]

Hey guys,

Bought an EVGA GTX 670 superclocked with 4GB vRAM a couple of months ago and was really happy with it until I noticed some lag while playing Borderlands 2 whenever I was in Sanctuary so I decided to do a little bit of overclocking (My first time overclocking a Kepler). I ran a stock Heaven Benchmark before overclocking so I'd have something to compare my results to and it came up with a score of 908. Not bad, I thought. So I eagerly started overclocking following the quick version explained in SeanPoe's "GTX 670 Overclocking Master Guide" on the overclock.net forums and went to town.

Using EVGA Precision-X I set a custom fan curve to make sure the temps never exceed 70C as suggested in the guide and continued with the usual overclocking routine. I managed to get a stable overclock at
GPU clock offset: +74
Mem clock offset: +158
I pushed the voltage to the max (1.175V) and hit apply, but ever time I open the "adjust voltage" panel it seems to be reset to the default value of 988mV so I'm not sure what's up with that.

I wish I could upload pictures here, but anyway here's the results of the Heaven Benchmark with overclocking:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FPS: 41.5
Scores: 1044
Min FPS: 11.6
Max FPS: 103.1

Hardware
Binary: Windows 32bit Visual C++ 1600 Release Mar 7 2012
Operating system: Windows 7 (build 7601, Service Pack 1) 64bit
CPU model: AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 955 Processor
CPU flags: 3214MHz MMX+ 3DNow!+ SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSE4A HTT
GPU model: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 9.18.13.623 4095Mb

Settings
Render: direct3d11
Mode: 1920x1080 8xAA fullscreen
Shaders: high
Textures: high
Filter: trilinear
Anisotropy: 16x
Occlusion: enabled
Refraction: enabled
Volumetric: enabled
Tessellation: extreme
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What I'm most concerned with here are the scores. When I did a little bit of research I found most people overclocking their GTX 670's were getting scores in the range of 1150-1250 and I'm a solid 100 points below the low end of those that have posted their scores online Is something in my system bottle-necking the benchmark process, or did I just get a lemon of a GPU?

From GPU-Z:
GPU Clock: 1041 MHz
GPU Memory: 1581 MHz
GPU Boost: 1120 MHz
--
Default Clock: 967 MHz
Default Memory: 1502 MHz
Default Boost: 1046MHz

For those of you who'd like to see, here is a specs list for my PC:

EVGA 04G-P4-2673-KR GeForce GTX 670 Superclocked+ w/Backplate 4GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

Gigabyte AM3 AMD GA-880GMA-UD2H (probably rev 2.0) Mobo

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W Quad-Core Processor

X-Power 650 watt PSU

2x (G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBRL)

^ total of 8 gigs of ram (4x2gb)

Crucial M4 128GB SSD

Seagate Barracude 1TB HDD

Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OEM

Let me know if I'm forgetting anything important.

Any help/info would be appreciated

 

[Cheepnis]

I can't see your pics but 950 is low. My gigabyte gets >1130 at its stock overclock of 980/1502 (1137/1502 in gpu-z), and >1300 OCed.

Have you reinstalled your drivers after your latest crash?
I had problems of getting ~750 in Heaven after a crash, and the only thing that helped was a clean reinstall (choose custom install) of the newest drivers.

Also, what is your Power Percent? you should at least be in the 80s, and I cant see your pics.

I also reinstall Precision-X after every crash, just to be safe (the joys of having super fast ssds).

 

[argo49]

Wow reinstall Precision-X after each crash? If I did that it would take me a solid week to OC my card lol. I tried reinstalling the drivers a while ago and it didn't seem to do much but i guess I can try it again.

ALSO the reason you couldn't see my pictures was because there are no pictures, they were spoilers and you had to click them I thought it would contract and make my post less lengthy but i guess not. I un-spoilerized them so now you can see my specs and benchmark results

 

[Anik8]

Your CPU must be the bottleneck here.Try overclocking it to a decent 4ghz and give your feedback.
Intel i5 2500 and upwards is recommended for cards like GTX 670

 

[argo49]

Ok I thought that might be the case. I'm wary of overclocking my CPU though because all I have is the stock fan and that thing gets loud enough even without the OC (and yes I do keep it clean and free of dust).

I'll definitely be upgrading my CPU around Christmas this year to a 3rd gen i7 but until then im stuck with my phenom!

 

[Anik8]

I guess what you need rite now and for the future is a nice cpu cooler at a decent price like this one here :-
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103055

 

[argo49]

Even if my CPU is the bottleneck, I've seen people with scores around 1200 that have the same cpu as I do. Also if I ever do some moderate CPU overclocking, I was thinking of getting this since noise is an issue with my rig:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103057

Thoughts on that or what could be any other reasons for the low scores?

 

[Anik8]

Well its more or less similar cooling wise and since you wish to keep noises low,I won't suggest anything else.But note for overclocking an ivy bridge i7 you'll need some high end air coolers if not liquid cooling.
Regarding the CPU,are you sure those people having your CPU didn't overclock theirs?