More voltage = worse perormance??? (GTX 960 overclocking)

[ExtremyMan]

I have a GTX 960 and I'm having some issues with overclocking. Without increasing the voltage I was able to get +125 Mhz on the core and +400 on the memory, anything past that was unstable.
That gave me a score of 920 in the Heaven 4.0 benchmark, which was a nice increase over the default clocks which gave me a score of 830. I decided to add some voltage. So I added 25mV
which gave me 1.212V instead of the stock voltage (1.187V). Now while it did add some stability and allowed me to achive +160 on the core, my scores in Heaven benchmark were now suddenly lower than before. I scored 915 (0.54% less) with a 35Mhz higher OC?? I tried to reset the clocks back to stock and scored 810 instead of 830 at the default voltage.

The GPU wasn't throttling (the temps never went above 70 dergrees celsius) and it wasn't hitting power limits either. Also this completely messes up my drivers and the only way to get back to normal is to reinstall the drivers.

 

[Quixit]

It happens, it's a sign that you need to pull back a bit.

 

[dylanestrada]

I think thats a sign of thermal throttling, the heat is interfering with performance (your GPU will get hotter the more voltage you add)

 

[maxalge]

I have a GTX 960 and I'm having some issues with overclocking. Without increasing the voltage I was able to get +125 Mhz on the core and +400 on the memory, anything past that was unstable.
That gave me a score of 920 in the Heaven 4.0 benchmark, which was a nice increase over the default clocks which gave me a score of 830. I decided to add some voltage. So I added 25mV
which gave me 1.212V instead of the stock voltage (1.187V). Now while it did add some stability and allowed me to achive +160 on the core, my scores in Heaven benchmark were now suddenly lower than before. I scored 915 (0.54% less) with a 35Mhz higher OC?? I tried to reset the clocks back to stock and scored 810 instead of 830 at the default voltage.

The GPU wasn't throttling (the temps never went above 70 dergrees celsius) and it wasn't hitting power limits either. Also this completely messes up my drivers and the only way to get back to normal is to reinstall the drivers.

more voltage = more heat = less performance if the card needs to throttle to stop from overheating

this happens with both core AND also when the memory is clocked higher than it can handle


error correction is engaged and performance suffers, clock down the memory ( in fact overclocking the memory is not recommended as the added heat is not worth the minimal gains, core speed is where it's at )

 

[wice22]

I used Afterburner to overclock MSI 960 Gaming 2GB

Set Voltage to +95
Power limit +108
Core Clock +1000
Memory Clock +600

I've got :
GPU Clock 2190 MHz
Memory 2053 MHz

Temperature do not goes over 29C
and I DO NOT HAVE Liquid/Water cooling on GPU
Only one silent 140mm fan on top taking heat (Probably) (Working on 30%)
and one 120mm case fan from the front blown right to the GPU to it's back (Working on 30%)

PC is Extremely quiet and Benchmark on Heaven I've got is: 1120

it is also totally stable after hours of gaming, 3D Max, video rendering with After effect and Premier, and some heavy compiling.

rest of the System:
CPU: Xeon w5590 3.33GHZ
RAM: 24GB 1333 Registered ECC RAM
Windows 10
x58 Chipset (Gigabyte Mainboard)
2 PSU 650+880W

UPDATE

After Overclocking the PC up to :

4.419.81 MHz
Best absolutely stable config I could get from GTX 960 was :

Set Voltage to +100
Power limit +108
Core Clock +230
Memory Clock +650

GPU Clock 1430 MHz
Memory 2078 MHz
GPU Temp =~ 42C

Benchmark on Heaven : 1834

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2ssHipIGU3ZbHktRlZmZUhOQW8/view?usp=sharing

Strange... With less GPU clocking I've got more score ....

Anyone has any answer on this ?

 

[daniel2000]

I have a GTX 960 and I'm having some issues with overclocking. Without increasing the voltage I was able to get +125 Mhz on the core and +400 on the memory, anything past that was unstable.
That gave me a score of 920 in the Heaven 4.0 benchmark, which was a nice increase over the default clocks which gave me a score of 830. I decided to add some voltage. So I added 25mV
which gave me 1.212V instead of the stock voltage (1.187V). Now while it did add some stability and allowed me to achive +160 on the core, my scores in Heaven benchmark were now suddenly lower than before. I scored 915 (0.54% less) with a 35Mhz higher OC?? I tried to reset the clocks back to stock and scored 810 instead of 830 at the default voltage.

The GPU wasn't throttling (the temps never went above 70 dergrees celsius) and it wasn't hitting power limits either. Also this completely messes up my drivers and the only way to get back to normal is to reinstall the drivers.

It is something strange in your question. I have two Gygabyte 960 (a mini ITX and a G1) and my stock voltage is 1,218V and with this voltage i coud overclock exactly 160mhz stable, after 165mhz i get artefact in gpu tool. As far as i know there are no gtx 960 that alow software voltage moding, you can change it but it doesnt work, only work with bios moding. Did you do this from bios?
(excuse my english)