Overclocking the ''Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 G1 Gaming'' (GV-N1070G1-GAMING)

[thecubicgamer]

Specs:

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CPU: i7 3770
GPU: GTX 1070 G1 Gaming
Mobo: Asus P8B75-M
Ram: 24GB (1600)

I recently upgraded to this card and I've been trying to really get the most out of it. I've made sure to uninstall all older drivers and reinstall the newest ones when installing the card. I've also switched my card to ''OC Mode'' using the Gigabyte XTREME GAMING software. So I ran multiple benchmarks but the scores seemed a bit low compared to a lot of the others online.

UserbenchMark

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Unigine Heaven

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Unigine Valley

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https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/116646015/Card/Unigine%20valley.PNG

Fire Strike

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To increase the performance I tried to overclock using MSI Afterburn, however no matter how many times I'd tinker with the settings I'd end up with either a game or benchmark crashing (sometimes even my PC) or some artifacts would appear on screen. I can't remember by how much I increased the clock speeds and such but I managed to reach 2100mhz under full load with 4300(ish)mhz memory clock. I ran all my benchmarks and there were no artifacts. Everything seemed great until I played a game for an hour or two, then the game started to bug out with artifacts and crashed. That's when I gave up and went back to the factory ''OC mode''. I've come here for advice and help on how I can get the most performance out of my card and how I can possibly overclock it without it going unstable.

Gigabyte XTREME GAMING Factory Settings

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[techgeek]

First off, I'd consider sticking to the core overclock and leave the memory alone. You will likely net close to 0% increase in performance from overclocking the VRAM. This might help stabilize things depending on where the instability originated at. Most times artifacting is a memory problem.

Did you raise the Power limit of your card? This will give Turbo Boost the most room to raise your clocks. Raising the GPU core voltage is usually detrimental because of how Turbo Boost works. Often raising the GPU core voltage will cause the card to reach it's Power Limit sooner and result in a lower boost clock. This is especially true with Maxwell, but it's also pertains to Pascal as well.

Temps are a big issue for overclocking. From what you are seeing, the card is mostly stable, but after awhile (after the card has had a chance to warm up) you start to get artifacting and eventually crashing. While I think that you may reduce this by leaving your memory clock alone, I'm not sure it will totally solve the crashing. I would look at running a fan profile that is a little more aggressive to try to keep the temperature down.

 

[thecubicgamer]

First off, I'd consider sticking to the core overclock and leave the memory alone. You will likely net close to 0% increase in performance from overclocking the VRAM. This might help stabilize things depending on where the instability originated at. Most times artifacting is a memory problem.

Did you raise the Power limit of your card? This will give Turbo Boost the most room to raise your clocks. Raising the GPU core voltage is usually detrimental because of how Turbo Boost works. Often raising the GPU core voltage will cause the card to reach it's Power Limit sooner and result in a lower boost clock. This is especially true with Maxwell, but it's also pertains to Pascal as well.

Temps are a big issue for overclocking. From what you are seeing, the card is mostly stable, but after awhile (after the card has had a chance to warm up) you start to get artifacting and eventually crashing. While I think that you may reduce this by leaving your memory clock alone, I'm not sure it will totally solve the crashing. I would look at running a fan profile that is a little more aggressive to try to keep the temperature down.

I did increase the power limit as far it would go. As for the temperatures, it would never go past 70, as far as I know that's pretty cool for a card under full load and overclocked. I could try again minus the memory overclocking and see what I get. How high should I go for the core clock?

 

[techgeek]

Start out low, I wouldn't go more than 100MHz to start with though 100MHz is a pretty large jump in the grand scheme of things. It's better to move up from stability rather than hit the wall right away. This will minimize possible hardware failure as well as OS corruption from crashing multiple times. If +100MHz is stable, then I would move up in 25MHz increments. Be sure to test with whatever games were causing your issues before. I know that the BF (3 and up) games tend to seek out instability on both the GPU and CPU.

 

[thecubicgamer]

Start out low, I wouldn't go more than 100MHz to start with though 100MHz is a pretty large jump in the grand scheme of things. It's better to move up from stability rather than hit the wall right away. This will minimize possible hardware failure as well as OS corruption from crashing multiple times. If +100MHz is stable, then I would move up in 25MHz increments. Be sure to test with whatever games were causing your issues before. I know that the BF (3 and up) games tend to seek out instability on both the GPU and CPU.

Alright I'll answer back when I try that out. I just find it odd that it seemed stable during benchmarks which seem more demanding then the game I was playing (Redout).

 

[techgeek]

Remember that Heaven / Valley / 3DMark are finished in a matter of minutes. This doesn't allow the card to warm up. While a card maybe perfectly stable at a run up to 70°C for a short run, it may not remain stable when held there for an hour or more. After this much time, nearly everything under the heatsink has been warmed up, even the PCB itself. This heat transfers to other components that don't produce much of their own heat.

I'd bet if you let Heaven / Valley run for hours (not benchmarked) it would start to misbehave after some time.

 

[thecubicgamer]

Remember that Heaven / Valley / 3DMark are finished in a matter of minutes. This doesn't allow the card to warm up. While a card maybe perfectly stable at a run up to 70°C for a short run, it may not remain stable when held there for an hour or more. After this much time, nearly everything under the heatsink has been warmed up, even the PCB itself. This heat transfers to other components that don't produce much of their own heat.

I'd bet if you let Heaven / Valley run for hours (not benchmarked) it would start to misbehave after some time.

I forgot to ask if I should be running both the Gigabyte software and MSI at tge same time. I use MSI to overclock, but would the default settings and OC mode on Gigabyte interfere with my MSI settings?

 

[techgeek]

I would stick with MSI Afterburner, it not only has all the same functions of the GigaByte software, it has additional functions that it doesn't.

If you use both, anything that you set in one should be reflected in the other. The modes for default and OC can be accomplished with a profile in Afterburner. Basically default is default, basically to revert to default you use the Reset button in Afterburner. Then make your settings for OC mode in Afterburner and save it as a Profile.

 

[thecubicgamer]

I would stick with MSI Afterburner, it not only has all the same functions of the GigaByte software, it has additional functions that it doesn't.

If you use both, anything that you set in one should be reflected in the other. The modes for default and OC can be accomplished with a profile in Afterburner. Basically default is default, basically to revert to default you use the Reset button in Afterburner. Then make your settings for OC mode in Afterburner and save it as a Profile.

So I decided to disable Gigabyte's software for now since I wont be using it and I'm currently running Heaven with a +125 on the core clock(2113MHz). I'm letting it loop and the temp never goes higher than 65. So far so good. I tried +135/150 earlier and I got some artifacts from time to time. I also used MSI's default fan curve instead of what I had before.

 

[thecubicgamer]

Well I guess I managed to overclock a bit , however overclocked or not, I seem to get mcuh lower scores than other 1070's online...

 

[techgeek]

Scores from what, and what are they? I've built two Skylake systems this summer with 1070s in them. They scored in the high 2300s to low 2400s in Heaven.

 

[thecubicgamer]

Scores from what, and what are they? I've built two Skylake systems this summer with 1070s in them. They scored in the high 2300s to low 2400s in Heaven.

I get in that range too, I was looking at Firestrike a bit more but it seems my graphics score is pretty good 19000+, it's just my cpu limiting my score (physics test + combined test). According to userbenchmark my cpu seems to be u derperforming a bit.

 

[techgeek]

You have the non-K version of the 3770, so no overclocking for you. However that is still a very capable CPU and shouldn't really hold you back in any games.

 

[thecubicgamer]

You have the non-K version of the 3770, so no overclocking for you. However that is still a very capable CPU and shouldn't really hold you back in any games.

Yeah, not quite sure why it's "underperforming", I suspected temperature but it seems okay even if I am using a stock cooler. I plan to upgrade to an i7-6700k so hopefully my scores go up a bit when I upgrade my cpu along with a bunch more components. Thanks for your time and help!

 

[techgeek]

No problem, glad I could help.

 

[chegalhavara]

How high did you have to increase the voltage?