Please help me understand GPU downthrottling and the cause in my case.

[hezikiya]

I have an Asus maximus v formula motherboard with an i7 3770k cpu. its cooled by an H100 and is overclocked to 4.5 or 4.6 depending... I have my very favorite samsung green ddr3 ram 4x16 overclocked at 1005Mhz which translates to (i forget). something either around 2000 or just above. They overclock like champs considering they are rated for 1333Mhz and have never failed me for the past 2yrs. My GPU is an MSI GTX 970 4g gaming and I have been toying with its overclock potential but have struggled to understand how we read them now with base clock and boost clock. I have found my core clock in the 500 range when I know that its nowhere near the temp limits and nothing really pegged beyond acceptable levels. Below is the OC im working with

Core Volt - +87
Power Limit - 110 (max for this card)
Temp Limit 90c (i think my issue lies somewhere in this area with the whole link them option..It never gets above 60c so im confused..
Core Clock - +150 (modest)
Memory Clock - +500
Fan on Auto.

I watch my readings for anything dangerous but so far nothing. occasionally the driver crashes and recovers right at the moment of overclock but runs good from there.

Heres my dilemna.. I bought an Acer Predator x34 monitor with hopes of running it at full potential and at its overclocked 100 refresh rate. It will not even let me overclock its refresh to 100 but it does let me get to 95 refresh.

I decided this GPU is not cut out for what this monitor is capable of and im beginning to think i need to sell the gpu and get something with more balls. Would SLI this card be a viable option cause ive never been a fan of SLI tho I have never done it myself. Just seems like it would yield some diminishing returns so I never bothered.

I am playing Black Desert Online at a reso of 3440x1440 with hopes of staying in the 90s for fps and my monitor is set with gsync. (which is still confusing to me)

Am I being bottlenecked by the low 110% power limit of the gpu or is it my rig thats the issue? All advice appreciated and all questions will be answered. Please give advice as I want to use this monitor for its strength and why i wanted it to begin with. As it stands with all I listed above, i have to play at low quality to get the 90+fps which is frustrating considering the gpu is nothing to scoff at.

Thanks in advance and pls share your thoughts.

Ryan

 

[madmatt30]

The 970 is in its element at 1080p mate.
Running 1440p ultrawide ( over 4 times the pixel count of 1080) & expecting close to 100fps at high settings is completely unrealistic.
I don't think there is a single card that will do that.

 

[Myrmidonas]

Any FPS above 60 is ok in any sitiation. You do not have to allways chase numbers above that, they give you nothing but a big number. The GTX970 is doing its job as suposed to. If you overclock PC components, expect their life to be reduced and the electricity power your PC condumes to be increased. Also heat is a big problem too. Throttling exists as a feature on modern PC components and takes place when they are stressed to operate at conditions obove their limits (strengths), in order to avoid malfunction, that might render the component burned (dead) in the end. Overclocking is one factor that mgith lead to component malfuction sooner than expected, and throtling is there to prevent this happen. Some PC components, are manifactured for overclocking and may operate at limits above nomral but before throtling takes place. That does not mean that the component will live longer than without using overclock though. Imagine throttling is like a safety net.

On the other hand, if you insist on your attempt to try to play games at higher resolutions with FPS on the monitor above the those you get , you should concider bying stronger GPU for start. But again you want 100FPS and you get 95FPS, I do not think it is a big problem. The only issue is the frequent crashes you mention, and this is an indication that the GPU mainly, or something else is having trouble to operate at overclock conditions. For example you overclocked above its ability. Try to lower down to factory settings. Then for the start of overclocking try to increase numbers by 10% and do some tests while you play the game to see if you get the crashes again. If the crashes hapen while you operate the PC normal, for example in windows or when you play any game, the problem is somewhere else. But usualy for the crashes overclock is the first suspect.

I advice you to search for guides on overclocing in general and for the video card you are using or the GPU you have and study them before any attempt to go further with it. Find as many as you can. There are plenty and also there are dedicated sites providing them. Also if English is not your mother language try to use Google translator. Good luck. 😉

 

[hezikiya]

While I don't disagree with what you said and in fact definitely agree that my card is not capable I find it hard to believe no card out there can handle it that doesn't mean I'm right but I have to imagine that is not unrealistic from a bleeding edge card I'm hoping maybe someone else can add more to this. If it's true and it's unlikely that the graphics cards have caught up to the monitors capability I can accept that but I need to know for certain that that's the case so I can stop planning for a new graphics card because I definitely had my eyes on the GTX 1080

The 970 is in its element at 1080p mate.
Running 1440p ultrawide ( over 4 times the pixel count of 1080) & expecting close to 100fps at high settings is completely unrealistic.
I don't think there is a single card that will do that.

 

[hezikiya]

As a side question along the same topic if I were to downgrade the resolution on the monitor but still want to fill the screen without letterboxing anything what resolution would I be looking for because every resolution option available always leaves some of the screen cut off even if I have to stretch things a bit it's a 34 inch monitor and I'd hate to lose gaming area. Now I will tell you at refresh rates 60 & below the card can run some of the games I'm playing that aren't as intensive like some MMOs like Black Desert online at full Max settings and that's even with a mild overclocked but to get 95 - 100 refresh I have to turn everything too low and that's not fun neither is the fact that the monitor I bought was more expensive than my computer but I knew that going in and wanted to just own a nice monitor for once

 

[Myrmidonas]

DOOM utilizes this technik on the consoles. It downgrades the rendering resolution in order to keep FPS close to 60 as much as possible. It is an engine (id tech 6) feature so it works internaly. On PC it is possible to use resolutions other than the preselected keep the details maxed out and have FPS close or above 60. In general it is the second trick one may use in order to keep the refresh rate as high as possible. The other trick is to lower details ofcourse.

My advice in general is to start with the monitor's native resolution and try to keep the games configured to play on that resolution with either increasing or decreasing the grafix details per game in order to achieve the highest refresh rate. There is no reason to reach FPSs close or above 100, except the situation where you need 120 at minimum in order to be able to use nVidia's 3D vision.

https://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-main.html

https://www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-displays.html (you will notice that all the monitors have refresh rates from 120Hz and above)

Monitor's refresh rate should be equal or close to games FPS as much as posstible to avoid screen "tearing" etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen_tearing

 

[madmatt30]

A 2560x1080 custom resolution (still ultra wide-screen) will run the majority of games at high between 80-100fps on a 970 mate.

A pixel count of around 2800000 vs your native monitor pixel count of nearly 5000000 - I overestimated before , you're current pushing 2.5x the pixel count of 1080p - you can imagine the differ hence in GPU power required.

When I said no current card can manage this at your native resolution , it was a general comment meaning on not every game out there.

Of course the 980ti, the new 1080 & whatever amd drops at it's high-end is going to be the best you can do .

 

[Vellinious]

I have an Asus maximus v formula motherboard with an i7 3770k cpu. its cooled by an H100 and is overclocked to 4.5 or 4.6 depending... I have my very favorite samsung green ddr3 ram 4x16 overclocked at 1005Mhz which translates to (i forget). something either around 2000 or just above. They overclock like champs considering they are rated for 1333Mhz and have never failed me for the past 2yrs. My GPU is an MSI GTX 970 4g gaming and I have been toying with its overclock potential but have struggled to understand how we read them now with base clock and boost clock. I have found my core clock in the 500 range when I know that its nowhere near the temp limits and nothing really pegged beyond acceptable levels. Below is the OC im working with

Core Volt - +87
Power Limit - 110 (max for this card)
Temp Limit 90c (i think my issue lies somewhere in this area with the whole link them option..It never gets above 60c so im confused..
Core Clock - +150 (modest)
Memory Clock - +500
Fan on Auto.

I watch my readings for anything dangerous but so far nothing. occasionally the driver crashes and recovers right at the moment of overclock but runs good from there.

Heres my dilemna.. I bought an Acer Predator x34 monitor with hopes of running it at full potential and at its overclocked 100 refresh rate. It will not even let me overclock its refresh to 100 but it does let me get to 95 refresh.

I decided this GPU is not cut out for what this monitor is capable of and im beginning to think i need to sell the gpu and get something with more balls. Would SLI this card be a viable option cause ive never been a fan of SLI tho I have never done it myself. Just seems like it would yield some diminishing returns so I never bothered.

I am playing Black Desert Online at a reso of 3440x1440 with hopes of staying in the 90s for fps and my monitor is set with gsync. (which is still confusing to me)

Am I being bottlenecked by the low 110% power limit of the gpu or is it my rig thats the issue? All advice appreciated and all questions will be answered. Please give advice as I want to use this monitor for its strength and why i wanted it to begin with. As it stands with all I listed above, i have to play at low quality to get the 90+fps which is frustrating considering the gpu is nothing to scoff at.

Thanks in advance and pls share your thoughts.

Ryan

As for your throttling....open up GPUz to the sensors tab. Watch the perfcap reason line. It'll tell you what's happening with your GPU. I'd guess you're probably hitting the power limit perf cap. It'll show up in green on the perfcap line.

For the core clock you're running, you shouldn't need the voltage offset that high. You probably aren't getting that much anyway. The stock bios files are set to max out around 1.256 to 1.262v anyway....still, if you can run those clocks at lower voltages, it'll help keep the GPU cooler, AND, will help keep the power draw down.

As for your monitor and your hopes of running the highest settings at that resolution with a single 970? I think you're shootin a bit high there.