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Voltage increase makes artifacting worse!

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dazza216

dazza216

Registered
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Joined
Jun 10, 2013
Location
Ireland
Hi all,

I'm having a go at overclocking my MSI GTX 750 Ti (Not the Twin Frozr one) and I've come across a problem.

I'm able to get about 1300Mhz stable on the core, but when I up that to 1310, it starts artifacting in Unigine Valley. Now the normal thing to do would be to increase the voltage, which I did, by 10Mv. But this seems to make the artifacting a whole lot worse!. I increased again, worse and finally threw in the towel and came here to ask for help. My temps never hit more than 60 degrees.

Could it be because of a bad PSU? Please don't bite my head off because it's a generic brand :cry:. A new build is on the way :attn:

Specs:
AMD Athlon II x2 270
4GB DDR2 800Mhz
PSU: Octigen 400w :-/

Thanks.
 
Your PSU at least looks to be a piece of junk... I can't find the UL # to find the actual maker though. A PSU shouldn't make a GPU artifact. It generally works or it doesn't... but I have seen stranger things.

You did increase the power limit, correct? Tried different slots? adapters...
 
My power limit started at 100% out of the box, although it only does use about 46.5% under full load. I did a bios hack which allowed the card to use the 75w on the PCI-e lane. I only have 1 lane so changing slots is out of the question.

The bios hack increased the performance by quite a margin, going from about 20Fps in Valley to 40 on average. I suppose I should find the most stable core clock without a voltage increase and leave it at that. I will keep trying though.
 
A BIOS hack for what...? Doesn't the card do that already as that is what the slot can give. What that hack is supposed to do and its results do not make any sense at all. You doubled performance by adding voltage and nothing else. It doesn't work that way. Adding more voltage and not changing the clocks would add more heat. That's it.

Anyway, maybe that is why. Flash back to your stock bios and check.
 
Actually, I've heard of more voltage causing artifacts before. I think the reason you see the artifacting get worse is because the extra voltage is making the instability worse.

And I'm hard put to quantify that. But I've heard it before.
 
Ok, so I was wrong, I was previously doing Valley benchmarks in full-screen (when I was using the stock Bios). I then switched over to windowed mode so I was able to view readings from afterburner. I did this because I was completely oblivious to the fact that the performance increases when in windowed mode, not becuase of the Bios hack. I did the Oc'ing before the Bios hack as well. So it really makes no difference either way.

What would the extra wattage be used for then? and will I keep the current bios or flash back to stock?

Oh and by the way, the 750 ti only uses 38.5w from the PCI-e lane. I think the Bios hack is to allow more headroom by increasing the amount of wattage available? It made no difference anyway for me.
 
Can you link to something for that mod you did? I would like to see it.

As I said, you need to figure out if it is the BIOS or not.. in order to do that, flash back/switch to the stock bios.
 
I totally don't remember man :( but it was here on this forum. And you're absolutely right about eliminating the bios as a variable first and foremost.
 
Right, flashed back, now will I do the OC again?

and what stress testing software would you recommend, the one's I'm using or something else.
 
Last edited:
Yes, now try the overclock again and see if it exhibits the same behavior.

Unigine Heaven or Unigine Valley... Catzilla,.. all are viable test applications.
 
I'll update this post as it goes along.

Right so before the latest Bios flash I was able to make it to 80Mhz stable, it gave issues at 90. So now, after the flash, I fired up Heaven at 90Mhz with no voltage increase. It managed two passes before I got the artifacting. So now I'm gonna increase the voltage.

Right so I increased the voltage by 10Mv. Before the increase on both the modified and unmodified Bios, it was reading 1.156V. I ran Heaven after applying the voltage and...nada.

10rpu9t.png.jpg

Is this normal? Shouldn't it be 1.161V? :confused:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Merged the double posts...

Why should it be 1.16v? It was reading 1.156 before, right? Things can vary... ;)
 
I increased the voltage by 5Mv actually, my bad.

Anyway it survived 4 loops of Heaven. in loops 3 and 4 it encountered the same bit of artifacting in the same scene (the one at night where it moves across the bridge between two lights). On my final loop, it started artifacting in places I haven't seen before (The aerial view of the fort and another one I can't think of). It was an improvement compared to the stock voltage.

Maybe I need to add a little more voltage?
 
I think I've found the limit, I upped it to 10Mv and saw an improvement, but on the first loop at 15Mv, the artifacting was happening a lot.

I got one instance of very minor artifacting per loop at 10Mv (a very small black line running across the screen for less than .2 of a second), would you call that a pass, or fail?

Would you call a 90Mhz core overclock decent?
 
^For benching, pass.

For gaming, well, I'd say fail, as that could freeze/crash the game after some time playing. (usually longer than a few heaven loops)
 
Anyway, thanks a lot guys for helping me out on this one. I don't come here often, but the advice here is so much better than Tom's Hardware's. I'll be using this forum more often! :)
 
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