Is this normal?

My system is stock right now, and out of curiosity, I opened up GPU-z, CPU-z and HWMonitor and ran both Heaven and 3DMark. I found that the only PerfCap reason when running Heaven was for SLI (makes sense), but for 3DMark, I was getting Therm and PWR reasons on top of SLI (resulting in lowered clocks) on both cards, but more Therm than PWR on the primary, and more PWR than Therm (no Therm, actually) on the slave. My primary card maxed at a temp of 80C. My questions are:

1) Is it normal for stock GPUs to throttle when running 3DMark?
2) If #1 is yes, why not on Heaven? I should also mention that I ran Heaven at my native (4K) resolution with max AA, and only ran Firestrike with default settings (which if I'm not mistaken is 1080p with no AA).
3) Does this mean that I likely won't get a high stable overclock on my cards?

If anyone wants pictures, let me know. I'll run the tests again and post back.

What happens if you manually force all fans to full speed? Since your GPUs have two fan ("Hooters style") coolers, case ventilation is very important. Does it perform much better with the side panel off and a desk fan blowing into it? You might just need a nice Delta fan in the side panel over the GPUs.

Case ventilation isn't a problem, my GPUs do the same thing whether the side panel is on or off. The side panel is just one big acrylic window (750D), so I can't put a fan there, even if I thought that was the issue. I intend to watercool this entire system next year around tax time, so I'm really not even worried about the Therm in PerfCap, more about the PWR. Granted, I can raise the power limit when I overclock, but being that I'm getting PWR throttling at stock speeds, do you guys think that I'm probably not going to get a good overclock?

I'd get temps down and if you still ha e the power throttling. I0c, iirc, is where they also art to throttle so that makes sense on that front.

I've seen cards nkt reach a stable boost clock Unless you raise the power limit.

EarthDog said:

I've seen cards nkt reach a stable boost clock Unless you raise the power limit.

Click to expand...

So it's not unusual then? Do those same cards reach an average overclock?

80C throttles the card with default power limit (tied to temps). You need to lower that and it should be more stable.

The only way I can think to get the temps down right now, is to put a box fan on the side of it. Since it only happens in Firestrike, it's fine for right now, so long as it's normal. I'll overclock when I dump water on them.

Just raise the power limit. The temp limit goes up with it.