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MSI GTX 1070 Armor OC overclock questions

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rapiddani

New Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2016
Hi!

First time GPU overclocker here, I have some questions, because Im a bit confused.

So I got a MSI GTX 1070 Armor OC card (1556/1746 base/boost).
I've watched some videos, read forum posts and then I attempted to overclock it, using MSI Afterburner 4.3.0 Beta 4 from guru3d.

What I don't understand is:

- I can only set my power limit to a max of 108%, while I see others have it on like 120%. Why is that? Is this a physical limit by the hardware itself?

- Testing in unigine valley and heaven, I could make +130 core clock, +500 memory stable, however I could only pass firestrike with only +100/+500.
Is this a normal value? It seems low to me, comparing to others. The temps are fine.
Even if I up my voltage limit to +100 in afterburner, the result is the same. My firestrike score is about ~15400.

Btw GPU-Z says that Im limited by "vRel"

Am I doing something wrong?

My build is the following:
Asus Z170-A mobo
i5 6600k @4.3GHz, 1.28V
evga supernova 750w g2 psu
16gb corsair vengeance lpx ddr4 @2800MHz XMP

Thanks in advance :)
 
I had the 1080 version of the card, with fairly similar experience.
It would also be interesting which clock speeds you actually achieved with these settings ;)

So now to your questions:
- Powerlimit % vary across different models, depending on the number of power connectors and how high it's already at stock settings. (factory OC)

- YES, differences in stable speed in various applications are absoultely normal - you have to find the best overclock that works on all applications.
Can't tell how good +100 Mhz is on the 1070, my 1080 worked stable up to +163. However, keep in mind that silicon lottery may play a role here, so don't get fixated on reaching this or that many Mhz.

For the VRel limit: It has to be limited by something, and it shouldn't be Power or Temps. So vRel limit is normal.
BTW: setting Voltage to 100 doesn't mean +100mV here, but rather that it goes all the way to max (1.093V) voltage before thorttling down. But having it up to 100% should give you a bit more performance though.
 
The "power limit max" is set in the BIOS for the card, by the card manufacturer. For example, on my EVGA 1080 FTW, I can set the power limit to 130%.

As stated above, the actual increase you do on the clock sliders is less important than what the GPU can hold for boost frequency. The GPU will throttle for temperature, power, GPU voltage, etc.

What is your sustained boost frequency on the GPU and Memory...and what is the temperature?

For instance, my GPU will hold a sustained boost of at least 2125 MHz at a temperature of 70 C.
 
I see, thank you guys for the answers.
Is it possible that someone will release an updated BIOS so we can go higher on these settings?

I will do some testing today, and check my sustained clock speeds and get back to you with the data :)
 
So...

I've run heaven for 10 mins, fullhd, max tessellation, ultra graphics, 8x AA
First the clock said 1987MHz, but after like 30secs it went down to 1974MHz and remained the same.
Maximum temperature was 70C, with the fan settings on auto, I didnt change the curve.
Memory clock is 4498MHz (2249 in gpu-z)

The afterburner settings were as I said before, +100 / +500.

I can go higher in heaven, but then firestrike crashes (windows error log says the nvidia driver stops).
I saw that there is a newer version of firestrike, so Im currently downloading the basic version to steam. Maybe it wont crash...

So, what do you say?


Edit:

some more interesting things...
I failed firestrike with core voltage +100, but pass with +0 (still +100 core, +500 memory). How can this be?
 
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Try changing the fan curve and having it actively cool your processor down to 60 to 65*C using 82% fan at any temp over 50*C.
Honestly, this card should be giving you at least +200 on the core, and +500 to +650 on the mem in afterburner assuming the core is sufficiently cool under load.
Im at +200 and +600 with 112% max power and 82*C max temp on my 1070 Founder Edition.
Good luck!
 
Try changing the fan curve and having it actively cool your processor down to 60 to 65*C using 82% fan at any temp over 50*C.
Honestly, this card should be giving you at least +200 on the core, and +500 to +650 on the mem in afterburner assuming the core is sufficiently cool under load.
Im at +200 and +600 with 112% max power and 82*C max temp on my 1070 Founder Edition.
Good luck!

Unfortunately, no luck.
Even with the agressive custom fan curve, I could only go +130 core (which is like 2010MHz total), but in firestrike it crashes the display driver in like 4 seconds.

Btw, my heaven benchmark behaves oddly too. Others say that when u go too high on the clock, you start to see artifacts, but the rendering is still going on 'smoothly'... Mine behaves differently:
When I go too high like +150, the rendering just stops for seconds like it is going to crash, the card is throttled down, then it tries again, stops again, and so on... Ive never seen these so called artifacts whiule testing.
And also I really don't get it why my card cant handle +core voltage... Using the same low settings (+100/+500) firestrike passes with 0% core voltage, but crashes with 100%.
 
I have achived above 2150 without voltage or poverlimit it runs stable didnt touched the mem is it good ?
 
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