680 power surge

Im having strange surges while running Heaven. Ive boxed in the parts that are relevant on Afterburner. Anyone have any idea what would cause this? you can see where the TDP is for most of the time, and can even see what it capped at, and that i have Power Limit at 300%. Why would it spike to 174% and crash a driver?

random.

Lower the Power Limit to 132% and the core to +105, then test again while running Heaven.

Runs fine @ +105/100%.

Runs fine @ +118/130%

I'm more concerned with the surges. What cause a random spike like that? It's the spikes messing with stability. If I can eliminate the spike I can push closer to 1400 on the core.

You failed to mention in the OP whether it ran fine w/ lower core and PL settings, so I just wanted to verify whether it did or not. The 680 has built-in power limits, so the core is probably limited to ~1300Mhz or so.

+118 on the core is 1320 MHz. Also, its a Lightning. Thought there were no power limits. And I'd say I'm running into a limit if I didn't sit @ ~70% power usage for 99% of the time in heaven. It just spikes randomly. The spike is what's crashing the driver.

Afterburner 2.2.3 unlocked voltages
MSI 680 Lightning
80.04.09.00.F8 unlocked LN2 BIOS

edit. sorry mobile skin doesnt show siggy when i post. i shoulda put lightning in the OP