MSI Afterburner going crazy and not applying correctly - GTX 980m

[HiHoeMan]

Hey guys, ive just recently got a new laptop P37x v5 with a 980m inside.

Ive downloaded MSi Afterburner and tried playing around with the core and memory clock but anytime i hit apply, no matter what i set as the clock speed it goes crazy and set a ridicules number. Has this happened to anybody else or anyone know how to fix it?

AB Screenshots http://imgur.com/a/ljYkm

 

[Woomack]

It's not optimized for mobile chips. Other thing is that mobile graphics have other limits and AB has usually higher slider than card can make. Simply sometimes above some clock card will freeze or clock will be different from what you expected, even though in theory it should still OC fine.
I have that on 960M and earlier was the same on other chips. On GTX960M I found out that ASUS already overclocked it so additional overclocking isn't helping much.

Try Nvidia Inspector. It usually has higher limits and works better with some drivers.

 

[HiHoeMan]

Hi Woomack thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I have downloaded it and it seems like it sets the overclock correctly. I used to have an MSI laptop with a 770m which clocked fine so was a bit weird seeing my abnormal clock speeds!

I have two quick questions: Firstly i have not used/heard of this inspector before. Does the inspector work straight from startup or do i need to have to open it up to apply the overclock?

Second: I know this is going to take trail and error and also dependent on my luck with the card i have been given but would you have a recommendation of where i could overclock the 980m safely? I have never fully tried to overclock a card correctly so i am a bit of a noob when it comes to setting the clocks to thier maximum/safe point.

 

[Woomack]

You can export profiles ( there is profile button ). It makes shortcut with settings which you can add to autostart folder. At least it's my quick idea. I'm not sure if there is a setting to enable OC with windows boot. I simply never needed that.

Voltage is locked and you can't damage card with only too high clock so just try how high it will go. Probably +100-150MHz on core and +200-300MHz on memory but I can be wrong. At least my card has similar memory in specs and it can't make much more than +200MHz. Memory on desktop GTX900 can make +400-500MHz.

When graphics card is unstable then usually driver will crash and you will see window with info about driver recovery or something. On GTX900 in most cases you see that instead of artifacts etc. Play some games, run couple of 3DMarks and you will know

 

[Kenrou]

Didn't nVidia lock overclocking for all 9**m ? we had a thread on it a while back if memory serves.

 

[Woomack]

Only in some driver series. I had no problems to OC my 960M but some clocks were limited as I said in last posts.

 

[HiHoeMan]

Hey Guys, overclocking in NvidiaInspector worked around the problems i was having in AB. Now it seems to be having problems setting the memory clock offset. Whenever i now try to set it, it goes straight back to 0. I have also set some profile shortcuts, which when run, give me 'attempted to read or write protected memory. this is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.'

This is slightly worrying! I hadn't gone crazy with the overclock and to be honest, I have not fully tested it with high intensity games and such. The highest i set the memory clock was +400mhz??? The base clock sets fine by the way.

I think I may have found out why I couldn't set my memory clock... I didn't have my laptop charger plugged in Although I am sure this happened last night as well when I did have my charger in, so I am not sure if it is a coincidence? But, it seems fine now.

I am still getting those messages when trying to run the shortcut (not all the time), so I am not sure if that may be a bug or some kind of permission issue between NvidiaInspector and Windows?

I will update if there has been any changes in case somebody has a similar issue!

 

[HiHoeMan]

LAST UPDATE: After continuous use of my new laptop I have come to found out the little niches of how to apply my over-clocks successfully. As mentioned earlier, it seemed like AB would work in some scenarios and not work in others, well, i have come to the conclusion of why it doesn't always seem to work.

The applying of over-clocks on my machine will only successful work (using AB) when the graphics card is actually in use. You may think this is pretty self explanatory, but, if trying to set the clocks before bench-marking/gaming it isn't at first obvious.

Hope this helps somebody!

 

[Woomack]

I had not much luck in overclocking memory on 960M. I could make +200MHz but that's all. I guess 980M has something similar as memory chips used in all series are the same just different "channel" count.
You can have some problems with overclocking when graphics card switches to IGP in 2D mode. I guess there is a way to turn it off. I had no issues with that. Now I can't even check anything as my laptop is in RMA.