Which GTX 970?

[wingman99]

New GTX 970 FTW+ upon it's arrival hope you like it. Do tell how it overclocks?

 

[Evil-Mobo]

New GTX 970 FTW+ upon it's arrival hope you like it. Do tell how it overclocks?

Oh I definitely will

 

[Woomack]

Not all cards. As I said, the gtx 970 extreme from giga seems to have adjusted the wattage/power limit so you can run wild until whatever the vomtage limit is for the card.

Yes, maybe except this one card. It's pretty new and I had no chance to play with it. Have you checked if it's not locked on the hardware level above some point ? I mean like OCP/OVP at 1.3V+?

The Gigabyte and MSI high end cards seem to be able to use up to 1.3v. I'm not convinced it actually does anything useful for them. I've heard people say that the EVGA cards can also use 1.3v, but....none of the cards I played with would do anything at all above 1.275v. No raise in temps, power usage, and no increase in stability. Didn't matter much though, they still ran right with and better than the cards that claimed 1.3v. The ASUS STRIX and some of the Galax cards have voltage locked at 1.212v at the VRM. Apparently, someone had made a voltage tool that was supposed to unlock the STRIX voltage, but.....from everything I've read, it quit working after subsequent driver updates around last May. The STRIX is also power limited, by only having a single 8 pin power connector, reducing their overall overclocking capability only being able to run a power limit of 255 or 260 watts.

So, yes...the silicon is all equal, or as equal as the lottery allows for, but....the cards themselves are not.

All 3 Gigabyte cards ( G1 and standard WF ) which I was testing could run at ~1.31V but above 1.29V was no difference in OC and I saw only random stability issues. About the same are acting most GTX970. There is a lot of false info around the forums so in most cases if you won't test it on your own then you won't know for sure.

All GTX900 series should have up to ~1.21V 3D mode and max up to ~1.267V 3D boost mode. If they're not then manufacturer locked something. I remember that when I was playing with these cards then some overclockers were pushing Strix the same as most other GTX970. I had no chance to test them so I won't tell you how.
Depends from used voltage controller, card can have higher or lower voltage so to know for sure you have to use multimeter. Software is always wrong as it only shows VID. MSI is often overvolting their cards so they look like better for OC. Anyway I don't recommend MSI nowadays as they put warranty stickers on everything.
Other thing is that these cards don't really need higher voltage to overclock good on air/water. Most just need good cooling and I mean like ~70*C under load is already overheating if you wish to pass ~1550MHz. Raising voltage is not helping in most cases just because it's raising temps what causes instability.

Going back to the topic, I think that EVGA is a good choice for gaming and gives additional comfort with good support.

 

[Evil-Mobo]

Thanks Woomack for the info, I cannot wait to stat toying with this GPU.

 

[Wam]

The best overclocking 970's that I found were the Gigabyte and MSI ones with the few I played with getting ~1600Mhz on the core. My MSI 970 does 1561Mhz on stock volts. Though I have to add that EVGA are my favourite brand. Very well built and I adore their warranty and support.