Quote (BluntsGLI @ Oct 9 2016 11:00pm)
Crank voltage and power limit all the way, it's limited to a safe level by the card's BIOS. You can hit as high as 1650 Mhz if you're really lucky but that would likely need a custom BIOS. My STRIX 970 only hits 1443 MHz, 1500 is pretty decent, 1550+ is dank. You can also overclock the memory by up to 500Mhz, it's Samsung memory and 970s can pretty much all handle it
Don't use Furmark, it's BS and way harder on the card than any game will ever be. It throttles my card and nothing else ever has, it's pointless
I recommend stress testing with Unigine Valley and then playing games and just lower your OC a bit if you're crashing in games
If you really want to get the most out of your card, custom BIOS is the way to go. You can disable NVidia Boost, raise the power limit to 150watts per 8 pin + 75 for the pci slot, raise the voltage a bit, set your memory overclock, custom fan curves and not have to open afterburner every time you game. I can let you know more about getting into this if you're interested, it's really easy to do.
1500 is considered really good for a 970, 1550 is rare, 1600+ is extremely good very few hit 1650+
How do you know its samsung? Does the 970 only use samsung? I know the 980 has at least 3-4 different brands of vram possible.
Custom bios is great, if you know what you're doing & are willing to take the risk. 150w 8pin & 75w pci-e is actually the standard. Depending on how crazy you go with the custom bios, Some you still need to keep afterburner running @ max volt/etc to supplement the bios power needs.
Quote (ZwiX @ Oct 10 2016 11:23am)
Man 1650mhz is insane. Mine 970s is just mere 1470
I had both my msi 980's at 1532mhz 24/7. The guy that made the bios had actually measured them pulling a max of 375w each
I could do just over 1600~ without issues, But just left it at the modded bios 'base' clock of 1532 'cuz it was easier.
This post was edited by Rikuo on Oct 10 2016 12:34pm