benchmark, that limit is lower at
1535MHz. Various benchmarks
obviously have different limits, but
please keep in mind that this is one
of the hardest if not the hardest
benchmark for modern day graphics
cards. Not only does it place a heavy
burden on the GPU at any given point,
but it lasts significantly longer than
any other 3D benchmark that’s in
use today, thus it compounds the
effect of temperature on the stability
of your overclock. It is however a
good measure of just how good your
particular sample and subsequent
ov erclock is. If you are able to
complete even a single run, then
your overclock is good to go with the
Futuremark family of benchmarks
and to some degree Catzilla as well.
Even though this is not a gaming
review, it is to be stated that for those
who would purchase this card only
for gaming, then a good limit to set
as far as overclocks are concerned
would be 1500MHz/2000MHz, which
is more than enough performance
for any game on the market.
Here are few tips regarding
your air overclocking. They will
not magically make your GPU
clock higher, but they will ensure
maximum performance for the most
part making sure that should you
compete in the air-cooled/water
cooled competition classes, you get
the best performance possible.
- Enable K-Boost, the constant
changing of clocks within
benchmarks and between game
tests will lower your score. K-Boost
however must be balanced with
the NVIDIA control panel settings.
You will have to play around with
the power settings to find the right
settings.
- By Default the graphics card
has a lot of droop under load. This
isn’t necessarily a bad thing and
perhaps necessary to stabilize the
benchmarks. So disabling it isn’t
necessarily to your benefit all the
time.
- There’s really no need for any
voltage adjustment when using air/
liquid-cooling. For the most part,
the limitations to clock speeds are
cooling rather than voltage. For
instance, this particular sample
gained almost 100MHz just by
limiting maximum temperatures to
20’C under load, reaching 1650MHz
with no adjustment to GPU voltage. It
is unlikely any liquid cooling solution
can achieve this, but perhaps chilled
water setups may do the trick.
- Using the shipping cooler, there’s
no need for much other than setting
the fan speed to 100%. Perhaps with
the sliders for power and
temperature thresholds increased as
much as possible.
LN2 OVERCLOCKING
This is where the fun begins. In
fact, this is precisely what the card
is designed for. If you head over to
kingpincooling.com to you will be
able to find almost everything you
need to get started. A rough guide
to what temperatures and voltages
to use, along with several tips to
try in case things are not going as
expected.
What is true for LN2 overclocking
and GTX 980 TI cards is that, it
isn’t as simple as just lowering the
temperatures and setting a high
clock speed. That approach, as
tempting as may be, will not yield any
meaningful clock speeds and in fact
will make sure that your overclocking
session ends prematurely. What
you’ll need to do is take it slow and
steady. Lower the temperatures in a
steady manner and in that way, you’ll
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