I was able to pick up a new graphics card from amazon, got a GTX 670 2gb, its the Gigabyte GV-N670OC-2GD. Got it for 360 and a 20 rebate. Really love the performance of the card. I am kind of sad I cant make Metro 2033 my bitch at 2560x1440. Whats really disappointing though is the overclock. I mean its stock oc puts it al gtx680 speeds but i always want more... The memory however overclocks pretty hard, taking nearly an 800mhz bump. I figured the huge heatsink on this would make it PERFECT for overclocking but i stupidly didnt read the reviews. Debating sending it back, but for the price i got maybe i should just quit whining.
Send it back and pick up evga FTW gtx 670 4gb with backplate. Or wait few month and buy gtx 7xx series =]
You can go to xtremesystems.org/forums and look in the Nvidia section. There is a guy there who is part of a team that made a bios editor for Kepler cards. You can use that to put your voltage to the highest allowed on your card and increase your power limit so the card will OC higher. EDIT: here is the link: http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?284014-KGB-Kepler-BIOS-Editor-Unlocker What is your highest stable boost clock? Just curious because I have a really bad OCer 670 as well. I can only hit about 1.175GHz boost speed. And my memory isnt great either, only hits about 6.7GHz stable. Many people I have seen are closer to or even over 7GHz on the memory, and I think you are as well.
so far +41 GPU is unstable still need to play with it, and +796 Mem clock is stable i think i can get a lot higher than this, using afterburner software. I really liked gigabytes software but it introduced SO many bugs into my system. Also ive user precision x as well, it was ok. UI is kinda overdone and annoying. the overlay for afterburner and precision x is nice. my stock clocks are 1058 and 6008, i dunno how it all works it doesnt seem that a +1 in the software translates to a +1 on GPUZ so i dunno what my real stuff is running at anymore.... i just assume that a +1 in afterburner = +1 onto those stock clocks... any insight into that would be helpful. Ill be on TS all night if you want to talk about shitty 670's enigma.
When you are OC'ing you are looking for an optimal balance between mem overclock and core overclock. Generally you would raise each up independently by 10 MHz until it fails a benchmark (ie. Unigine Heaven, 3DMark) My max overclock for the core was +83 MHz and +833 for the memory. Those numbers are kind of meaningless without actual core and memory speeds but you get the idea (it was also so long ago I don't have them on hand). Once you find the fail point you start backing off by ~5 Mhz until it is stable again. Then raise it by 1 Mhz until it fails and back off by 1 to be stable. Once you find the stable point for both you can do a combined benchmark and start lowering them both to find the optimal balance. Unigine heaven scores are heavily influenced by memory clock but whatever game you play may be better suited to higher core clock. Generally it has been accepted with these cards that a decrease of 10 MHz in mem clock will allow you 1 Mhz more core clock. For example, if it is unstable at +83/+833, then lowering it to +83/+823 would be stable (it isn't in my case). There is also a threshold for each step the card takes to boost the core clock. That is, at +76 to +80 you may get 1223 Mhz but when you drop the card to +75 Mhz it will only boost to 1215 Mhz and if you drop it further to +72 Mhz it will remain at 1215 Mhz. But, if you drop it to +71 you can remove another 13Mhz from the core clock. Again, the + values to core clock are meaningless to you and will be different for every card but the idea remains the same. For "real world" testing of your OC I suggest running crysis 2 on max. It will beat the shit out of your card and if the OC is unstable (it may pass heaven regardless) it will fail, I promise. I highly recommend precision X for OC'ing but that is because it is what I used with my EVGA card. The graphs it allows you to view give you a good idea of what is going on with your card while the benchmark is running and the exact moment it fails. I'm sure other programs give the same features, I just find precision X really simply laid out. Also, set your power target as high as you can. It is all likely very confusing and I am sorry but I know how to do it well enough but typing it out may not translate. HERE is an awesome guide for what to do and all the terminology you need for communicating with others in the know. You can also search the thread for overclocks other people have had success with that may have similar cards to yours (maybe the exact same) to get an idea of where to start. The entire process depending how picky you are can take hours. Some games will also absolutely hate your overclock and no matter what you will be forced to run at stock clock speeds. A good example of this is Guild Wars 2, I'm not sure what it was but the people making that game were dropped on their heads and to this day the game still dislikes overclocks that are stable in Crysis 2 (wtf, right??). It is not as bad as it was in beta but still unacceptable for a game that frankly isn't the most graphically demanding game ever made.
yeah ive been been pretty well versed in overclocking but this kepler stuff is a whole new beast. i had been using the guide loosely until today and i started following it more to the T and found a few things i missed in my haste to get going. I dont seem to be hitting any issues with heat at all luckily. after tweaking it tonight im right at where enigma is, and it seems to be stable. i think i might have just gotten a slow one lol
Core @ 1215 Mhz Mem @ 6886 Mhz (Precision X reads 3443 Mhz) is what I was able to hit as stable within Crysis 2. If I drop the core clock I can hit 7k+ on the mem clock. Again, all depends what will benefit a specific game. I never had a problem with heat either. Although I do have a fairly aggressive fan profile setup to get rid of the heat as it is being created rather than wait for it to hit the limiting value.
Thanks for the info Ryld. I didnt know that about the step threshold's This is actually what my card is stable at on the stock bios:
Dam I hate you guys... mine is stable at 1175 core and 6708 mem with the volt stuck at 1.175v, including the Kepler boost... enigma is probably boosting to at least 1300... I think I'm going to dedicate tomorrow night to getting it done unless I keep being unable to sleep I don't know if I want to mess with the bios unless I find better numbers out there specific to a bios build and my card Probably will end up keeping it since at the end of the day the oc isn't exactly going to double my frames on metro or something. Prices are back up so I'd have to cough up an extra 50 to play the oc game like you guys lol
there is no reason to be overclocking your gpu with a 670. Im fairly certain you can run everything at max anyway, and getting 40+ fps on any game on the market.
Na, the 1202 is supposed to be my boost clock right there. I *think* I have seen it go to 1230 or something like that before, maybe a bit more I dont really remember. But I am pretty sure it doesnt go all the way to 1300.
40 FPS is too low!!! I haven't seen many cards boost to over 1300 Mhz. They usually have beefed up power delivery to get them there as more voltage is needed to stabilize the OC.
Metro 2033 i get 20 frames per second, plus 40 frames avg sucks. i want at least 60, plus you forget im running 2560x1440 resolution, which is brutal i saw some more forum posts about people running +170 gpu and +500 mem with my specific model, so i might give that a shot when i get home tonight. the more i read it seemed the right balance is critical on these cards.
I am picking up a MSI 670 SC http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127685 from work tomorrow ... I am returning my 560 ti ... paid 250 for it when they was 300 and now im getting the 670 for 279 ... love dem discounts baby !!! anyways reviews look good on this card ... even thou im hardly on my computer maybe this will make me wanna play some more games ... how you like the card bishop?
on the card im getting? no clue ... it came in today on the truck from MSI ... some guy bought it used it for a day then bought a 690 ... MSI requires us to send them back to them if someone uses it ... so now i get super discount cuz its a RRTV re return to vendor 35% off word kinda excited ... makes me wanna get that 2560 x 1440 screen we sell at work also
If you can deal with it you should go for a single DVI input model only on the monitor Erock. It works perfectly fine for any PC use but cant be used for anything else. But those are the best ones because they have almost non-existent input lag from the monitor side of things. All gamma, contrast, and color adjustments are done through your graphics card control panel on these types of monitor because all the monitor does is take the input signal and display what it gets. No scaling, no checking inputs, no signal processing, nothing. Great for PC gamers. And the graphics card has all the adjustment you need anyway. Like this one: http://www.overlordcomputer.com/overlord_tempest_X270SE_display_p/ot_x270se_a.htm I am of the opinion that if you cant play on high settings in the latest game with a min FPS of 60 then you need more powerful hardware 30-40 is much too low.
well i was able to find a pretty decent overclock ran heaven for an hour and it worked fine. http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5515092 http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5526239 http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5526595 with a 9800GTX acting as phyx
That max of a 112% power limit will probably be the thing that keeps you from really getting any faster.
yeah but i believe it makes your kboost higher too so its kind of a trade off i guess, the oc guide recommended maxing that out along with voltage