https://xdevs.com/guide/maxwell_big_oc/ IMGIMGIMG

Overclocking/overvoltaging your EVGA GeForce GTX 980 Ti KINGPIN graphics card on air, water, and LN2 temperatures can be fun and most of all pretty safe for the hardware, as long as it’s done correctly. This includes not only card PCB preparation for extreme conditions, but having the right software tools + capable supporting hardware(PSU) and a stable platform to test on. Taking the time and effort to prepare the VGA properly for more extreme forms of cooling and knowing some of the basics of overclocking, can go a long way to give a better understanding of exactly what is going on when you overclock your VGA at any temperature. Consider everything given below as “self-educational” and provided to assist in getting the most out of your shiny new KP card. Not only EVGA, but I think most vendors won’t warranty any hardware if it shows signs of being used and abused. Proceed with caution and at your own risk. Having patience and doing things in small steps can work wonders in providing the best user experience while keeping your hardware safe and benching over and over again.

Overclocking VGA’s today is made easy through a design like EVGA 980 Ti KINGPIN or other similar custom card. The voltage regulation components on the card and overall design/layout are much more capable than reference designs. There are also many different software tools available for adjusting voltages, fan limits, and clock speeds. Anyone can do it with a little basic knowledge of some key terms and practice. First, let’s talk about some of the major components of NVIDIA VGA overclocking software controls. Then some basic terminology/behavior of what’s going on with the GPU when you use those tools to overclock and overvolt the graphics card.

This is main item limiting performance usually, as every NVIDIA card since the Kepler era has a power limit and circuitry on the PCB to measure input power. This control does not give you any amps or Watts value, but instead provides a percentage over design specification (which varies depending on card SKU/vendor!).

980 Ti KP has three different BIOS modes, which all have different maximum power targets keeping nominal power spec the same. If you want maximum OC headroom on air/water, you can just max this setting out and it will be enough.

• GPU Clock offset – This is GPU core clock adjustment setting.
• MEM Clock offset – This is memory clock adjustment setting.
• Voltage – for increasing the power to the core (1.212V limit in Precision X) or use classified voltage controller/EVBot for higher.
• Fan speed – Always max these when pushing the card on air
• KBoost – This is critical for getting the best scores when pushing the limits. It forces the driver to P0 state on a SW level and can prevent the card from sticking low at 2D clocks in between game tests while running benches. This can hurt the overall FPS in a benchmark a lot, and usually results in slightly lower score. On LN2, its most necessary.

Always use K-boost when doing any kind of benching!

Also if you benching with VGA cable (some cards might have no display issue on digital interfaces, such as DVI, HDMI, DP when running very low temperatures), you will need use secret menu in EVGA Precision X to make KBoost working. To access secret menu open Precision X, press Ctrl+Shift+Middle wheel on mouse and extra window with experimental features will pop up.

IMGIMGIMG

• Disable voltage control – this feature prevent Precision X to control any voltage settings.
• Turn off KBOOST limitation – this feature allow you to still enable KBoost even if using VGA output (normally it’s disabled, due rare compatibility issues)

There is one more trick, regarding voltage readout in Precision X and K|NGP|N Edition cards (both 980 and 980Ti flavours). As you all already know, software is unable to show real voltage supplied to GPU, it shows what GPU VID setting currently is, not actual voltage. Most of users are not aware of this detail, and expect to see real voltage. That’s why we often get confused people in forums, who see LN2 records with 2000MHz clocks and asking how is that possible with only 1.212V?

Well, KPE cards have a solution for this, as Precision X can actually read real voltage. KPE PCB have special circuitry to measure real voltage delivered to GPU chip and Precision X can get that reading. This is not default enabled feature, so to enable real GPU voltage monitoring, follow few simple steps before you start your session:

• Download latest Precision X, at moment of writing it was 5.3.6
• Set both OVERVOLTAGE and OVERBOOST mode in Voltage section top right. No need change voltages.
• Now VOLTAGE in center section will read actual voltage delivered by hardware.
• You can disable voltage control via secret menu after, reading still will work.

Screenshot below shows example usage with 1.400V set. GPU Voltage is reported correctly in hardware monitor graph, log and OSD as well, which can be handy to monitor voltage droop/change during benchmark sessions. And after you found sweet spot for voltage, disable OSD and run for records (OSD have little performance hit when running, so you want it OFF when benching for records).

IMGIMGIMG

There is no limit on reading, so even 1.8V will be reported correctly. Again, this works only for EVGA GeForce GTX 980 KPE and EVGA GeForce GTX 980Ti KPE cards.

IMGIMGIMG

EVGA 980 Ti KINGPIN as well as all other 980 Ti, 980 and Titan-X cards use a GPU featuring the NVIDIA Maxwell architecture. Given what we already know about it highlighted here before, we know that Maxwell GPUs don’t really benefit from much overvoltage on air and water cooling temps. If you give it some thought, it’s due to fact that power-efficient Maxwell is already close to pushing frequency boundaries when running at ambient temperatures. So then it seems Maxwell doesn’t seem to like much applied voltage at ambient temperatures. Well, how does applied GPU voltage normally work on other GPUs normally? There are two ways:

As your card clocks go up, it’s harder for the electrical gates in the GPU to switch due to more noise generated and the increased demand for current from the power supply. There is also an overall increase of temperatures inside the chip structures internally on the GPU. At some point, the applied voltage is just not enough to keep the internal gates switching reliably and this creates errors/artifacts. The result is the GPU will crash. Raising voltage will provide that extra power the GPU needs, but it will also skyrocket GPUs temperatures internally. If you are still below “maximum” temperatures for a specific frequency, the GPU will remain stable and continue working well. There are safe typical temperature ranges for different voltages. These are like “sweet spots” with regards to voltage/frequency/temperature.

Increasing voltages and improving the cooling to reach max clocks, this is basic overclocking. Keep in mind increasing voltages always brings an increase in power consumption and internal GPU temperatures. This is not a linear relationship, but more like an exponential one. When you increase voltage 10%, your power usage and temperatures will not increase just 10%, but more like 25-30%. This is very different to frequency gains, which are more linear (10% faster clock gives close to same 10% power increase). Even at extreme cooling temperatures, this rule still applies because -100 °C at die contact surface is still not enough to cool down heavily overvolted chip logic structures buried deep in the silicon. It will still overheat at one point no matter how cold temperature is, if voltage and power consumption is too high. This behavior is important to know, as it is the basis for all overclocking, extreme or not.

IMGIMGIMG

Maxwell is designed and optimized very well to run at high frequencies. This means that while keeping voltages and temperatures at normal default levels, you can get amazing clocks. Most of the GM200 GPUs on Titan X and 980 Ti cards can run 1450+ MHz, which is already considered very high clocks given the chip complexity and size. There is some headroom left for scaling at ambient temps, but not much.

Overclocking at frequencies beyond 1450 MHz really depends on quality of silicon and how high it can scale. Another important thing is whether the GPU is taking more or less power at default spec.