Asus gtx 970 overclock: Overclock profile for the Asus GTX 970 Strix

Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review

Written by

Matthew Lambert

January 15, 2015 | 10:05

Tags: #gtx-970 #maxwell #mini-itx

Companies: #asus

1 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review2 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Test Setup3 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Battlefield 4 Performance4 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — BioShock Infinite Performance5 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Crysis 3 Performance6 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Skyrim Performance7 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Unigine Valley 1. 0 Benchmark8 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Power and Thermals9 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Overclocking10 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Performance Analysis and Conclusion

To overclock the GTX 970 DirectCU Mini, we first set its power and temperature limits to the maximum permitted: 110 percent and 91°C respectively. Some cards let you push the power limit further than this, but with only one power connector the 110 percent limit is not surprising. It also didn’t stop us from achieving a very good overclock on the core, which we pushed to a base clock of 1,309MHz, a 220MHz or 20 percent increase. At this speed its boost clock is 1,448MHz, and though we observed a maximum frequency of 1,549MHz it was typically somewhere between 1,440MHz and 1,500MHz in games, which is still fantastic.

As for the memory, we were able to crank this up to 7. 8GHz without issues, though beyond this glitches and crashes started to happen. This is on par with most over GTX 900 series cards we’ve seen, and is a healthy 11 percent boost that takes the memory bandwidth from 224GB/sec to 249.6GB/sec.

• AMD Radeon R9 295X2 8GB
• Galax GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition 4GB (OC)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Black 6GB
• Asus GTX 970 DirectCU Mini 4GB (OC)
• MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G 4GB (OC)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB
• Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC 4GB (OC)
• EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX2 4GB (OC)
• AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB
• Galax GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition 4GB
• EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX2 4GB
• MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G 4GB
• Asus GTX 970 DirectCU Mini 4GB
• Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC 4GB
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB
• AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB

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• AMD Radeon R9 295X2 8GB
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB
• EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX2 4GB (OC)
• Galax GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition 4GB (OC)
• Asus GTX 970 DirectCU Mini 4GB (OC)
• MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G 4GB (OC)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Black 6GB
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB
• Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC 4GB (OC)
• Galax GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition 4GB
• AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB
• EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX2 4GB
• MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G 4GB
• Asus GTX 970 DirectCU Mini 4GB
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB
• AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB
• Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC 4GB
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB
• AMD Radeon R9 280X 3GB

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• AMD Radeon R9 295X2 8GB
• Galax GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition 4GB (OC)
• MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G 4GB (OC)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB
• Asus GTX 970 DirectCU Mini 4GB (OC)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX Titan Black 6GB
• Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC 4GB (OC)
• EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX2 4GB (OC)
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 Ti 3GB
• Galax GTX 970 EXOC Black Edition 4GB
• EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX2 4GB
• MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G 4GB
• Asus Strix GTX 970 DirectCU II OC 4GB
• Asus GTX 970 DirectCU Mini 4GB
• Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB
• AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB

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1 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review2 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Test Setup3 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Battlefield 4 Performance4 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — BioShock Infinite Performance5 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Crysis 3 Performance6 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Skyrim Performance7 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Unigine Valley 1. 0 Benchmark8 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Power and Thermals9 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Overclocking10 — Asus GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini Review — Performance Analysis and Conclusion

90,000 is still too early to retire! GECID.com. Page 1

::>Video cards
>2020
> Gameplay testing GeForce GTX 970 + comparison with GTX 1650: it’s too early to retire!

13-02-2020

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GTX 9 graphics card70 based on the Maxwell 2.0 microarchitecture debuted in September 2014 with a suggested price tag of $329. It is based on the GM204-200 GPU: it has 1664 CUDA cores, 104 texture units and 56 raster units. He is assisted by 4 GB of GDDR5 memory with an effective frequency of 7 GHz, a 256-bit bus and a bandwidth of 224 GB / s.

At first everything went well — a productive and fairly energy-efficient video card quickly became popular among gamers. But in January 2015, a scandal erupted — users noticed that in some tasks the performance of the GTX 970 crashes when more than 3.3 GB of video memory is full. It turned out that due to the peculiarities of the structure, one of the L2 cache modules serves two video memory controllers at once. Priority is given to the first, and the second already receives resources as far as possible. Accordingly, the last 0.5 GB of memory suffer.

As a result, NVIDIA admitted that the GTX 970 asset uses 1792 KB of L2 cache instead of the originally announced 2048, and ROP blocks — 56 instead of 64. Many users considered themselves deceived and hastily sold this new product. AMD promptly set up a «4 GB means 4 GB» promotion for them and offered a discount on the R9290. On the other hand, many on this wave bought the GTX 970 at very attractive prices. As of December 2019, among Steam users, this video card was ranked eighth in popularity.

So we want to check how she feels in current realities. To do this, they took out the video card MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 100ME from their iron bins. By default, it uses the Gaming mode with a 6% GPU overclock. But there are still OC and Silent in stock.

It also boasts an unusual black and green design for the series and an efficient cooler with four heat pipes, an aluminum radiator and two 96mm fans. There is support for passive mode thanks to ZeroFrozr technology. In games, the temperature reached 68°C with a critical value of 98°C.

Now let’s get to know the test bench. This video card is unlikely to be installed in the new system, but the imitation of the old one will work fine on the basis of the “interesting, but controversial” 8-thread Core i7-7740X nominal. This is an analogue of the i7-7700K, only for the Core X series and without an integrated video core.

Cooler be quiet! DARK ROCK PRO 4 . The mass of its two-section design with two fans exceeds 1 kg, and the height is almost 163 mm. In addition, it will conflict with memory modules with a height of more than 40 mm.

These and other components are installed on a functional and reliable motherboard ASUS TUF X299 MARK 1 ATX format.

4 of its 8 slots are occupied by simple DDR4-2400 modules from Apacer .

A pair of SSDs from the same Apacer is used to install most games and the operating system. For the rest, there is a hybrid drive from Seagate .

Saving on the power supply is fraught with unstable operation and possible replacement of components. We did not want to take risks and took a proven «gold» source Super Flower Leadex III Gold 650W . It uses a fully modular cable system and easy-to-use cables. And four 8-pin PCIe connectors allow even two of these GTX 970s to be connected. Silent Base 801 there is room even for a larger cooler. The video card can be installed vertically so as not to additionally load the motherboard, but the riser will have to be purchased separately.

Any assembly is not complete without peripherals. In this case, the Redragon brand helped. And after a few weeks of use, we have developed vivid impressions of some of its products.

The mechanical keyboard Redragon Indrah uses laser marking. We did not like the chosen font, but this is subjective. The comfort of work is enhanced by a plastic wrist rest, which is mounted on two latches.

Mouse Redragon Cobra liked the quality of materials and assembly. The sides are quite tenacious, but there are no rubber inserts — it’s just textured plastic. But there are no questions about the Pixart P3325 optical sensor — it does not break down in games, the cursor moves smoothly and clearly.

The Redragon Archelon mat with a smooth fabric upper part was used for comfortable work with the mouse.

Headphones Redragon Lagopasmutus are a universal solution — suitable for games, movies and music, if you do not have high expectations. In the frequency range, low and high are well developed, but the middle ones were slightly lacking.

Gameplay recorded by external system with AVerMedia Live Gamer 4K.

Let’s move on to the test. It featured popular games that either appeared in 2019 or received a major update so that the gameplay does not repeat a similar test from the beginning of last year.

ARK Survival Evolved suggests that it is recommended to use the high preset with the GTX 970. But we still did not understand the logic of the developers, because the average speed does not even reach 50 fps, not to mention comfortable 60. The stators slip in places and the 0. 1% Low falls below 20.

In RUST we set everything to the maximum and slowly lowered the settings until we reached a smooth video sequence, without constant friezes and lags, but with a still pleasant picture. The average speed was 50 fps. If desired, the settings can be lowered further to reach 60 FPS.

Quake Champions unexpectedly flew on ultras. It requires more than 4 GB of video memory and still takes more than 13 GB of RAM, but in the gameplay itself everything was smooth, comfortable and responsive. The 0.1% Low indicator drops below 40 fps, but this does not cause discomfort.

PUBG with a folk mix of ultra and medium settings demonstrates typical gameplay — the average speed exceeds 100 FPS, but the statistics of very rare events jump around 24-30 fps. When loading new locations or objects, stators are possible, but they were not in the firefight.

Fortnite with the epic preset didn’t give the system any trouble. Light drawdowns are possible only in the first minute of the battle, while the necessary objects are being loaded. After that, there were no problems. The average speed exceeded 70 FPS.

For a comfortable launch of Apex Legends switched to high quality textures. You can’t fault the gameplay at all — the statistics of rare and very rare events do not fall below 50 frames / s, the control is completely predictable and responsive.

If you suddenly missed Strange Brigade and now don’t know what to play, then you can play it with the ultra preset. The high comfort of the gameplay is indicated by the statistics of very rare events in the region of 60 FPS. Other comments are superfluous.

In Far Cry New Dawn , you can not only set the maximum preset, but also select HD textures. Video memory is definitely not enough, because another 10 GB is taken from the RAM. But we also did not notice critical drawdowns. Video is smooth and responsive. Light stators appear only with a quick change of location. Everything else is good.

The remake of Resident Evil 3 will be released in April, but for now you can go through the second part again. The presets did not help — the middle one is too heavy, and the recommended one thinks that we have a 2-gigabyte video card. Manually picked up the settings so that the picture was pleasant, and there were no friezes. The average speed rose above 70 fps.

Testing the GeForce GTX 970 using Gainward

as an example

Sunday, 28 February 2016

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Video cards

Author

Alexander

We continue to compensate for the lack of reviews of some current video cards on our website. GeForce GTX 970 was periodically present in various tests for individual games. It’s time for a summary review. We will describe the general features of the GeForce GTX 970 and consider a specific model made by Gainward. Tests will be carried out at the recommended frequencies, with factory overclocking and at the maximum frequencies that we managed to achieve on this card. GeForce GTX 9 Performance70 we will compare with some flagship solutions and rivals from AMD.

The GeForce GTX 970 is a junior solution based on the GM204 graphics processor of the second generation Maxwell architecture, being essentially a stripped down version of the GeForce GTX 980. An unpleasant story is connected with this card, when changes were made to the official specifications after the release of the product. At the same time, the product itself did not change in any way, just initially NVIDIA did not disclose all its technical features.

In the full version, GM204 operates with 2048 CUDA-cores and 128 texture units, which are organized into two clusters of 8 SMM units each. The GeForce GTX 970 has 3 out of 16 SMMs disabled, resulting in 1664 active CUDA cores and 104 texture units. The 256-bit memory bus remained unchanged. But, as it turned out later, the GeForce GTX 970 is also slightly simplified in terms of ROP — there are 56 of them instead of 64. Along the way, the L2 cache blocks associated with them are cut off, and instead of 2 MB, the younger card has 1792 KB. One of the eight 64-bit memory controllers has lost its allocated cache area. It works with the last memory segment. As a result, out of 4 GB of the video buffer in the GeForce GTX 970, 3.5 GB work at maximum bandwidth, and the last 512 MB act as an additional segment, and the speed of working with it is much lower. To simplify, we can talk about 3.5 GB of effective memory and 0.5 GB of auxiliary memory, which is not always used.

The general organization of such a structure is shown in the block diagram. For clarity, we can give a more familiar block diagram of the GM204 core, which you could see in various reviews. On it, we removed deactivated blocks.

Together with some simplifications, the GeForce GTX 970 managed to achieve high energy efficiency and a TDP of 145 watts. The Boost frequency of the core is declared at an average level of 1178 MHz with a base value of 1051 MHz. The effective frequency of the memory chips is 7 GHz. Relative to the GeForce GTX 980, the younger card is 23% weaker in terms of main computing units, and the difference is 14% in ROP. A little lower and the frequency of the GPU. For better clarity, let’s compare the characteristics of these two video cards in one table.

Now let’s take a look at a specific Gainward GeForce GTX 970 Phoenix model.

The video card is supplied in a large box. Complete with power adapter, DVI/D-Sub adapter and software CD.

Gainward GeForce GTX 970 Phoenix is ​​a massive device with a cooling system that takes up more than two slots. The cooler uses two fans. The plastic case is covered with decorative elements of red and silver colors.

The card has two power connectors that are closer to the center. At the same time, the board itself is full-sized. Gainward is protected by a warranty seal on one of the screws. For this reason, we were not able to disassemble the Phoenix and examine the board in detail.

There are four interface connectors for image output: HDMI, two DisplayPort, DVI.

You can evaluate the design of the cooler indiscriminately. The plastic housing is removed separately. Under it is visible a large radiator with three copper heat pipes.

The heatsink has a «window» for power connectors. In the area of ​​​​the power node there is a finned radiator on transistors.

Airflow is provided by two Apistek fans with a diameter of 92 mm. They are screwed to a plastic removable case.

Gainward GeForce GTX 970 Phoenix core frequencies are above the recommended level. Base value 1152 MHz with Boost Clock 1304 MHz. The memory frequencies remained at the standard level of 7012 MHz.

Boost frequency is determined by power and temperature limits. If they are not exceeded, the frequencies are higher than the declared Boost Clock level. As it heats up or exceeds power limits, the frequency may decrease to lower values. Our test unit peaked at 1367 MHz Boost. The reductions relative to the maximum are small, in some applications only by 12-25 MHz, in some games more. For example, during the passage of the Metro Last Light benchmark, the core frequency sometimes dropped to almost 1300 MHz, but not lower than the declared Boost Clock.

The noise level is very moderate. The temperature was kept within 75 °C.

Overclocking was done through the MSU Afterburner utility. The base frequency was increased to 1277 MHz, which allowed us to achieve Boost up to 1505 MHz after a slight increase in voltage. The memory was overclocked to 8100 MHz.

To maintain stability, we had to increase the speed of the fans, which is already fraught with the appearance of a certain hum. If the issue of noise is extremely critical, then without increasing the voltage with less overclocking, the video card will be able to work at the same noise level as in the nominal.

We are also interested in the performance of the simplest version of the GeForce GTX 970. Based on other reviews, we can conclude that the Boost frequency largely depends on cooling and operating conditions, even if the technical characteristics of different video cards are the same. As a result, we chose such a base frequency so that the peak value does not exceed 1230 MHz. At the same time, the power limit was lowered, which reduced the Boost core to 1177 MHz in the most difficult moments. In simpler games, the resulting Boost value was closer to the maximum.

With these settings, the Gainward video card will replace the reference version in our comparison.

Characteristics of test participants

An old flagship represented by the GeForce GTX 780 Ti has been added to testing. This video adapter is equipped with less memory, but boasts a 384-bit bus. It is interesting to compare its capabilities with the GeForce GTX 970 in modern games. Earlier, we compared the flagship cards of two generations from NVIDIA and AMD in a separate review, but the junior model based on GM204 was not included in it. For clarity, the results of GeForce GTX 9 are added80 Ti. This is the most powerful serial card. Its default level is higher. But I wonder what the gap will be with the extremely overclocked GeForce GTX 970.

AMD’s competitors include top solutions based on the Grenada (Hawaii) processor — Radeon R9 390X and Radeon R9 290X, plus Radeon R9 Fury.

Only the Gainward GeForce GTX 970 graphics accelerator was tested during overclocking, all other participants were tested at the recommended frequencies.

Technical characteristics of all participants are shown in the table. The frequencies are official data for Boost. Performance charts show GeForce base and peak frequencies.

Test bench

• Processor: Intel Core i7-3930K @4.4GHz
• motherboard: ASUS Rampage IV Formula
• Memory: Kingston KHX2133C11D3K4/16GX, 1866MHz, 4x4GB
• hard drive: Hitachi HDS721010CLA332, 1 TB
• power supply: Seasonic SS-750KM
• operating system: Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64
• GeForce driver: NVIDIA GeForce 359.06
• Radeon Driver: AMD Radeon Crimson Edition 15.