Does ED and/or the DK2 hate overclocking ?

gapper4 · Mar 29, 2016

Hi guys,

I have an Asus Matrix Platinum GTX 980ti GPU which is already pretty fast out of the box. Using Afterburner I've OCed it slightly (need that to run SS 1.5 and maxing out settings with 1.3) and it's very stable in the Heaven benchmark (had it running for over an hour) and have had no problems running those settings in other games. However, it will occasionally crash with the DK2 in ED, and I can't figure out why. Does anyone else have similar experiences, or know of a reason why it would be so ?

Beavis Tingleball · Mar 29, 2016

I've noticed the same whenever i OC..stability everywhere else but ED..it's not just you.

shadragon · Mar 29, 2016

Is that card running native clock speeds or is it OC'd already in the factory? If so, the OC limit will be a lot lower. That said, a 980Ti should not need OC'ing to make it work with VR.

Actual game play and bench-marking will stress the card differently. If you are seeing instability, dial back the OC to a lower level and redo. OC'ing is an iterative process and you are always tweaking.

nepo · Mar 29, 2016

shadragon said:
Is that card running native clock speeds or is it OC'd already in the factory? If so, the OC limit will be a lot lower. That said, a 980Ti should not need OC'ing to make it work with VR.

Actual game play and bench-marking will stress the card differently. If you are seeing instability, dial back the OC to a lower level and redo. OC'ing is an iterative process and you are always tweaking.

same here, exactly like OP (also same specs)

buts not a matter of OC, tried it completly resetted, but same!

my suspicion is going in the direction of single powersurges
(have 550W/be quiet!, so in my case its possible, but dont know for sure,
normaly its quite enough power)

edit: there is something else, dont know its related,
only! in chrome i get sometimes black sreens and black blocpatterns, absolutely weird!

HeavyGroovez · Mar 29, 2016

Its not just you.

I can get my 970 overclocked to nearly 1500Mhz on the core base clock and 2000Mhz on the memory base clock and its stable in every benchmark and game except Elite

gapper4 · Mar 29, 2016

My PSU is a brand new Corsair 1000W so it really shouldn't be a problem. Like I said, the OC I tried with ED in the DK2 works fine everywhere else. It's just in ED that it crashes. Was wondering if I was the only but it seems to be an issue with the game itself since others are having similar experiences.

For the record, the card runs everything maxed out at SS 1.0 smooth like butter, but I find SS 1.0 unbearably ugly, full of jagged lines. I need at least 1.5 SS for the game to be acceptable visually. Before these updates, I was running 4K DSR + 1.5 SS with the 0.5 runtime with a minimal OC, and everything was perfect. Not sure if I'd call 1.3 an upgrade at all.

In any case, that wasn't the point of my question. I'm glad (in a "misery-loves-companry" kind of way) that others also see crashes in ED with OCed cards.

Spam · Mar 29, 2016

Isn't real world performance better than any synthetic stress test?

gapper4 · Mar 29, 2016

Spam said:
Isn't real world performance better than any synthetic stress test?

Of course it is but....what are you asking exactly ? My point was that the only real world performance where my OC was unstable was on ED, and I was wondering if it was just me or if there's a wider issue with the code.

catanonia · Mar 29, 2016

Gave up over clocking my GTX980. Even a slight over clock causes Ed to randomly crash. I am running a Corsair 1200w PSU and I have easily a spare 600w.

Gedemon · Mar 29, 2016

gapper4 said:
Of course it is but....what are you asking exactly ? My point was that the only real world performance where my OC was unstable was on ED, and I was wondering if it was just me or if there's a wider issue with the code.

Yep, it is known, it's never the OC that is unstable, it's the code...

Number one rules of OC : when it works in all apps except a new one, then congratulation, you've just found your new tool to test the OC stability.

gapper4 · Mar 29, 2016

Gedemon said:
Yep, it is known, it's never the OC that is unstable, it's the code...

Number one rules of OC : when it works in all apps except a new one, then congratulation, you've just found your new tool to test the OC stability.

Admittedly, I'm no computer engineer but it seems to me that ED cannot be more demanding that a full-on graphics benchmark test designed to push a GPU to its limits.

HeavyGroovez · Mar 29, 2016

Gedemon said:
Yep, it is known, it's never the OC that is unstable, it's the code...

Number one rules of OC : when it works in all apps except a new one, then congratulation, you've just found your new tool to test the OC stability.

No, you have just found a lemon.

Why would i restrict the overclock on 99% of my game library because 1 title crashes ?

It takes no time at all to switch profiles in afterburner.

Captain Sharky · Mar 29, 2016

Same thing with MSI Lightning 980ti. Factory overclocking doesn't cause problems in ED, however even tiny bit extra by afterburner - crash every 10 minutes. Alien Isolation worked fine with same settings.

Spam · Mar 29, 2016

gapper4 said:
Of course it is but....what are you asking exactly ? My point was that the only real world performance where my OC was unstable was on ED, and I was wondering if it was just me or if there's a wider issue with the code.

I wasn't really asking anything but that statement I made without a question mark makes me sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Surly_Badger · Mar 29, 2016

I have to downclock my MSI 980, or ED crashes the damn thing constantly.

And it's a classic finger-pointing scenario: everyone says its someone else's problem so I've got a $500 card that performs like a $300 card or a game that I can't really play.

jbebad · Mar 29, 2016

Surly_Badger said:
I have to downclock my MSI 980, or ED crashes the damn thing constantly.

And it's a classic finger-pointing scenario: everyone says its someone else's problem so I've got a $500 card that performs like a $300 card or a game that I can't really play.

The issue is it crashes in low load, voltage drops too much.Try evga k boost to force voltage stops my crashing.

RAJA · Mar 29, 2016

gapper4 said:
Admittedly, I'm no computer engineer but it seems to me that ED cannot be more demanding that a full-on graphics benchmark test designed to push a GPU to its limits.

It depends on the pattern types and the current swings the architecture is sensitive to. Sometimes a stress test can pass for days, but a given application can trip up in seconds.

vic · Mar 29, 2016

I overclock my GTX970, never got a crash!
Maybe it's becuase I have the strix version with large heatsinks?

Xebec · Mar 29, 2016

RAJA said:
It depends on the pattern types and the current swings the architecture is sensitive to. Sometimes a stress test can pass for days, but a given application can trip up in seconds.

+1 for this comment. Elite is hitting the compute shaders very heavily, and i've seen the same thing where Heaven tolerated a higher OC than Elite.. (although usually Heaven is a great test). 980Ti's seem finnicky in general with their overclocks..

shadragon · Mar 29, 2016

Surly_Badger said:
I have to downclock my MSI 980, or ED crashes the damn thing constantly.

And it's a classic finger-pointing scenario: everyone says its someone else's problem so I've got a $500 card that performs like a $300 card or a game that I can't really play.

What is the rest of your system? Mobo, RAM, CPU?