Hardware & Technical GTX970 to 1080ti comparison

[mossfoot]

I've since been able to tweak the GPU and MEM Clock Offset to 75 MHz. (BTW, what is the difference and is there one I should be prioritizing in bumping up or one over another?)

Not sure I want to bother going past that, since I doubt it'll get much more and I'm not interested in squeezing every last drop out of the system, want a bit of a margin for safety.

How long is an extended test? I'm running the Unigine Superpositional Benchmark test on VR Optimal settings.

Well, seems like the fan was a bust if I can't do any tweaking to the CPU (which is doubly unfortunate since it actually doesn't fit in my case and I have an exposed side now... need to cut a hole in the side panel for it ). But at least I can carry the fan over to my next computer (I might even consider building one).

 

[Riverside]

I've since been able to tweak the GPU and MEM Clock Offset to 75 MHz. (BTW, what is the difference and is there one I should be prioritizing in bumping up or one over another?)

Not sure I want to bother going past that, since I doubt it'll get much more and I'm not interested in squeezing every last drop out of the system, want a bit of a margin for safety.

How long is an extended test? I'm running the Unigine Superpositional Benchmark test on VR Optimal settings.

Well, seems like the fan was a bust if I can't do any tweaking to the CPU (which is doubly unfortunate since it actually doesn't fit in my case and I have an exposed side now... need to cut a hole in the side panel for it ). But at least I can carry the fan over to my next computer (I might even consider building one).

Extended test is waiting for the temps to settle down (ie not still rising or falling). 20mins or so is usually enough for me.

Google the Coolermaster TX3 EVO - My media PC has one. It's like a slightly smaller version of the Hyper 212EVO & fits in an old Dell tower that's barely wider than a CD drive bay. About the same price too, around £25. Most modern cases are much wider, presumably to fit these massive heatsinks in.

The Heatsink is a supporting mod - it will let your PC run cooler & more importantly quieter. I have one (not currently in use) called a coolermaster V8 that's just enormous, even taller than the 212 but it's an older design & only has the same 180w TDP (heat dissipation capacity). Bigger isn't always better

 

[mossfoot]

Extended test is waiting for the temps to settle down (ie not still rising or falling). 20mins or so is usually enough for me.

Google the Coolermaster TX3 EVO - My media PC has one. It's like a slightly smaller version of the Hyper 212EVO & fits in an old Dell tower that's barely wider than a CD drive bay. About the same price too, around £25. Most modern cases are much wider, presumably to fit these massive heatsinks in.

The Heatsink is a supporting mod - it will let your PC run cooler & more importantly quieter. I have one (not currently in use) called a coolermaster V8 that's just enormous, even taller than the 212 but it's an older design & only has the same 180w TDP (heat dissipation capacity). Bigger isn't always better

Given the amount of effort it took to get the damn fan installed, I'd rather just modify the side plate than put in a new one (I'd be pressing my luck anyway - The way I tinker with computers probably looks like a caveman with a club to pros

And the worst part is, after all that, I don't notice a lick of difference in FPS in the game itself. I tried it with the default settings and the amped up profile I described earlier.

 

[Riverside]

Given the amount of effort it took to get the damn fan installed, I'd rather just modify the side plate than put in a new one (I'd be pressing my luck anyway - The way I tinker with computers probably looks like a caveman with a club to pros

And the worst part is, after all that, I don't notice a lick of difference in FPS in the game itself. I tried it with the default settings and the amped up profile I described earlier.

The 3D clock speed on the 970 is something like 1300Mhz, you were already overclocked +50 and you just added another 25.

25 over 1350 is a 1.8% change. It's not going to be significant but it might be the difference between a choppy 58fps & a stable 60. If you were already at 60fps (assuming a 60Hz monitor) you aren't really going to notice unless it crosses a threshold.



I've just been following a bit of a diagnostic path, trying to find a cause or cure for my CTD problems described in this thread. I installed EDH on my son's PC (logged in as me in-game) & plugged in my old Hotas-X to do a couple of cargo runs.

I set all the graphics settings the same as on my PC, including running at 144Hz (which the 970 can do in space no problem at 1080p). Played for half an hour or so, no crashes, just as it used to be when the 970 was in my PC.

I'm going to swap the cards around, put my 1080ti in my son's PC & see if it crashes.

 

[mossfoot]

The 3D clock speed on the 970 is something like 1300Mhz, you were already overclocked +50 and you just added another 25.

25 over 1350 is a 1.8% change. It's not going to be significant but it might be the difference between a choppy 58fps & a stable 60. If you were already at 60fps (assuming a 60Hz monitor) you aren't really going to notice unless it crosses a threshold.



I've just been following a bit of a diagnostic path, trying to find a cause or cure for my CTD problems described in this thread. I installed EDH on my son's PC (logged in as me in-game) & plugged in my old Hotas-X to do a couple of cargo runs.

I set all the graphics settings the same as on my PC, including running at 144Hz (which the 970 can do in space no problem at 1080p). Played for half an hour or so, no crashes, just as it used to be when the 970 was in my PC.

I'm going to swap the cards around, put my 1080ti in my son's PC & see if it crashes.

Well in my case I'm playing in VR, and the issue is trying to cross a threshold where I'm no longer locked at 45FPS (or so the FPS tracker tells me I'm running).

What's more important to amp up? GPU Clock Offset or MEM Clock Offset? Does one or the other have more of an impact on the frame rate?

 

[Riverside]

Well in my case I'm playing in VR, and the issue is trying to cross a threshold where I'm no longer locked at 45FPS (or so the FPS tracker tells me I'm running).

What's more important to amp up? GPU Clock Offset or MEM Clock Offset? Does one or the other have more of an impact on the frame rate?

Clock speed, you can push it further and more sums beats more paper to do sums on (until you run out of paper).

 

[CMDR PRJeff]

Lot's of great info here and thanks for the thread...I have some idle GPUs after upgrade and while I am in the US, if anyone might be interested in either a non-overclocked 970 or 1070, we should talk...

 

[Morbad]

Most motherboards don't allow bus speed overclocking, and even if yours does (in the bios or maybe via a windows utility) the RAM sticks need to be able to run at the higher speed for stability. So know your hardware.

The issue with Intel platforms after the first gen i-7s is that there is no way to decouple the CPU's I/O (DMI and PCI-E) from the base clock. This means there is about 2-3MHz of room before some components start to get unstable...especially things like drives.

Memory usually has some wiggle room and even if it didn't memory multipliers could be used to keep it in spec, but withotu a PCI-E lock/divider, significantly increasing the base clock simply isn't viable for most setups.

In the game I can max out the graphics settings with no problems but if I raise the FPS cap above 60Hz (in-game menu) when I enter a station instance it will almost certainly CTD or hang with Direct3D failing to lock a buffer - on one occasion it actually caused the PC to reset. But at 60fps it's fine for hours

Googling the failing to lock a buffer thing all the top results are discussing Elite Dangerous even going back to 2015. I tried all the suggestions found including re-seating the card, checking power line voltages, re-installing the drivers, nothing has helped yet. I noticed some audio crackling (on-board 5.1 sound) in the second or two after entering a station instance before locking up which might be indicative of something, but I don't know what.

I don't know what buffer can't be locked, I suppose it could be sound or even USB related.

D3D can only be video related. Locking a resource is what needs to be done to grant the CPU access to it. The error seems to indicate that something has timed out or been tied up when the CPU is preparing frames to be sent to the GPU. Audio crackling could also be indicative of CPU or memory that cannot keep up.

Have you stability tested everything?

I still don't know how (or how much) to tweak the CPU if I can.

The best you can likely hope for on your locked i5 is to run all cores at their maximum turbo multiplier all the time, if the board supports it.

The maximum all core multiplier the i5-3450 can take manually is 35x, which would be a 300MHz overclock past what it could do at stock turbo. It's not much, but it's something.

 

[Riverside]

Thanks for your reply morbad, it's helpful to have a sanity check on my ramblings

I've been going through the two PCs (mine & my son's) checking what's the same & what's different. One of the differences is the GPU tweaking tools of course, mine is using the evga one, his has the Asus one installed.

The evga one has a K mode, it runs the GPU at 3D speed constantly (the Asus one has a similar toggle). When I set this it tells me I need to close all 3D applications, and shows a list of apps including chrome and setpoint (Logitech mouse software, my son has a Microsoft mouse). So I've spent a few hours playing ED at 144Hz disabling various background tasks on this list, and I think it might be setpoint causing the buffer lock.

I haven't done a thorough test yet with everything but setpoint enabled, but fingers crossed I've made some progress...

 

[mossfoot]

The best you can likely hope for on your locked i5 is to run all cores at their maximum turbo multiplier all the time, if the board supports it.

The maximum all core multiplier the i5-3450 can take manually is 35x, which would be a 300MHz overclock past what it could do at stock turbo. It's not much, but it's something.

I'll take what I can get, but how to I get to that point? I haven't been able to find these multipliers.

 

[mossfoot]

Clock speed, you can push it further and more sums beats more paper to do sums on (until you run out of paper).

But they both say Clock Speed (GPU Clock Speed and MEM Clock Speed)!

Does it matter if the two are set differently? Can I not change one in favor of the other, and should one be favored over the other for something like Elite in VR?

 

[Riverside]

But they both say Clock Speed (GPU Clock Speed and MEM Clock Speed)!

Does it matter if the two are set differently? Can I not change one in favor of the other, and should one be favored over the other for something like Elite in VR?

Sorry GPU speed. You can change them independently, but if you only muck about with one do the GPU I guess.

Any CPU multiplier settings will be in the bios/uefi, probably under a section called advanced CPU settings or similar. If you can figure out the make & model of the mobo we might be able to give you something more concrete. You probably don't have the settings, they are usually only on higher end boards (I'm guessing if you had a juicy mobo you'd have told us ).

 

[Riverside]

I haven't done a thorough test yet with everything but setpoint enabled, but fingers crossed I've made some progress...

Nooooo I've been playing for an hour & it just crashed again, this time about a minute after I entered my destination system. Setpoint isn't even installed any more.

Hardware swap next.

 

[mossfoot]

Sorry GPU speed. You can change them independently, but if you only muck about with one do the GPU I guess.

Any CPU multiplier settings will be in the bios/uefi, probably under a section called advanced CPU settings or similar. If you can figure out the make & model of the mobo we might be able to give you something more concrete. You probably don't have the settings, they are usually only on higher end boards (I'm guessing if you had a juicy mobo you'd have told us ).

It's an ASUS motherboard, BIOS looks like this:

I got that image online. I assume it is the same as mine, as it looks identical (some are similar but with different fan images). Dunno if PrntScr for image capture works while in BIOS, I just assumed it doesn't.

And yeah, nothing juicy board wise, but given what I've gotten out of this machine over the years and the fact it handles ED as well as it does (even in VR) I'd say I got a hell of a bargain

 

[Riverside]

It's an ASUS motherboard, BIOS looks like this:



I got that image online. I assume it is the same as mine, as it looks identical (some are similar but with different fan images). Dunno if PrntScr for image capture works while in BIOS, I just assumed it doesn't.

And yeah, nothing juicy board wise, but given what I've gotten out of this machine over the years and the fact it handles ED as well as it does (even in VR) I'd say I got a hell of a bargain

My son's PC has the same UEFI

See at the top where it says E35I-I just to the right of the clock in the top left corner? Have a look at your own PC & it should tell you what your motherboard is. His is a P8H61, it's a fairly basic board but it does have some overclocking support in advanced mode.

 

[mossfoot]

My son's PC has the same UEFI

See at the top where it says E35I-I just to the right of the clock in the top left corner? Have a look at your own PC & it should tell you what your motherboard is. His is a P8H61, it's a fairly basic board but it does have some overclocking support in advanced mode.

It says:

CM6330_CM6630_CM6730_CM6830
BIOS Version : 3803
CPU Type : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3450 CPU @ 3.10GHz
Total Memory : 16384 MB (DDR3 1333MHz)


I assume this is the section I need to tweak?

 

[Riverside]

It says:

CM6330_CM6630_CM6730_CM6830
BIOS Version : 3803
CPU Type : Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3450 CPU @ 3.10GHz
Total Memory : 16384 MB (DDR3 1333MHz)

First a side note: you have 1333 memory, I just had a look at my son's PC & it actually has 1600Mhz memory - we were both wrong . It isn't relevant though, and it's just the speed your RAM is running at, it may be capable of more (look for "ASUS SPD Information" in the tool section of the advanced UEFI to interrogate each of the two sticks).


Your motherboard is not a retail ASUS one (as my son's is), it's (probably) a motherboard from an actual Asus branded retail PC - presumably a micro-atx tower. My media PC is similar, although it's a Dell it's a custom board. The four variants listed (CM6330_CM6630_CM6730_CM6830) are different specs of PC, each sharing the same motherboard design.

One important aspect is the same as my son's mobo - the chipset. In your case H61, which is the basic worker bee version supporting 16Gb RAM max (1033/1333 as I thought). My son's mobo has an additional custom chipset that allows for custom RAM speeds (it's set at 1648 with a 103 bus speed), yours might have this too but I'd guess stuff like overclocking utilities & custom chipsets probably weren't put into basic retail PCs, my Dell has none of these options.

Here's a user manual for your motherboard:

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/Desktop/CM6330/E7956_CM6330_CM6730_CM6830.pdf?_ga=2.62771308.119480429.1534705276-1235099123.1525998782

Looks like you can do some power saving stuff but not overclocking.

ETA have a look for an i7 3770 on ebay. I have one (duh) that I'd happily sell to you if I could find a 3770K (that my son's PC can benefit from, but yours cannot) to replace it with. The only other socket 1155 CPU I have left is a Pentium G2020 which is like a quarter of his i7

ETA2 Just had a quick look on ebay & 3770Ks go for £150-£300 still, there is a non-K for £80.

ETA3 just seen your pic, yes you are in the right area but as I suspected you lack the options my son's PC has

 

[mossfoot]

Thanks for the offer, but when the time comes I'm going whole hog for a new system This is just an exercise in delaying the inevitable

 

[Morbad]

I assume this is the section I need to tweak?

What's the highest ratio it lets you type in for "CPU Ratio"? Try 31 and go up from there.

 

[mossfoot]

What's the highest ratio it lets you type in for "CPU Ratio"? Try 31 and go up from there.

Yeah, it's set on Auto, but I tried changing the value. 31 is the highest I could put it to I guess there's no setting where I can prevent that cap/block? Should I leave it on 31 or Auto (or does it matter?)

I checked the ASUS SPD Information section, but it only provided information, no options to change anything