Win 10 and Overclocking my 7970M's offers amazing results

With Win7 or Win8, I have never been able to get 1000mhz/1350mhz stable on my 7970M's. With Win 10 it worked like a charm. Temperatures were fantastic. Checkout my results.

 

Can you run a 3dmark11 bench?

 

Yeah, I'd like to see that 3DMark 11 benchmark, too. I am more interested in how bad Windows OS X is going to screw up the CPU/physics performance. Earlier Preview builds I tried were very disappointing... worse performance downgrade than Windows 8/8.1 were.

 

Here is my 3DMark11 Benchmark. Was able to run 1000/1420.

 

I've managed to pull about the same score using catalyst 15.5 beta, 975/1400 and 4.2Ghz x4 on the 3920XM no extra flex in Windows 7. Granted I could never hit 1000 Vcore on the 7970M in windows 7, but whats the point if we get relatively the same score, with my end having lower clocks on Windows 7. I will post benchmarks as soon/if I get my M18x back from Dell Depot....

EDIT
Found my old benchmark scores on 3dmark site. I was mistaken, it was actually 950/1300 on the 7970M and 4.2Ghz x 4 on the 3920XM which resulted in an even higher score than yours. 16GB samsung 1600 ram overclocked to 1866
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9970683

And my other score when running 1ghz on the 7970M with overvolt to 1.1V vs 1.050V. Wasn't worth it for me so I turned the voltages back down:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9795282

 

Thanks for posting your scores, though the point of the thread is that I can get a higher more stable overclock in Win10 when I couldn't in Win7 or 8. If you look at your score, my GPU actually scores higher than yours by a few points. Maybe what we can say from this, after a certain point it is pointless to overclock the 7970's

 

Ghz for Ghz, my rig does perform better than yours with mine on Windows 7. Yours outperforms my 950Mhz/1400Mhz score. My 1Ghz score shows about 20 more points on the graphics score than yours and 200 points more on the CPU score. However it is a shame that Windows 8 and Windows 10 tax the CPU so hard that the physics score suffers so poorly, where your 4.6Ghz 3940XM performs worse than my 4.2Ghz 3920XM. The 7970M does have an unfortunate overclocking roof as well, it really levels off around 1Ghz.

We must be some of the last people on the M18x board using CF 7970Ms

 

One thing I need to look at is if my CPU is throttling when running 4.4GHz with no Flex added.

 

You can run XTU in the background and add throttling monitor on the time graph to see if it throttles at any point. Typically it would lead to instability/crash before it would lead to throttling. Check to make sure your power consumption is above 55W in XTU. I set mine to 100W on both sliders.

 

If you increase power (amps/watts) and instability starts, not having enough flex voltage will manifest in 0x124 STOP errors (aka "whea uncorrectable error" in Windows 8 and newer). Having power set too low will often let you get away with not having enough voltage, but performance will be lackluster and there will be throttling under load due to lack of power. You can set the power as high as you want without issues because it is not a static supply. It's more of a limit or ceiling on what the CPU is allowed to use, so crank up the power beyond what you think is needed and then dial in the voltage to maintain stability. Running zero flex VID at 4.4GHz raises questions in my mind as to whether the CPU is optimally tuned for extreme performance. Even an extraordinarily good binned XM, K or X CPU typically needs more than zero flex VID to run right at 4.3GHz and higher.

 

I've managed to pull 4.3 x4 on 0 flex, but my chip really doesn't respond well to voltage increases (...much like my 7970M). I don' t know if its the PSU tripping or the GPU drawing too much power.

 

May I ask what power settings you use in the Bios to maintain a table overcook?

 

I set Pri Plane at 1080, which is generally good for up to about 45x4 without any downclocking due to power depletion. I disable c-states, disable AES, disable MSR lock on the same screen as Pri Plane. (You can ignore Secondary Plane, as that is only for Intel HD Graphics power limits. I leave it set to zero.) On the main overclocking menu, I set long and short duration power limits both at the maximum of 99, and the long duration time window at the default of 28. I also max out the TC1, TC2 and TSP settings (16, 16, 32), disable all sensors and max out the thermal and shutdown trigger values on the same screen, and disable watchdog timers. I also disable DPTF and virtualization in the BIOS. Then I use XTU to bump the long and short duration power limits to 150 each and set base clock to 100.3. For 46x4 up to 49x4, you need about 1200 Pri Plane.

Voltage needs can vary widely by individual chip as well as thermal conditions. All things being equal (which is often not the case) higher core temps require more voltage.

 

For 4.3 I needed at least 10 flex but 15 gave me some overhead and better results. I had a average chip.

These 980m issues in the R2 honestly break my heart. I hope you guys get there soon.

 

I use 20 flex for 4.3GHz for the same reasons. 10 works fine for some things, but not everything. Temps are great with Liquid Ultra, so leaving it on 20 is no issue at all.

 

If you guys could give a break down of what flex for what multiplier you are using, that would be great.
I know I have 42 x 4 0 flex, 43 x 4 0-10 flex, 44 x 4 25 flex, 45 x 4 45 flex, and it is just more and more voltage from thereon. I don't think I've ever reached above 4.5ghz stable, but maybe thats because i'm using BIOS to set the flex and its capped at what? 60 flex? or was it 50? I don't have my M18x on hand yet to check.

 

Off memory - here's what worked for me. It should go without saying every chip is different .

42, 0 flex
43, 10 - 15 flex
45, 40 - 50 flex

You can go above 50 flex in the other CPU overclocking tab (not the main one) so long as your bios is unlocked, otherwise XTU can do it.
It shouldn't matter if you use your bios or XTU to set flex .

 

Hey ! thank for the post!

I recently upgraded to Win 10 and I am no longer able to overclock my 7970M with MSI AB. How were you able to??

Thank,

Ps: Sorry for the NEWB question.

 

Try uninstalling then reinstall the software. Sorry but I have moved on to a Desktop after selling my M18x.

 

Beautiful rig.