680M bios mods and testing

So I'm not new to the overclocking scene but I haven't done it in three years, since my sigged NP8662 arrived. Now that my new P150EM showed up I'm eager to max it out and find some stable gaming clocks that I can run eternally.

Here's what I did back then:

Dump my vbios using GPU-Z and mod the 'EXTRA' clocks and voltages using NiBiTor.
Flash using a USB DOS stick with nvflash.
Test new clocks with a 15 minute Furmark run (1 minute warmup, 10 minute burn, 4 minute cooldown).
If I saw artifacts or got any crashes, I stopped it immediately and reduced the clocks/voltage.

Unfortunately, I just found out that NiBiTor doesn't play well with Kepler vbios files so I'm kind of stumped as to how I'd go about things this time. I've never used MSI Afterburner or EVGA Precision so I don't know which I ought to be trying if software overclocking is my only option.

Furthermore, I've read that Furmark isn't healthy for the GPU so I'm trying to find a good way to test new clocks and voltages for stability. Furmark had that convenient artifact tracker which meant I didn't actually have to give the process my full attention, and I'm not aware of other programs which have similar features.

Any advice would be appreciated!

 

I just wish Svet could update his VBIOS tuner to support Kepler. I know some people have mentioned it to him. Maybe ship him some $ to do it.
Its geniously easy to mod your own VBIOS with it.

Other than that, we have a few experienced skilled people in this forum that might help you mod the VBIOS

 

Get an unlocked bios from tech inferno and then have MSI afterburner apply your clocks on startup (but not actually start running permanently, click the set clocks at startup, but disable start with windows in options).

 

Afterburner it is, I guess. Can I modify voltages from Afterburner, or will that be something preset depending on the bios I choose to work from?

What sorts of tests did you run to check for the stability of your clocks? Is there some way to monitor for artifacts without requiring you to pore over your screen the entire time?

 

Heaven, crysis 2 bench, 3dmark mostly.

 

Thanks. So you basically looked for graphics driver crashes? Artifacts are pretty hard to spot unless they're huge. The tiny ones that showed up in Furmark for me a few years ago were quite difficult to spot.

As for finding a vbios, could describe the specifics of the one you used? I'm finding a fair few of them, and some have stock voltages while some are overvolted to different degrees. Some are OC'd but can only go 135 MHz higher, and others are OC'd but can go as high as you want (though obviously they'll crash at some point).

I just want something I can game on max settings with for a few hours at a time. Thankfully my gaming library doesn't include stuff like Metro 2033 or Crysis so I'll probably get what I want at stock settings (I stick to Skyrim, Supreme Commander, The Witcher 2, some Wii emulation, etc) but I'll likely need to get more out of the card in the future.

 

Well i'd suggest not to mess to much with programs who not support your bios, only use programs who support it coz u dont wanna brick your card , there are some great vbios around, no need to mess with your own.

You can juust overclock the card with the MSi tool, i suggest to only flash when u want to modify the voltages

 

Or if you want to OC higher using stock voltages since stock is limited to +135MHz GPU. I'm using Saltius stock voltage set at 900MHz and so far so good. BF3 running 63C peak.

 

Have you tried overvolting? I'm not looking to beat (or even meet) those 9k GPU score 3dmark11 runs, but it'd be nice to see 10-20% more fps for no extra cash.

I'm guessing that voltages won't be something I'll be able to change through afterburner, so I'm looking for an unlocked bios with a slight overvolt, so I can just adjust the clocks until I'm comfortable. Which bios would you recommend?

 

If you are only looking for 10-20% increase then the stock vbios oc with msi afterburner would be enough. You'll get 18.6% out of it.

But if you are looking for more than 18.6% then you are going to need custom modded vbios. However you don't need to increase the voltage before reaching 900MHz on core.

 

Wow, I just took another look at the overclock/overvolt results and I'm totally floored. Those are some ridiculous gains!

What's the stock voltage on the 680M? I hear Saltius' modded voltage is 1.037, which let people take the core up to 1035MHz.

I figure I won't actually need to increase the voltage for at least a year if not longer, but it's better to try and get ahold of some help with vbios stuff now when the card is fresh and everyone is working with it, rather than trying to do so a couple years down the line when everyone else is busy fiddling with the 880M or whatever.

 

Stock voltage for the GTX680M is 0.962v for 3D clock, 0.987v for warm up clock, but this is for Clevo and MSI's GTX680M. Not sure if the boost clock in the m17x R4 is 0.987v though.

 

With the help of Saltius to remove the silly 135MHz limit, I'm running stock voltage @ 900MHz without issue.

 

Cool! Is Saltius on this forum? I'd like to see if he'd be willing to make a custom bios for me since it looks like 1.037V caused some heat issues in your case.

What sort of heat reduction measures were you using when you measured your temperatures? Right now all I have is factory-applied IC Diamond and a Zalman NC2000 notebook cooler, and I don't know if that's enough. Did you use a cooler or modify your notebook in any way (drilling holes, removing the backplate, adding heatsinks, etc) when your temperature measurements were taken?