NVIDIA 347.88 Game Ready Driver - 17/03 (re-enables overclocking!)

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/geforce-347-88-whql-driver-released

Download 64bit: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/download/driverResults.aspx/83148/en-uk

Download 32bit: http://www.nvidia.co.uk/download/driverResults.aspx/83130/en-uk

Overclocking re-enabled!!!

 

Lol beat me to it, it is indeed re-enabled.

 

I edited the title to reflect the overclocking being re-added.

 

Perks of being a mod

 

I thought about making it a sticky to be perfectly honest lol. I don't want it to get buried but we don't really have an issue with that in gaming so I had made it sticky and then unstuck it right after haha.

 

Good. Maybe now I could go harass them in their twitch chat more, since they were true to their word. I've been boycotting supporting them in that respect since the whole fiasco happened.

But I really like harassing their mods about giving me free 980Ms.

 

Yesssssssssssssssssssss woohouuuuuuuuuuuuu

 

It's good that overclocking is back, but I have a question.
Is it weird that my GPU, which should have the overclocked-blocked vBIOS, has full overclocking abilities with this driver (I used a .inf mod to make sure the driver installs)?
Another weird thing is that some programs think I have a GTX 960m (already knew I had a 960m, though).

 

Looks like this driver ignores the clockblock bit in the vBIOS, as hinted by @Prema earlier

 

Im going to test them when i come home...that means sunday....
But anyway im glad that nvidia keep her promise!
Any boost perfomance at games guys besides the oc ability?

 

Who's gaming right now? I just got done running a test of overclocking on the new drivers and now its time to order sushi

 

Lol you right...
At least looks study driver from your ocing?

 

I'm impressed with the results I got for sure. 1298 @ 1.062v is pretty impressive indeed, even if its only stable for benching. The big bummer is how hot my cards get. I'm hoping that can be resolved with a repaste whenever I stop being lazy.

I am irritated about the lack of DSR. I am guessing at this point Maxwell mobile will never see it.

 

Prety impresive mate...

 

how much of an improvement in bf4 would that speed be in 4k gaming vs the stock?

 

I honestly couldn't tell you because I don't have BF4 but stock boost clock is 1127MHz on 980M so if the game scales well with core clock, it would be a pretty decent bump. The problem is that I doubt that core is going to be stable in gaming for an extended period of time. 4K still isn't really all that viable on modern hardware as even 1440p takes a rather large performance hit...

 

Is it still +135MHz max or is it more?

 

HTWingnut did a video with bf4 at 4k ranging between 33-52 fps during some scenes with stock clocks. Just wondering how much of a bump OCing would be. I'm fine with an average of 40-45 fps if it means playing in 4k.

 

Here it is on Ultra Preset:


Imagine if you adjust settings a bit. Ultra on MP doesn't make much sense, because you lose the advantage with all the effects.

 

Yeah, but isn't that video with stock speeds? It's still very playable, but I'm asking how many extra fps would an extreme overclock with those same in game settings?

I'm phaseskater on youtube btw when I asked for the request, so thanks again for that.

 

You need a steady framerate for those types of games or the input lag is really bad though. If you lock it at 30FPS, it might be okay if you can tolerate half-refresh (or in my case quarter-refresh) but I personally can't do less than 60. Current generation console games drive me nuts because of the 30FPS lock that is seemingly becoming standard...

 

Same +135

 

It doesnt matter with unlock vbios you can go further....

 

isnt input lag really bad with vsync on though? and i mean 45 fps is playable. i used to destroy bf3 online with just an intel hd4000 in my old laptop. i was getting between 22-29 fps lol. i cant go back though

 

http://forum.techinferno.com/genera...t-overclocking-mobile-gpus-26.html#post127089

 

If you have a game that hits the CPU hard, watch your temps when using this release. I was playing Watch Dogs for a few hours and it was smoother than usual but I noticed that it was running my CPU between 85 and 90C most of the time. Well I ended my session and HWiNFO64 was the window under Watch Dogs... Core 1 maxed at 91C, cores 2 and 3 at 93C, and core 4 at 92C. CPU package was maxed at 95C! I'm either gonna have to drop my TDP down when I play that game, 70W is too high. Either way, there was a significant performance increase. Most of the stuttering was gone and input lag was basically non-existent. The game is actually playable now. GPUs were running in the high 70s most of the time with a few spikes to the low 80s for the master, slave maxed at 79C. Utilization was between 95 and 99% the whole time from what I saw with the game favoring the second GPU.

I played Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition for awhile as well and it was also smoother.

My room is between 21 and 23C so its not like its hot in here.

Oh and HWiNFO made a nice glitch... it says that my bus speed spiked to 176.2MHz pushing my CPU all the way to 7048.6MHz lmao.

Anyway, the best part is that nothing crashed. Sleeping Dogs still hates fullscreen (as in, every time you set it to fullscreen it falls back to a window) so I ran it in a window, I was hoping that would be fixed but I didn't even notice it after the first 10 minutes or so.

And before anyone asks, yes I was running max fans

 

REPASTE
NAO
As for your CPU, that's to be expected, but TDP won't fix that. In really hot games like BF4 etc (pre-patch) I'd be using 45W or maybe 50W max, and be hitting like 85 degrees at 3.9GHz. Unless you want to 47W limit your chip (below your default spec) you're never killing that heat at that clockspeed, unless you use CLU and/or use the P370EM heatsinks. But your GPUs get pretty toasty, so that's another issue. If your repaste shoves them right back down in heat, I'd suggest really considering that benefit. If you can get ~75W on the slave as a maximum, using the EM heatsink would make it closer to 83-86W as a maximum. You could always default your GPU's downclock temp threshold to 92c like kepler/normal maxwell, and your whole system should get a nice cooling spike.

BUT that's only if using the Gelid or ICD helps your GPUs a lot. But something really tells me that your cooling is somehow borked. You are *LITERALLY* the only user on this whole forum who manages to send your temps past 80 degrees at stock. In any circumstance.

Hell, people in the P650SG can't get 80 deg using FURMARK

 

They're not stock. Im using Prema's vbios that has power limits removed entirely. They didn't get that hot when I was running the stock vbios. I don't really have an explanation for the heat of my machine. The CPU and both GPU heatsinks were totally replaced when they upgraded me. As for the CPU I'll play with it tomorrow. I have a feeling that running it at 4GHz and not 4.1 or 4.2GHz is why the temps went so high. It will TDP throttle faster with the higher core which is likely why I didn't have the problem before. Repaste is inevitable but unless they did something really stupid with the paste job, I don't expect anything more than a 2 or 3 degree improvement. I most likely would benefit greatly from an undervolt but nVidia blocked undervolting. Either way they aren't 880Ms which is a big thing

 

It would be cool if someone could show
a) maximum (allowed) overlocked 960m vs stock 965m performance
b) maximum (allowed) overclocked 965m vs stock 970m performance

Though I doubt anyone has 3 machinesto test it out.

Besides, I'd like to declare "clockblocked" or "overclockblocked" as word of the year

 

I meant stock clocks, not stock vBIOS. If you overdraw power limit on a stock vBIOS but not on Prema's vBIOS, then that means the stock vBIOS is still power limited, and wouldn't hold stock clocks in gaming (not even counting boost here). But if you're using Prema's vBIOS at stock clocks, then that heat is inexplicable.

Also, again, you're probably not gonna TDP throttle at 70W in pure gaming scenarios. In a bench or a heavy stress, sure. But just with a game? It likely won't happen. Well, unless you're using a truckton more voltage than I was at 3.9.

I would laugh if you get a huge improvement XD

Also, how exactly is undervolting blocked? You should be able to undervolt in NVI with prema's vBIOS, no? I can do it on my 780Ms with svl7's vBIOS

 

It doesn't work for 980M.

 

Neither does it on my 650M SLI. I can only overvolt.

 

NVIDIA Inspector's voltage slider's scaling and zero point are also bugged and misaligned.

 

It's always been that way

 

Oh, OK. Not on sl7's 780M VBIOS though.

 

This seems like a great driver. Noticed some good performance bumps during gaming and I finally managed to hit a Firestrike score over 9000 on my 980M.

 

So if I understand correctly, this driver will allow ALL Maxwell cards in all notebooks to be overclocked now, even those that shipped with an overclock-blocking vBIOS!?

If so, then that's really great news and yet I also feel sad that Nvidia only did this once we presented them with enough pressure. If we kept quiet, they never would have brought back mobile overclocking. Of course they never did this out of the goodness of their hearts.

ManuelG, eat your heart out!

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." What a true quote, especially when applying to Nvidia.

 

Yes this is true

 

I play Watch Dogs.This driver has a problem with dropped frames in SLI . The frames drop from 65 to 25.

 

Weird, I didn't notice any of that. Maybe I've gotten used to Watch Dogs being a disaster of a game or maybe they optimized it a bit in the Bad Blood DLC? That's what I was playing. I did give nVidias GFE another shot though for configuration rather than just maxing everything like I usually do.

 

nvm its ocing fine.

 

I tryied new drivers and i noticed increase in dragonball game(10% increase but i dont need it cause i already run it 80-90fps with vsync constant 60fps) but in other games its more or less the same except i noticed a bit lower performance in dragon age inquisition and this driver is less stable for my overclock cause it crashed sometimes during benchmarking shadow of mordor(not responding exe) and thats why i rolled back to 347.52

 

Do Clean installs.. I think people getting instabilities is due to some corruption in their install.. DDU old drivers and then install this.. Driver has been very stable and good OCer for me..

 

Just tried installing the driver and my GPU clocks when under load seem to get stuck at 540Mhz and 1600Mhz Mem.

Any ideas peeps?

Or is there another modded INF somewhere I can use to try?

Thanks.

 

Get it from J95 on techinferno.. He has modded infs there.. Do u want me to Pm it to you or u have a account over there so that u can download them?

 

Microsoft released a 347.90 via windows update too.

 

inb4 it bricks laptops unless they use Windows 10

 

The last driver Windows 10 driver was a fail (349.65).. This one should be fine since it's in the 347 branch...

 

DDU and a fresh reinstall appears to have fixed the added overclocking instability I was experiencing after updating to 347.88, but I've found no added headroom for overclocking with this driver. +125 is the limit on stock voltage (1.0500) in Unigine Valley, same as before. I'm beginning to wonder whether my lower stock voltage is the cause of my lower stable headroom compared to folks with MXM 980M's and their higher stock voltage. Valley/Heaven are also far more unstable than even demanding games such as Crysis 3 and Metro Redux. It's annoying.