How to get RT GPU to Overclock?

[biochemical_animations]

@Vizioen

Ok, just tried to overclock the memory of my GTX 980 (non Ti) but MSI Afterburner wouldn’t let me to. I can overclock the GPU core. It resets the memory clock to defaults as soon as I apply the new memory clocks. I tried also with EVGA Precision. Some people on the internet say that they managed to OC the memory with. I was able to apply the new memory clocks without resetting to defaults but I found that in reality, as with MSI Afterburner, it too can’t OC the memory. I checked the memory clock in GPU-Z and it was still at factory default even when I’ve applied the OC in EVGA’s software. Is it possible that Nvidia have locked the memory OC abilities on my card? Anyone else having the same issue?

Yep, exactly what happened to me, but I got around it.

From what I learned 3ds max prompts the nvidia driver to put the gpu in the P2 state. The only state OCing the memory in MSI AB will work is P0.

If you open nvinspector, it will tell you the performance state (P-state). The driver puts the card in various states based on what application is running. P0, P2, P5, P8…google them to look up what they are, basically different power, lower clock, etc, if you are not stressing the card.

So, since max forces P2, the only way to get memory to OC is to create a new GPU bios from your existing one, and change the P2 state to whatever clock speed you want. To figure this out, I downloaded heaven and msi AB and nvinspector, I ran heaven and observed p2. I had to disable/enable my display driver in device manager for win7 64, then I ran heaven and I got p0, the overclocking p-state…msi then let me OC my memory.

I’m currently testing this, but my goal is to use the above method, find my stable memory OC using msi ab, then put it manually in my saved bios using Maxwell Bios Tweaker under the p2 power state, and flash my gpu bios using nvflash v5.287 with the tested/stable OC value. This should run the memory at the OC in max and vray rt gpu cuda mode at the p2 state.

Be careful about flashing your gpu bios, because you can brick it.

For me, since I have a 980 ti classified, it has a switch for 2 bios’, one is normal and one is LN2 (liquid nitrogen or water cooled I think)…I’m using my stock air cooler, I think its called acx 2.0, or something, but my temps stay at below 84 C.

So I mess with the LN2 bios, leaving the normal bios alone in case I mess up.

I save a copy of my LN2 bios for later in case I mess up and have to put it back to stock. I do this using GPU-Z. Then I open my saved stock bios file with MaxwellBiosTweaker and make one adjustment (that is all I know at this point). Simply setting the p2 memory clock state from 3305 to 3505. Save the modified bios file and open cmd prompt as admin, cd to the nvflash folder on my c drive, type this command

nvflash --index=0 -6 bios.rom

(--index=0 means my 1st card on my mb…I have 2 980 ti on my mb) If you have one card, I think only run this:

nvflash --index=0 -6 bios.rom

-6 is for overcoming some admin privilidges or something, and bios.rom is the file name of the bios you want to flask with.

press y when prompted (I think it’s only once)

I get a confirmation my bios was updated successfully (I ignore the errors about cert checks not being valid or something like that), reboot, and now my P2 memory runs at the modded value.

I hope this helps.

So far, I successfully flashed my ln2 gpu bios to get the p2 memory clock to 3505…I have not OC’d it beyond that yet…but so far that has worked.