For some reason I now get stuttering in the Heaven Benchmark! MSI Afterburner shows eratic GPU usage which correlates to these dips. I've tried all sorts to no avail, need to get some geek heads together to sort this out!
i too have have some odd occurences from afterburner measuring split second temps jumps of well over 100C (159 is the highest seen). Then when checking the gpu-z log this also registered the errant temps, but all other variables logged were fine at the time. Then scrolling down I also found a reading of -5904A on VDDC Current with all other readings fine and then a VDDC Power reading of -5904W with 128.5A on Current. And the dodgy power reading were when it was at idle at stock clocks and volts! Might all be part of the initial issue with the early fermi's. Need to get Excel on my PC as trying to read the logs in notepad is a pain the rump!
Think I found a solution to this one! It looks like the Nvidia High Definition Audio was conflicting with my system. I disabled all four from within Device Manager and now my system has been able to run through Heaven Benchmark 3.0 twice without the major GPU usage spikes I observed before. I'm curious if this inadvertently limited my overclock stability? I'll do more testing to confirm and write this up to help others experiencing similar problems.
Do you think this could be down to new drivers? As in, did you install new drivers and then see this occurring? Why would this have occurred now and not before?
I'd seen it before and took it to be an error with afterburner. But will try bloggins solution when I get the chance and report back. Good work mr bloggins!
I went back to the most recent WHQL driver for 3DMark testing, so that may have triggered this fault.
Strange, because I've had a problem with BF3 stuttering recently, and I'm pretty sure its not Microstutter! Think I'm running out of vRAM actually, 1.5GB with Ultra textures appears to be too little as I get windows asking if it can disable the Aero theme!
It really was the Nvidia High Definition Audio that casued all my stability and GPU usage problems. I uninstalled the Nvidia drivers for HD Audio and also disabled them from Device Manager. All working really well now, I even thought that I had a 925mV stable stock clock but it crashed out after a staggering hour of Heaven Benchmark. On the upside the top temperature for the GTX 480 was only 36 degrees. Deltas on full blast mind you but still impressive! I'll be gunning for a 100% stable stock clock at 938mV next with a through suite of tests.
My 938mV undervolt at stock clocks has been tested for 2 straight hours with a rolling demo of Heaven Benchmark v3.0 with everything maxed out. This includes Tesselation on Extreme, Anisotropy 16x, Anti-Aliasing 8x at a full screen resolution of 2560 by 1440. The FPS drifted between 15 and 20 which I think is quite impressive to be honest. So do you think I'm good to flash the BIOS with a new minimum resting voltage of 938mV? Also could you run a Benchmark of Heaven v3.0 at the above settings Parge? I'd like to see results for single and SLI GTX 480 for comparison with my score when I get around to running the bench test opposed to a rolling demo! At the moment I'll be running some comparative power draw tests for stock Vs modified BIOS. Just for your interest (and to boast!) my GTX 480 hit a maximum of 39 degrees during the benchmark with Delta fans on minimum and Phobya Nano-2G on maximum.
Just did 2 hours of heaven at max settings 1920x1080 with 480@stock. with the gelid's fans at 100% max temp was 56 also before this i uninstalled the HD audio drivers and haven't seen any spikes.
GTX 480 Stock Vs Modified BIOS Power Draw Results The Gelid is one hell of a cooler! Just compiled my power draw results for Stock Vs Modified ASUS GTX 480 BIOS... The biggest difference for general use is the 5W saving when the GPU isn't stressed. With this modified BIOS at rest my GTX 480 is kept at 938mV which is something I couldn't replicate using MSI Afterburner. Through that utility even with a 938mV undervolt applied, when not under stress the GTX 480 automatically jumped to 963mV.
I'm doing this as precaution. BF3 seems buttery smooth now, I lowered textures to High from Ultra, and disabled Aero. Lovely.
Come on then Parge! Modified BIOS for 938mV and stock clocks, here's my Heaven Benchmark v3.0 with Nvidia 301.24 Drivers.
Parge, you're clearly cheating with SLI enabled! My score with Modified BIOS for 938mV and stock clocks, here's my Heaven Benchmark v3.0 with Nvidia 301.24 Drivers at a resolution of 1920 by 1080. Not much in it and I dare say a few more runs would yield results either side of this score. Mere fractions I tells ya!
