I keep hitting my speed limit way too soon.
I keep hitting my speed limit way too soon.
I own a GTX 1060 founders edition card. When I try to speed up (overclock) it, my power usage hits about 100% instead of the 116% that MSI afterburner tells me it can go up to. Is there a way to change this?
The power limit goes up or down based on what kind of load the graphics card gets. Different games and test programs use the GPU in different ways, so they push it more or less. You can see this every time you run tests like Furmark versus Unigine Heaven. When you run Furmark, it might slow down the graphics card's clock speed because it is too much for that hardware to handle quickly. On the other hand, when running Unigine Heaven, the GPU runs at its peak speed. This is similar to how some Intel CPUs can't go full speed when they try to do heavy math-heavy instructions like AVX. Here is a tip: You can use the sensor graphs in GPU-Z to see what's holding back your performance. Another tip: If you really want to squeeze every bit of power out of it, you will need to change and restart your graphics card's BIOS settings to go above the normal 115% mark. That is possible, but I don't recommend doing this unless you have a lot of experience or tools.
The power limit depends on what kind of load your GPU has. Different games and test suites make the GPU work harder or easier than others—I see this every day with my 2080Ti. It is most common when comparing Furmark to something like Unigine Heaven. In Furmark, the card slows down its clock speed because that game uses so much power from it, while in Unigine, the peak clocks are hit. This is similar to how some Intel CPUs can't go at full speed when running heavy AVX instructions. Tip: You can check your GPU's sensor graphs with GPU-Z to see what is holding you back. Tip 2: If you really want to push things way too hard, you have to change and re-flash your BIOS to go past the 115% limit. It is possible, but I don't recommend doing it without lots of research, and also be ready to replace the card if you burn it up by accident.