Quadro K3000M in Precision M6700 throttling

[rahl]

So I managed to grab one of those fine BIOSes that are supposed to unlock the potential of those Quadro cards. Flashed it, and lived to tell the tale.

 

This is Quadro K3000M (Dell version, used in Dell Precision M6700). The defaults of 650@1400Mhz got pushed to 850@1400 here, along with implementing that sweet OC unlock feature -- not bad, not bad at all.

But then, I wanted to squeeze more out the card. I've tried 1000@1750 and 1050@1400, and it did work, but the card defaulted to throttling to a lower P-state like every five seconds, or so.

 

The attached screenshot shows the GPU under some heavy load, at 1000@1400 clocks, throttling a bit.

Obviously, jumping from 1000Mhz to 325Mhz every once in a while is not wanted, as such throttling is associated with FPS drops.

 

What can I do to do away with this throttling? Nvidia inspector? Modded drivers? Another GPU flash? Sorry guys -- I'm kind of lost here, not knowing what the next move is gonna be.

Or am I pushing this little GPU a bit too far?

[Khenglish]

That grey bar for "perfcap reason" in gpu-z means the card is dropping clocks due to low utilization if I remember right (if you mouse over it you will see "util"). It sounds like something on your system is stealing CPU time away from the game. Does this not happen when at stock clocks?

 

Also those memory clocks are very low.

[rahl]

Quote

That grey bar for "perfcap reason" in gpu-z means the card is dropping clocks due to low utilization if I remember right

 

You do remember right! And I'm a noob (hey, at least I'll admit that). As explained below:

 

It turns out that there's a deviously hidden menu in nVidia Inspector of "Activate full 3D by GPU usage", which I had set to 96% and then forgot all about it (no wonders here).

So I pushed the card to 1050@1750, for the fun... and it seems it holds (there's just one throttling drop in the attached screenshot, caused by by setting the aforementioned item to 80% and coming across an undemanding area of the rendered scene (I'll set the value in question ever lower then, I guess)).

 

Now, with the supposed issue solved, what can we do here?

Lemme rephrase the question to this, to have some constructive discussion going: is running the card at such clocks considered safe? Or should I worry about blowing something (the 240W PSU, the internals of the notebook, my pride, etc.) ?

In other words, these precisions notebooks are supposed to handle 100W cards, and the stock K3000M is a 75W card. But then, what's the consumption like on this 60% GPU overclock? Got no watt-meter here, oops.

 

Thanks, guys

Edited November 4, 2016 by rahl

[Khenglish]

Overclocking is fine. Almost 2/3 of your core is disabled, and fully enabled cores ran using the same power circuitry your card has.

 

You are far, far below your 75W TDP.

[rahl]

Those nVidia bastards are gonna pay for disabling my cores!

Wait, I'm no Duke Nukem. Let's try that again...

 

Thanks for the informative post, dude!

Turns out the situation solved itself, because at 1090Mhz core, the 3D application crashes almost instantly; at 1070Mhz, it takes five minutes for it to get there. So I'll be running 1050Mhz core max.

This kind of goes hand in hand with some other TechInferno guy, who (once upon a time) had a K3000M, too -- back then, he bragged about getting it to 1088Mhz... and I kept his screenshot, for reference. So these results make my card only slightly crappier-- but that's cool, too.

 

1050@1800 it is, so far. Read about some fools pushing their 680M GDDR5 to 2066 (but they probably didn't have this crappy Hynix memory).

EDIT: 1050@2000 crashed, 1050@1950 showed some minor artifacts in geometry. I'm gonna go conservative and leave it at 1000@1800... at least till I get my filthy human-paws on some more recent card.

 

Edited November 5, 2016 by rahl

[Mononom]

" So I managed to grab one of those fine BIOSes that are supposed to unlock the potential of those Quadro cards. Flashed it, and lived to tell the tale."

Wich one did you use?  You made me curious...

[Mononom]

What would be the maximum teperature for a GPU (in my case K3000M) to reach safely?