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Using your 4GB GTX 680m to its safest and full potential


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So you've got hold of a 4GB version of a GTX 680m, figured out how to flash the vbios and it runs well. However, there are some things missing such as GPU boost and the ability to actually install drivers easily. Perhaps you are reluctant to run a vbios that ups to voltage to 1.037v.

This thread aims to have everyone owning a 4GB GTX 680m get the most out of their GPU including enabling a GPU boost hack. This is not an overkill thread, but more about getting things working well with a good performance, quality and stability improvement over stock. There will be no crazy high voltages so everything should be safe short and long term however I take no responsibility for burnt or bricked cards. Please proceed at your own risk, there will be vbios flashing.

First of all, the GTX 680m is similar to the desktop GTX 670 but severely downclocked. By OC'ing, one can get the core speed up to speed and beyond but clocking the memory @3Ghz (6GHz effective) in an attempt to reach its 192GBit/s bandwidth is very risky and likely dangerous. However, if the memory is clocked to 2250 (4.5Ghz effective) then the bandwidth is identical to that of the GTX 660 Ti @144GBit/s. Both desktop GPUs have the same base and boost clock at 915Mhz and 980Mhz respectively.

This brings me to the vbios. Kindly created by master hex maestro svl7. The vbios (attached below) clocks in @915/1125(2250)Mhz exactly the same as that which I mentioned above. Those specific clocks are also what makes the GPU boost work well (I'll get to that later). The vbios is engineered from the MSI ES(FD) vbios and has a voltage of 1.025v and settles @1.0v during constant load. Not amazingly(potentially dangerously) high but there is still plenty of headroom for overclocking. Flash this, and verify with GPUz. Of course the memory clock can be anything but I chose 1125 as they are nice and neat as well as offering a mild but significant boost in performance.

Next, drivers. The recent nvidia drivers are great but digging deep into the source code, we find that there are image quality hacks that trade image quality for performance. Plus some drivers just plain won't install if the GTX 680m is an aftermarket upgrade on unsupported mobos. These drivers are winners though:

http://files.laptopvideo2go.com/Dox/geforce306.02.2-modded.exe

Modded by the infamous Dox, all hacks are removed, quality is optimsed and support for all nvidia devices is included and should install without a hitch on any system. Drivers are uber stable but not great benchers as image quality is improved at some cost to performance. but I'd happily trade performance for decent quality and stability and use another driver to bench.

And finally, enabling GPU boost. This method is not actually GPU boost but it functions in exactly the same way, call it "fake" GPU boost. What we need to do is to download Nvidia Inspector:

NVIDIA Inspector 1.9.6.6 download from Guru3D.com

Put that in a safe place and run it, allow overclocking and set the base offset to +65 to achieve 980Mhz, the same as the desktop cards. Now some of you may think that this is plain overclocking however, this is not the case. After applying the clocks (keep Inspector open), run a mild to moderately intensive GPU task such as playing HD video or opening the settings dialogue of Furmark (but not starting any test yet) and you will see that the clocks will still show 914.5Mhz. Start a game or Furmark and that will jump to 980Mhz similar to GPU Boost. Now click on "Create clocks shortcut" and a new shortcut should appear on the desktop. Drag that to your "Startup" folder in the Start menu and Fake GPU Boost should be enabled on every restart without any user input needed. I tested other base clock speeds ranging from 900Mhz up to 1000Mhz and and every boost clock speed from +1 to +100 and 915 -> 980 was the only combination that worked. Most other base clock speeds would always change to 928Mhz and without the 915Mhz baseclock, all other fake boost clock offsets would go to 966Mhz unless I went way beyond 1Ghz which I don't recommend anyway. Either it was coincidence that those clock speeds are identical to the desktop ones or that they are the only clocks that work on the GK104 which is why nvidia set them to the desktop ones in the first place.

Please report back if you have any issues. I've only tested this myself but it should apply to all 4GB GTX 680m users.

EDIT by svl7: Vbios is outdated, grab the latest one here: http://forum.techinferno.com/general-notebook-discussions/1847-nvidia-kepler-vbios-mods-overclocking-editions-modified-clocks-voltage-tweaks.html

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Ok, I gave this a shot, and in general it worked very well. I have been using the MSI FD vbios with a pretty mild OC (I forget the specifics, but the 3dmark11 was 6834). With this vbios (without the fake boost) it went to 7132. I tried overclocking further (up to 1000/1150), but keeps crashing out of 3dmark11. I am running the 306.02 drivers. For now this will do, I will try a few more things over the weekend. I am fairly new to this - is 1000/1150 higher than this voltage can support?

Thanks for the guide and info! +rep!

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Ok, I gave this a shot, and in general it worked very well. I have been using the MSI FD vbios with a pretty mild OC (I forget the specifics, but the 3dmark11 was 6834). With this vbios (without the fake boost) it went to 7132. I tried overclocking further (up to 1000/1150), but keeps crashing out of 3dmark11. I am running the 306.02 drivers. For now this will do, I will try a few more things over the weekend. I am fairly new to this - is 1000/1150 higher than this voltage can support?

Thanks for the guide and info! +rep!

Well then it is most likely that it is the threshold of the voltage as this vbios has a lower voltage for the better sustainability for the card.

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Got some sick 3DMark11 runs, but I'm encountering some screen flickering in Unigine Heaven 3.0. My system specs:

Sager NP9150 (Clevo P150EM)

nVidia GTX 680M w/ your vbios and "fake" turbo boost set up as instructed

i7 3720QM

16GB 1600MHz RAM

500GB HDD (Seagate)

I get maybe one flicker per run, where the screen flashes green or teal for a fraction of a second before the benchmark continues as normal. No problems in 3DMark11. I'm using the 306.02 beta drivers from nVidia, which I'm going to replace with a clean install of 302.92. We'll see if that clears things up.

EDIT: Just got a clean run of Unigine Heaven 3.0 using the older drivers. Looks like I should wait for a WHQL release before updating them.

EDIT2: Looks like I spoke too soon. Saw texture flickering on three different occasions while running Unigine Heaven 3.0 My settings during the benchmark:

DX11; Extreme Tesselation, High Shaders, 16x Anisotropy, Stereo 3D Disabled, Multi-Monitor Unchecked, 8x Anti-aliasing, Full Screen 1080p (my notebook's native)

My GPU reached 89C during the benchmark and downclocked itself to 915MHz for two brief intervals, according to MSI Afterburner's hardware monitoring graphs. What do you think is the problem?

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Here in Taiwan I am able to choose between msi and clevo GTX680m with 4G VRAM. If price is the same, which one would be a better choice?

Clevo since it can sli. Not sure if the MSI card has the sli connector.

Sent from my GT-N7000

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Got some sick 3DMark11 runs, but I'm encountering some screen flickering in Unigine Heaven 3.0. My system specs:

Sager NP9150 (Clevo P150EM)

nVidia GTX 680M w/ your vbios and "fake" turbo boost set up as instructed

i7 3720QM

16GB 1600MHz RAM

500GB HDD (Seagate)

I get maybe one flicker per run, where the screen flashes green or teal for a fraction of a second before the benchmark continues as normal. No problems in 3DMark11. I'm using the 306.02 beta drivers from nVidia, which I'm going to replace with a clean install of 302.92. We'll see if that clears things up.

EDIT: Just got a clean run of Unigine Heaven 3.0 using the older drivers. Looks like I should wait for a WHQL release before updating them.

EDIT2: Looks like I spoke too soon. Saw texture flickering on three different occasions while running Unigine Heaven 3.0 My settings during the benchmark:

DX11; Extreme Tesselation, High Shaders, 16x Anisotropy, Stereo 3D Disabled, Multi-Monitor Unchecked, 8x Anti-aliasing, Full Screen 1080p (my notebook's native)

My GPU reached 89C during the benchmark and downclocked itself to 915MHz for two brief intervals, according to MSI Afterburner's hardware monitoring graphs. What do you think is the problem?

I've updated to the 306.23 WHQL release with the following results:

I'm consistently reaching 87C in 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark11 now that I've completed the foil mod, and Unigine Heaven hits 85-87C as well.

(Heaven settings remain 1080p, Extreme Tess, High Shaders, 16x AF, 8x AA)

My scores:

3DMark11: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P7877 3DMarks (P7877, 8158 GPU, 8203 Physics, 5978 Combined)

3DMark Vantage: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor,CLEVO P15xEMx score: P24693 3DMarks (P24693, 25263 GPU, 23128 CPU)

Heaven: 36.6fps (922.4 Score)

(Multiple runs have shown results consistent with the above, which is why I mentioned just one score per bench)

I'm really pleased with these results, but I'm trying to find ways to cool down the system some more if possible. Are my temperatures normal, in your experience?

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@AlphaMagnum those temps are manageable although still high. With the M18x at the clocks in the original post, I don't even hit 80C.

Are the flickers seen near the end of that clip artifacts? I get those roughly once or twice per run in Heaven 3.0, and if not those, then individual houses will do the same (flicker briefly). I'm experiencing these at the settings described in the OP, though I'm using the new WHQL release like I mentioned earlier.

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yeah, you must test at the base frequencie of 915/2125, don't try the fake gpu boost ... keep in mind you have only a 180W psu and a 15 inch laptop.

I don't know if this is the case but with such overclock you must use a laptopcooler to help temperature goes down.

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yeah, you must test at the base frequencie of 915/2125, don't try the fake gpu boost ... keep in mind you have only a 180W psu and a 15 inch laptop.

I don't know if this is the case but with such overclock you must use a laptopcooler to help temperature goes down.

Is it the core or the VRAM which would be causing this sort of issue? Would increasing the voltage clear things up?

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