MSI GTX 1080 Armor OC Power Limited

[TheJoker]

Hello guys. I bought a couple of days ago a new gtx 1080 msi armor. Since then, whatever i play, or benchmark, the card is hitting the power limit and throttle back the cores. The original bios jas a 210watts limit.

I searched the data base here and i found another bios for my armor with 290watts being the limit. I flashed it and all good, the card doesn't hit the power limit and the clocks stay constant. But especially in 3d mark the app is closing itself while testing, without giving an error
In heaven, sometimes the screen gets black, and the app crashes, but without an error from the nvidia driver

I then flashed back my original bios and to my surprise i found that the card now can't keep the voltages. It runs 1900mhz on 1.000 or sometimes it drops to even 0.980 voltages. It never goes up higher that 1.041 now. Is there a possibility that i just broke my card?

 

[eidairaman1]

Yes.

Lower the clocks

 

[TheJoker]

Yes.

Lower the clocks

It's the same even if i -200 on clocks. But the games are not crashing. From the beginning it had a veird voltage, if with the stock card i put the voltage offset to 100% in msi afterburner would crash like hell. But even on the new vbios, if i don t touch the voltage offset it s all good...!? I never had a gpu doing this. Nor my 1070, 1060 and 970

 

[Vayra86]

It's the same even if i -200 on clocks. But the games are not crashing. From the beginning it had a veird voltage, if with the stock card i put the voltage offset to 100% in msi afterburner would crash like hell. But even on the new vbios, if i don t touch the voltage offset it s all good...!? I never had a gpu doing this. Nor my 1070, 1060 and 970

Conclusion:

don't flash Nvidia card BIOS for performance. If you do it for a specific purpose and, more importantly, know what you're doing then by all means, everyone else should stay far away.

The reality is that Nvidia driver+ BIOS is smarter than you or any rewritten BIOS. These cards go as fast as they go and that is all unless you start modding the board itself. Those black screens and crashes are instability, and it happens because the fake BIOS overwrites GPU Boost 3.0 features, which include not only power saving but also thermal thresholds. Going past those is asking for instability and not lowering voltage when the card should is asking for damage to hardware.

BIOS mods on a GPU that is not performing perfect out of the box is probably even worse, because you can void warranty & brick a card that still could be replaced with no cost.

 

[eidairaman1]

It's the same even if i -200 on clocks. But the games are not crashing. From the beginning it had a veird voltage, if with the stock card i put the voltage offset to 100% in msi afterburner would crash like hell. But even on the new vbios, if i don t touch the voltage offset it s all good...!? I never had a gpu doing this. Nor my 1070, 1060 and 970

Not every GPU is exactly the same due to manufacturing Variance.

Reset Afterburner to defaults, reset the nvidia control panel, remove after burner, remove the graphics card driver using Display Driver Uninstaller twice,

Install freah chipset and driver that was working. Then get back to us. Dont install afterburner yet.

Run the gpu on the drivers itself, if you have problems then the card was damaged and will need to be RMA'd or thrown in trash.

You should of just stuck with afterburner and not a bios flash.

 

[Vayra86]

BTW: your 1060, 1070 didn't have this voltage drop problem?

Thats because its a 1080 I kid you not - its a bigger GPU that needs more volts and with voltage comes temperature. Temperature means you pass temp thresholds, and these cards are designed to drop small bits of voltage when you get closer to 83C. When you surpass 83C, they drop voltage HARD and along with that clocks will drop, easily by 100 mhz and all the way back to base (boost) clocks.

Its the behaviour of the card and you may see it with a 1080 because its harder to keep cool than your previously owned cards. Maxwell (970) had a less refined form of GPU Boost and had some more 'freedom' but clocks consistently lower.

So, if you see small voltage drops and if your clocks never go below the advertised base and boost clock, you have no grounds for RMA. I saw similar behaviour a few months back - it was a hot summer so temps constantly exceeded 83 C, and my 1080 clocked back to 1898mhz from 2000+ almost all the time.

 

[TheJoker]

Conclusion:

don't flash Nvidia card BIOS for performance. If you do it for a specific purpose and, more importantly, know what you're doing then by all means, everyone else should stay far away.

The reality is that Nvidia driver+ BIOS is smarter than you or any rewritten BIOS. These cards go as fast as they go and that is all unless you start modding the board itself. Those black screens and crashes are instability, and it happens because the fake BIOS overwrites GPU Boost 3.0 features, which include not only power saving but also thermal thresholds. Going past those is asking for instability and not lowering voltage when the card should is asking for damage to hardware.

BIOS mods on a GPU that is not performing perfect out of the box is probably even worse, because you can void warranty & brick a card that still could be replaced with no cost.

Well, by no means i did this by my own. One of the forum moderators on msi global forum told me to flash this bios with the 290watts limit so i can remove it and he assured me that the warranty will not be voided. I thought that he being a moderator on msi forums he knows what he is talking. I will try removind drivers with ddu in safe mode, delete all msi ab folders and reinsert the card and give a try.

Still, is it normal for a card with stock clock to hit the power limit so hard that it throttles itself down to 1800mhz?

Edit: My gpu is constantly running below 70°C, like all my other gpus. I know it throttles a couple of mhz every 10°c or less, but never saw one doing 1.000voltage under load without oc

 

[Vayra86]

Well, by no means i did this by my own. One of the forum moderators on msi global forum told me to flash this bios with the 290watts limit so i can remove it and he assured me that the warranty will not be voided. I thought that he being a moderator on msi forums he knows what he is talking. I will try removind drivers with ddu in safe mode, delete all msi ab folders and reinsert the card and give a try.

Still, is it normal for a card with stock clock to hit the power limit so hard that it throttles itself down to 1800mhz?

Yes, that is how GPU boost works essentially; if your ambient temp is high and/or the cooling is crap, or both, that is how it will look for you.

GPU Boost just boosts along a voltage curve, with a set clock for each voltage point, and this curve is applied through temperature reading.
If you got recommended to flash this BIOS by a rep, always make sure you have the written confirmation on screenshot with a timestamp - for future reference.

What MSI model is it? Armor?

EDIT: if you run below 70 C and get this kind of clock cap, something is wrong and I would consider RMA. 'Use this BIOS and fixed' is really quite ridiculous, and just an attempt to keep you from sending in the card in that case.

 

[TheJoker]

Yes, that is how GPU boost works essentially; if your ambient temp is high and/or the cooling is crap, or both, that is how it will look for you.

GPU Boost just boosts along a voltage curve, with a set clock for each voltage point, and this curve is applied through temperature reading.
If you got recommended to flash this BIOS by a rep, always make sure you have the written confirmation on screenshot with a timestamp - for future reference.

What MSI model is it? Armor?

EDIT: if you run below 70 C and get this kind of clock cap, something is wrong and I would consider RMA. 'Use this BIOS and fixed' is really quite ridiculous, and just an attempt to keep you from sending in the card in that case.

I didn't told the whole story just to save some time to the readers, but the msi is shocking. I ss the post where he said that to me and time stamped
I have msi gtx 1080 armor oc
The sad thing is i have a friend with the same gpu, newly bought, and doing the same power throttling.

I think i have found something. If you are willing to help me i would greatly appreciate it. The pascal curve on this bios is jacked up. The higher point on the curve is at 1100v and i think when i crank the voltage offset to 100% it tries to overwrite the 1.093cap and crashes. Just by locking the higher point to 1.093 the card isn't crashing for the moment but neither it downclocks

 

[Vayra86]

I didn't told the whole story just to save some time to the readers, but the msi is shocking. I ss the post where he said that to me and time stamped
I have msi gtx 1080 armor oc
The sad thing is i have a friend with the same gpu, newly bought, and doing the same power throttling.

I think i have found something. If you are willing to help me i would greatly appreciate it. The pascal curve on this bios is jacked up. The higher point on the curve is at 1100v and i think when i crank the voltage offset to 100% it tries to overwrite the 1.093cap and crashes. Just by locking the higher point to 1.093 the card isn't crashing for the moment but neither it downclocks

Then you may have found a fix right there, to be honest. Nice. Since you've had only application crashes with the higher power limit BIOS, this might well have been the problem (no TDRs - Timeout Device Removed). Did you have crashes where your overclock and settings had been reset to stock, as well?

 

[TheJoker]

Then you may have found a fix right there, to be honest. Nice. Since you've had only application crashes with the higher power limit BIOS, this might well have been the problem (no TDRs - Timeout Device Removed). Did you have crashes where your overclock and settings had been reset to stock, as well?

I didn't got any timeouts or bsods or display driver crashed prompts. Only black screen for a couple of seconds then back to desktop, no oc reset either. Well, with the curve set to 1.093max the card isn't crashing anymore in 3dmark and heaven, but it doesn't downclock from 1.093, only the core clocks downclocks a little. Is therw any way so edit the curve so it will downclock the voltage too?

 

[eidairaman1]

I didn't got any timeouts or bsods or display driver crashed prompts. Only black screen for a couple of seconds then back to desktop, no oc reset either. Well, with the curve set to 1.093max the card isn't crashing anymore in 3dmark and heaven, but it doesn't downclock from 1.093, only the core clocks downclocks a little. Is therw any way so edit the curve so it will downclock the voltage too?

Not on those cards, their bios are locked down from mods.

 

[TheJoker]

Not on those cards, their bios are locked down from mods.

Alright. I will flash back my original vbios and ddu the drivers and msi ab. After that i will send you some screenshots to see if perhaps there is something wrong with the card or if it s how it is supposed to be

 

[eidairaman1]

Alright. I will flash back my original vbios and ddu the drivers and msi ab. After that i will send you some screenshots to see if perhaps there is something wrong with the card or if it s how it is supposed to be

SI afterburner and Nvidia control panel back to default before you remove them because if you don't you will need to go into the registey to remove certain settings and you don't want to have to do that.

I believe what you were told was to put a ln2 or water bios on your video card is why its nackered up

 

[TheJoker]

SI afterburner and Nvidia control panel back to default before you remove them because if you don't you will need to go into the registey to remove certain settings and you don't want to have to do that.

I believe what you were told was to put a ln2 or water bios on your video card is why its nackered up

Can you please explain the last paragraph a little more? What is an ln2 bios?

 

[eidairaman1]

Can you please explain the last paragraph a little more? What is an ln2 bios?

Liquid Nitrogen

 

[TheJoker]

Liquid Nitrogen

It was only my mistake for taking his word on this one. I was just very upset that i blown 700$ on a card that is underperforming. I will be back shortly with an update on the situation. Thank you

 

[Vayra86]

I didn't got any timeouts or bsods or display driver crashed prompts. Only black screen for a couple of seconds then back to desktop, no oc reset either. Well, with the curve set to 1.093max the card isn't crashing anymore in 3dmark and heaven, but it doesn't downclock from 1.093, only the core clocks downclocks a little. Is therw any way so edit the curve so it will downclock the voltage too?

You can try Precision XOC
It supports voltage curve / frequency edits better than Afterburner does. Beyond that, no. Also don't run both Afterburner and Precision together.

 

[Vya Domus]

Hello guys. I bought a couple of days ago a new gtx 1080 msi armor. Since then, whatever i play, or benchmark, the card is hitting the power limit and throttle back the cores. The original bios jas a 210watts limit.

That's how it's supposed to work.

was just very upset that i blown 700$ on a card that is underperforming.

Was it though ? From what I read you screwed up a perfectly functioning card. Why didn't you ask if that behavior was normal before flashing it ?

 

[TheJoker]

That's how it's supposed to work.



Was it though ? From what I read you screwed up a perfectly functioning card. Why didn't you ask if that behavior was normal before flashing it ?

I made a web ticket on their site and the moderator totally assured me that none of the msi cards are doing this, so i took his word for granted. I asked multiple times and 3 different people from their forums told me the same thing: no, it's not normal

 

[Vya Domus]

I made a web ticket on their site and the moderator totally assured me that none of the msi cards are doing this, so i took his word for granted. I asked multiple times and 3 different people from their forums told me the same thing: no, it's not normal

Let me put it this way. You a have a card that supposedly doesn't function correctly, MSI tells you to flash the card with a BIOS that makes it run outside of the default parameters.

Why would you need to force a card to run out of spec in order for it to work "like it's supposed to". Didn't you sense that something was amiss ?

 

[TheJoker]

Let me put it this way. You a have a card that supposedly doesn't function correctly, MSI tells you to flash the card with a BIOS that makes it run outside of the default parameters.

Why would you need to force a card to run out of spec in order for it to work "like it's supposed to". Didn't you sense that something was amiss ?

I know they made a fool out of me and i was really dumb, but when the administrator told me it's safe, i just went full retard. Still, i don't even know why would they make such a move when they are suppose to be there to help people that throw money their way...

 

[Vya Domus]

Still, i don't even know why would they make such a move when they are suppose to be there to help people that throw money their way...

I doubt they even have anything to do with the actual support team. And if they do, God forbid.

If you say you flashed the card back to the original BIOS and it's still not working like it should I suggest you try to RMA and not mess with it any further. Though again, 1900mhz seems pretty in line to me for a stock 1080.

 

[eidairaman1]

Just request RMA, tell them it artifacts.

 

[Vya Domus]

But try this out of curiosity to see what it does :

In Afterburner click on the voltage/frequency editor, select the the frequency that corresponds to 1.093 Volts, press L and apply. That should force the card to stay at the highest voltage state.