Hi Guys,
I always thought that powertune allowed a higher "Overshoot" before the clock was throttled and as suich, I have always slid it to +20% and forgotten about it.

However - I have been pushing my OC's a lot more recently and have got round to experimenting with this and found it actually makes things WORSE not better... and thats on benches like 3Dmark Fire Strike, Catzilla, Heaven 3.0 etc.

I realise this may be an anomaly with my system, or even an anomoly with the 13.2 beta 5 drivers on my trifire system, so in an effort to figure out why this may be, I spent all of last night playing with OCCT on 5 min, 2gig runs on level 7 @ 1920x1080 with error checking enabled and I was very surprised to learn that, I ALWAYS get more errors with Powertune higher than zero and find the only way to get an error free run above 1150mhz is to set it to zero and adjust the CPU voltage instead.


Example only... not exact figures but certainly representative:

• Core 1150
  
  
• Volts 1.150v
  
  
• P-tune (Power li) 0%
  
  
• Error free run over 5 mins.
  

---------------------

• Core 1150
  
  
• Volts 1.150v
  
  
• P-tune (Power li) 20%
  
  
• 25000 Errors over the 5 mins run.
  

--------------------------

• Core 1150
  
  
• Volts 1.200v
  
  
• P-tune (Power li) 0%
  
  
• Error free run over 5 mins.
  

In all runs I monitor volts and core speeds with GPU-z to ensure no overshoots or throttles and the results are always the same, less FPS and more errors. Can anyone please try to explain why this is? Am I just bloody using it wrong?

What I am trying to convey, is that no matter how stable my overclock (Lets take my 1150mhz at 1.20v example as I can run that in OCCT for 2hrs with no errors) as soon as i tweak PT upwards of 0%, It will generate 10s of thousands of errors on the same run with the same volts.

If I then add lets say 0.05v (1.25v) in oder to asses wether it needs more volts for some reason and try again, i get the same errors no matter what I try, unless i drop the PT slider back to Zero. At which point it will run error free, but a tad hotter, as expected due to the increased voltage.


Dont get me wrong here, it doesnt crash, and it will usually increase benchmark scores, so unless your running an error checking program like OCCT you are likely to never even know this is happening.


For reference:

• Cpu = 3770K @ 4.7ghz
  
  
• Maximus IV Extreme-Z
  
  
• 3x Sapphire 7970HD's (UW-max temps 45c)
  
  
• Sapphire Trixx 4.4.0 modded for mem voltage adjustments
  

These cards will all do 1250mhz error free as long as I DONT use powertune / power Li