roadblock with OC 980 Ti Strix

It seems like whenever I try to overclock the core clock past the +120mhz offset, drivers always crash. I can raise the memory up to +300mhz offset with no issues, but it seems almost impossible to push the core clock past 120mhz offset.

Currently I'm using msi afterburner, I have the voltage set at +10mV, the core clock is at +120mhz, and  the memory is untouched. Witcher 3 runs fine with no issues and Heaven runs fine.

I, personally, enjoy using Heaven among a few other's for my stability testing. ASUS has some great stability tools.

As for the overclock. +120Mhz is quite a decent overclock actually. I wouldn't worry about overclocking your memory too much. I will say if you are trying to overclock your gpu core with a +300 mhz on the memory, you might try lowering your memory.

I'm not home at the moment to check mine right now, but I think I was about to push +500 on my memory max, but I do know having it that high caused my gpu core overclock to have to be decreased... and there is virtually no performance gain in overclocking your memory on those cards.

All overclocking your memory is going to do is increase your bandwidth on the cards. @ 500mhz increase on my cards, the FPS gain was so minimal, that it wasn't worth increasing them. The benefit from a higher core clock is way more beneficial than a memory overclock, especially on that GDDR5.

So yes, I stand behind my "no performance gain" on overclocking the memory.

Oh yes, the core clock is way more important (imo and from my testing). The thing about Video Card overclocking is usually one of the three following things:

High OC on the GPU core
High OC on the memory
Finding that balance between the highest possibly Core and Memory.

If you do the first option, you'll get roughly 1 FPS per 1% overclock (on average... keep in mind these are rough number). If you do the second option... you'll get a gain from the higher bandwidth, but not much.

The third option won't let you overclock either one as high as if did them individually (usually). But this can usually be your best option.

Have you tried +120mhz and +300mhz on the core and memory? Or is that completely unstable? Try backing it down to something like +115mhz with a +275mhz. Or a +120mhz and +250mhz. Play with them both to find that middle balance of the highest on both sides. Then save those settings and try it with as high as you can get the core by it's self. See which one is the most beneficial. It might just be the silicon lottery. Some times you just can't push them that far unfortunately.

the asic quality is 77.2

Is the game crashing or is the driver crashing?

I know I've put my voltage up to 1.275 in ASUS GPU Tweak II. But even then, it still only pulled like 1.21v if I remember correctly.

If I remember right, I think I did something like a +65mhz on the core (because one of my two cards wasn't a fan of anything higher than that), I was able to get a stable +800mhz on the memory, but I ended up leaving it at like +500mhz, I put the voltage all the way up.

Keep in mind, I keep my cards under water though, so I don't have to worry about fan curves. Oh and I put the power target % to 110% obviously.

You can safely run it up to like 1.275v, especially if it's under water. I doubt it'll pull that much anyways.

the game is crashing. I'm guessing its because the tdp goes up to 114.9%
Otherwise, there are no artifacts or anything seriously wrong.
On a funny note, the fps increased by about 20 when I disabled hairworks.

The drivers only crash when Heaven is running, but they recover and Heaven continues to run with a low fps dip.

Also, whenever I put the mV past +35 the screen goes haywire and nothing really works. I'm guessing that's the "limit."

 In gpu-z the VDDC usually maxes at 1.237