I myself got mine up to 1507mhz stable with 109% gpu and 300% memory. It wasnt stable at first but after some reading and changing some settings that i didnt know what they did, no more crashes and always got the display crash error within 5 mins on shadow of mordor but since changes hadnt crashed for hours so can maybe go higher now, feel pretty confident i can get close to 1600mhz honestly once i tinker some more if temps stay good, right now 60C is highest i get at max clock with default aggresive fan profile which is still pretty quite for my card. 

Slider6996
I myself got mine up to 1507mhz stable with 109% gpu and 300% memory.

300% memory? 12gb or 21030mhz... LoL, just kidding.

Hmm, thanks a lot for your response.
I think I have figured out the most likely culprit. It's rather mild stock fan curve. Card just hits 80 degrees even with mild overclocking, but it stays silent :).
Just switched to software controlled fan curve in MSI Afterburner, just added one 75% point at 70 degrees, I could go +100 on core (1518Mhz actual) and +500 memory, stock voltage. Fan hovers around 65%, temp 63.
I am using Valley benchmark for testing.
Hope some find this info helpful as I was quite frustrated yesterday when couldn't even go to +80 w/o crashing on stock fan profile.

joder
Are these boost clock frequencies?  

Actual, as a frequency achieved during test. For instance stock clock GTX 980 ACX 2.0. SC has 1367 Mhz boost speced, but at load goes over, on mine it's somewhere around 1418 Mhz, so adding just +82 to base clock moves it to 1500 Mhz.
 
 
 
 
 

Mine can run a bench at 1620Mhz for one or two seconds. It can loop Heaven all night at 1580 but it's only stable in games at 1520-1530 with the power limit set to 124%, 1.243v. My memory seems pretty stable at around 8200-8350mhz but I haven't tested it too extensively. I put my waterblock on before even trying the card.
 
Still on the fence but I might just try and grab a classified. Not sure if it'll be worth the extra price, abandoning my current waterblock, and buying what will likely be a nickle plated only variant.

BelowAverageIQ
I cant get it to run at +200. Been dropping it down to +155 with +87mv and power at 124%
Trying to run firestrike. Get black screen and driver recovered alert. Sigh. ASIC 67.1%
Max boost is 1542.Sigh.
Not a very good card at all. Would have thought EVGA would have binned the SC cards a bit better.

Well 1542mhz on the core isn't really a bad overclock to start with. Also as a note I actually can overclock higher when I don't bump the voltage. All is seems to do for me is bring up temps and power use. 

BelowAverageIQ
I cant get it to run at +200. Been dropping it down to +155 with +87mv and power at 124%
Trying to run firestrike. Get black screen and driver recovered alert. Sigh. ASIC 67.1%
Max boost is 1542.Sigh.
Not a very good card at all. Would have thought EVGA would have binned the SC cards a bit better.

My 970 gigabyte runs at 1601mhz... would have expected to have these evga 980 run faster.. :o 

At least you aren't having coil whine. Just as I was accepting my 1520,  booted up a game in a quiet room and could only hear this awesome squeal coming from my case. Second GPU now... Looks like I'm getting a classified after all.

Slider6996
Any of u know the estimated price of the Classified 980 when it comes out because honestly thinking of sending my 980 back since i also seem to of got a dud of a OCer and i originially wanted a classified anyway but saw 980 in stock and jumped on it lol...

I know for the 780 it was about $30 more or so, but I would think with limited availability and everything they might be a bit higher than that.

Most can do at or around 1500MHz, but of course your mileage may vary.

joder
 

Andrew_WOT
This articles has a good how-to coverage of GTX 980 overclocking and to some degree explains that "actual" clock phenomena.

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/10/08/nvidia_geforce_gtx_980_overclocking_video_card_review#.VEVU9PnF_mG

 

Thanks for sharing.  It is interesting how not touching the voltage helps get a higher OC.  I was jacking the voltage and TDP up and couldn't get past +230 on the core.  Just touching the TDP gets me up to +280.
 
Since it may not already be assumed this is around 1506MHz on the boost clock.

I am wondering what is EVGA recommendation here, mine seems to be more stable overvolted.
Also how do you guys test OCing stability. I use Unigine Valley, it seems to really hammer the card.

Andrew_WOT
I am wondering what is EVGA recommendation here, mine seems to be more stable overvolted.
Also how do you guys test OCing stability. I use Unigine Valley, it seems to really hammer the card.

Thing is with video cards there's not really a "one test" for stability like there is for cpu's. You will run into cases where you are perfectly stable in Valley for hours, then launch up a game and get crashes. Not even in every game either. I tend to overclock it, run valley/firestrike to see if unstable there, and sometimes I still have to tweak it here and there. Like right now for some reason I can run Crysis 3 at 1500mhz core clock, but at that speed assassins creed will crash on me. 
 
As far as the extra voltage, it seems for most people its just not needed and just makes you hit the TDP limit faster and run hotter. 

dave851

BelowAverageIQ
I agree. Pity. Oh well not much I can do. There is no coil whine etc. 
Would have expected them to be a bit better overall. Then again my SC Titans were very average as well.

 
Well, these are reference models. Its just the design handed out by nvidia and not evga custom pcb as far as I'm aware. Normally the reference model is pretty much identical across manufactures because well, its the reference.
 
As far as a gtx 970 hitting 1600mhz, if thats not under more then water cooling, that's pretty much a golden chip. On hwbot there's only three or four people doing that speed without ln2.

Dave,
I wonder if companies such as EVGA get to bin the boards and GPU's as such??
Does Nvidia just ship the GPU's for assembly by EVGA or send the ref board and GPU installed. Would be interesting to find out/see.
Gigabyte talk about "hand picked" for their G1 line. My sons 970 is golden :)
All good though.

Hi guys i can OC my card only to 1460 core and 7600 no power target increase (idk if this helps or not)ram without crashing heaven and valley benchmarks. Thats without touching voltage. Is this good or bad. :( Also I get really high clock speeds in benchmarks like 1624 is this normal?!?