i think that the thermal throttling on these chips is very chip to chip dependent.  my last sc did not like anything over 60.  this ssc+ does fine right on up to any temp it seems.  this can all be explained many ways tho.  maybe the old 4+2 voltage rails had leakage at lower temps and the 6+2 just handles it better by distributing the voltage load.
 
the only thing that stops that drop is +40mv on the core voltage for me.

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aronh17

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@Levifig - Great start to you're youtube channel. I liked the vids! You're right about the gamble with step-up. I'll be a little disappointed on Wednesday when I get my FTW+ if it's a worse overclocker then the FTW that I had, with an ASIC of 68.4%. It wouldn't even maintain it's factory boost clock without a modded bios. It needed around another 10 watts. Adding voltage was useless because of the power limit. I did experiment with high power and voltage, but decided that since I have no idea how hot the vrms were to not use it with such an extreme increase of power for long periods of time. Teemeister does have a good point. You're 59.2% ASIC card while not being the greatest is a much better overclocker than mine was. The best stable overclock I could get was 1455mhz at 1.212v. And I questioned the stability lol.

That's exactly the clockspeed my old FTW was running on overclock, and it had an ASIC of 72.8% but I highly doubt that my new FTW+ coming in on Monday will be slower. Even with a lower ASIC it should still do better. It was all about the lack of power draw and 4+2 phase power setup. Did you get your FTW+ yet or did you mean next Wednesday?

 
 
I got in on Wednesday and have been messing around with it for the last couple days. With no additional OC (1367 boost clock) it scores 12300-12400 graphics in firestrike! That's much better than my FTW that would score 11900 at it's stock 1392.2 clock.
 
The one small annoyance for me is that unlike the FTW, the FTW+ will throttle at 60-65C, lowering the voltage from 1.225v to 1.2v as well as one boost bin. I confirmed this by running the fans at 100%, keeping the card right at 60C. It didn't throttle. Adding atleast +25mV, putting the voltage at 1.243v seems to override the temp throttle and it will stay at 1.243 with the core temp around 67C.
 
The max stable OC I have so far is 1493mhz core and 7600mhz mem, run through multiple runs of firestrike and some CoD: AW campaign. This is without any voltage added so it mostly sits at 1481mhz at 1.2v. The ASIC is only 63.9%. At first when I looked at it I was a bit worried that it wouldn't OC and would be worse than my FTW.
 
One other thing I noticed. The FTW sagged a little bit in the PCI-E slot. This new FTW+ sits perfectly straight. I'm not sure if adding a backplate to the FTW is something that would have fixed that. Anyway, could go on, but I'll leave it at that

cancelling my step-up, financial situation which jumped on me 2 days ago made this a complete no brainer now, 100 or so euros for the FTW+ I was struggling to justify anyway.
 
Next time I upgrade be it 2-3 years down the line, EVGA I will think twice about buying after us early adopters were guinea pigs for a substandard card.
 
In inquisitions just now I noticed if the game is demanding enough to need the boost clocks, there is not enough power for those clocks to be sustained in high utilisation (it had 70% power for just uinder 40% utilisation).  So the issue is not just in benchmarks, the normal FTW cannot fully utilise its marketed speeds.  (at 1367 same issue with power).
 
Of course its still an excellent card overall, so I dont feel that bad about it, just dissapointed with EVGA.
 
Regarding your post it seems EVGA cut one too many corners on the power delivery, to get a higher score at lower clocks must mean some throttling had occured on the original FTW.
 

chrcoluk

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aronh17

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@Levifig - Great start to you're youtube channel. I liked the vids! You're right about the gamble with step-up. I'll be a little disappointed on Wednesday when I get my FTW+ if it's a worse overclocker then the FTW that I had, with an ASIC of 68.4%. It wouldn't even maintain it's factory boost clock without a modded bios. It needed around another 10 watts. Adding voltage was useless because of the power limit. I did experiment with high power and voltage, but decided that since I have no idea how hot the vrms were to not use it with such an extreme increase of power for long periods of time. Teemeister does have a good point. You're 59.2% ASIC card while not being the greatest is a much better overclocker than mine was. The best stable overclock I could get was 1455mhz at 1.212v. And I questioned the stability lol.

That's exactly the clockspeed my old FTW was running on overclock, and it had an ASIC of 72.8% but I highly doubt that my new FTW+ coming in on Monday will be slower. Even with a lower ASIC it should still do better. It was all about the lack of power draw and 4+2 phase power setup. Did you get your FTW+ yet or did you mean next Wednesday?

 
 
I got in on Wednesday and have been messing around with it for the last couple days. With no additional OC (1367 boost clock) it scores 12300-12400 graphics in firestrike! That's much better than my FTW that would score 11900 at it's stock 1392.2 clock.
 
The one small annoyance for me is that unlike the FTW, the FTW+ will throttle at 60-65C, lowering the voltage from 1.225v to 1.2v as well as one boost bin. I confirmed this by running the fans at 100%, keeping the card right at 60C. It didn't throttle. Adding atleast +25mV, putting the voltage at 1.243v seems to override the temp throttle and it will stay at 1.243 with the core temp around 67C.
 
The max stable OC I have so far is 1493mhz core and 7600mhz mem, run through multiple runs of firestrike and some CoD: AW campaign. This is without any voltage added so it mostly sits at 1481mhz at 1.2v. The ASIC is only 63.9%. At first when I looked at it I was a bit worried that it wouldn't OC and would be worse than my FTW.
 
One other thing I noticed. The FTW sagged a little bit in the PCI-E slot. This new FTW+ sits perfectly straight. I'm not sure if adding a backplate to the FTW is something that would have fixed that. Anyway, could go on, but I'll leave it at that

cancelling my step-up, financial situation which jumped on me 2 days ago made this a complete no brainer now, 100 or so euros for the FTW+ I was struggling to justify anyway.
 
Next time I upgrade be it 2-3 years down the line, EVGA I will think twice about buying after us early adopters were guinea pigs for a substandard card.
 
In inquisitions just now I noticed if the game is demanding enough to need the boost clocks, there is not enough power for those clocks to be sustained in high utilisation (it had 70% power for just uinder 40% utilisation).  So the issue is not just in benchmarks, the normal FTW cannot fully utilise its marketed speeds.  (at 1367 same issue with power).
 
Of course its still an excellent card overall, so I dont feel that bad about it, just dissapointed with EVGA.
 
Regarding your post it seems EVGA cut one too many corners on the power delivery, to get a higher score at lower clocks must mean some throttling had occured on the original FTW.
 

Yeah 170 watts or even 187 is nowhere near enough. If you haven't set the power slider to 110% in something like afterburner that will help a lot, but it'll still most likely throttle. My FTW+ can use up to 220-225 at times, with increases to core/mem frequency.
 
Also, I had forgotten, but yup the FTW definitely throttled when it got 11900 in firestrike.  It's an easy fix though to edit the bios and increase the TDP limit to around 210w which will likely be enough to stay at the stock OC.
 

I am not that confident in changing the bios, for now I am keeping as is but if games suffer I will mod the bios.

I bet they cut down the power limit just so they would not run into issues with the 4+2 power phase setup.
 
I really do believe that the whole original lineup all the way to the ftw should never had been released.  this is arguably the second fastest GPU on the market today and to deliver it without the current acx 2.0+ cooler and 6+2 power phase is really just a manipulation of a loyal evga user base.  when you pay $400+ dollars after tax and everything and you buy from evga I would associate that with what would never be considered an inferior product (not the very best but never a purchase i would regret).  unfortunately when chatting with other forum mods at places like toms hw the evga first series of cards are not considered recommendable.  It is sad and below evga standards.
 
On the other hand after paying s&h twice at $30+ I am now in ownership of a ssc+ so I now have no real complaints with the GPU after the step-up.  I am a little disappointed in evga this round.  I have never owned a non evga branded card.  I use MSI for the AMD products and their same price offering was much better.
 
sorry for the rant

chrcoluk
I am not that confident in changing the bios, for now I am keeping as is but if games suffer I will mod the bios.

how much is it for you to just go to the ssc+,  it is the same card just no backplate and backplates are really more for aesthetics and support than anything else.  just putting this out there as the 3xxx cards are such a jump in quality.

fkrIII

chrcoluk
I am not that confident in changing the bios, for now I am keeping as is but if games suffer I will mod the bios.

how much is it for you to just go to the ssc+,  it is the same card just no backplate and backplates are really more for aesthetics and support than anything else.  just putting this out there as the 3xxx cards are such a jump in quality.

It's €20 less. But prices have gone up significantly due to the weak Euro. So he would still have to pay about €80. I could step up from my SC to the SSC+ basically for free (had to pay for shipping only).

fkrIII

chrcoluk
I am not that confident in changing the bios, for now I am keeping as is but if games suffer I will mod the bios.

how much is it for you to just go to the ssc+,  it is the same card just no backplate and backplates are really more for aesthetics and support than anything else.  just putting this out there as the 3xxx cards are such a jump in quality.

pretty much the same, its 5 euros fee, rest is shipping. So shipping both ways using royal mail and only 250gbp insurance is about 50 euros.
 
Interesting watching the clocks and power % and utilisation whilst running around in inquisitions, only when the clock is below 950mhz does the power % exceed the usage %, at 1100mhz, the usage % slightly exceeds the power %.
 
I dont know how evga managed to mess up, did they over trust nvidia's claims at super low power demands without testing? or did someone think well the lower retail price meant they could skimp?

I just want to figure out who sells a waterblock for the newer SSC?  Going with a new z97 mobo and case and wanted to modify my H220 to cool my graphics card too.  Once I get some extra dough I will look into getting a second SSC. :)

chrcoluk

fkrIII

chrcoluk
I am not that confident in changing the bios, for now I am keeping as is but if games suffer I will mod the bios.

how much is it for you to just go to the ssc+,  it is the same card just no backplate and backplates are really more for aesthetics and support than anything else.  just putting this out there as the 3xxx cards are such a jump in quality.

pretty much the same, its 5 euros fee, rest is shipping. So shipping both ways using royal mail and only 250gbp insurance is about 50 euros.
 
Interesting watching the clocks and power % and utilisation whilst running around in inquisitions, only when the clock is below 950mhz does the power % exceed the usage %, at 1100mhz, the usage % slightly exceeds the power %.
 
I dont know how evga managed to mess up, did they over trust nvidia's claims at super low power demands without testing? or did someone think well the lower retail price meant they could skimp?

I can only imagine that you are correct about underestimating the power needs of this card.  In the end it just kinda sucks really.  If you did want to get another card you could always sell yours and pick up a MSI gaming 970.  I do not know how it works in the eu but in the states MSI does there warranty strictly based on the manufacturing date on the product code sticker on the back.  I have bought multiple used MSI cards and RMA'd them without any purchase receipt.  they just ask for the product code then they approve.  This could be a cheap way of exchanging a card if you wanted.  I do not like recommending other peoples cards on the evga site but when there is no better option I kinda have to.