Neither overdrive nor MSI Afterburner was able to clock the memory lower than 685. The settings just didn't want to take. I even tried using the unofficial overclocking mode with afterburner.

I really don't think heat is the issue, because the cards are never hotter than 75C.


And I'd read a few guides about doing the BIOS flash, but I wasn't sure if it would work on a NON-Reference card.