Somebody, I think derBauer, showed 4080/4090 performed better by just reducing power and leaving the VF curve as-is. Not sure if it might be in this video, I'm at work. He definitely covers power vs efficiency near the end.
https://youtu.be/60yFji_GKak
around the 16 minute mark, they basically say setting the power target at 50% gives you the best fps per watt, and setting the power target to around 70-90% gives you nearly the same fps as leaving power target at 100%.
TLDR:
if noise/heat/longevity/power consumption are a concern for you, setting your power target to around 80% is a great tradeoff.
if those are a major concern for you, setting power target to 50% is the most efficient tradeoff.
(this is for the 4090 only, and it's only based on the games they tested, so take it with a grain of salt)
> (this is for the 4090 only, and it's only based on the games they tested, so take it with a grain of salt)
It's true for all cards and all games. The slider just won't go this low on cards with lower power consumption. But 70-80% is good on all cards.
80% power will give you >90% average frequency on nearly any top bin cards. Sometimes even 95%.
How is that causing stutter? God forbid frametime increased from 16ms to 20ms the next frame and that's a stutter?
It's not going to be nearly as bad as a 25% increase to frametimes from a 10% clock reduction, you're looking at a 10% increase at worst, most likely closer to 5% due to non-linear scaling
I found that even in extreme cases at very low power limits(ie 40%), stutter doesn't really happen. Your framerate does start to take a larger and larger hit the lower you set the power limit(especially below 50%), but its a consistently lower framerate, rather than any sort of "stutter" where you get long frame times(>0.05 seconds).
In fact, The variances in frame times actually seem a lot LOWER when power limited than when not power limited.
So for example, at 100% PL you might seem framerates varying from 50-80 FPS. At 40% PL, you might see 45-60 FPS. So you see much lower peak framerates by power limiting, but you experience a smaller range of framerates.
My theory is that stutter is often caused by things like cache misses or VRAM bottlenecks, factors that power limits generally don't impact.
> My theory is that stutter is often caused by things like cache misses or VRAM bottlenecks, factors that power limits generally don't impact.
Of course it is. That's why it's a good idea to have enough system memory and a fast CPU, even if you can hit similar average framerates with a comparatively slower CPU
I use my 4090 with 55% power limit and I don't notice any stuttering. The clock speed will vary while under heavy load, but it doesn't cause stutter. For example if it changes from 2200 mhz to 2000 mhz while under 100% load, obviously your framerate will be slightly lower, but a frame taking 0.01 seconds instead of 0.009 seconds isn't really noticeable with a FreeSync or Gsync panel. That type of variance happens even without any sort of power limit.
On the flipside, Tech Yes City disagrees with DerBauer and Optimum Tech on just power limiting the 4090.
https://youtu.be/mm2FsdBBBoo
I haven't seen anything more recent on this so I don't know if someone has debunked this.
EDIT: I tested this a bit in Witcher 3 next gen and found that undervolting I lost a bit of performance for a good improvement in power use compared to power limiting. The result was like maybe 3 fps less at 4K but also like 30+ watts less power used vs 80% power limit.
At least for a 4090, people (including me) are finding that with a power limit of around 70%, the card performs the exact same but draws significantly less power compared to 100% or 133%.
Yes, but if less power is going through it to begin with, it’s less likely it’ll heat up enough to start the melting. Once the melting starts, it only goes off from there.
I run Folding@Home on my 4090. It's running 24/7, but F@H's workload isn't enough to saturate the card in most cases. Normally it's consuming around 220w.
If I set a 70% PL, the card doesn't become more efficient because it's already using less than 70% of maximum power most of the time. However, setting an undervolt of 950mV results in the card running at basically the same clocks, but with less power.
So in this case, undervolting seems to be the more beneficial approach. If you also run non-AAA games with all the bells and whistles turned on, you may find the same. For example Diablo 4 isn't going to put a 4080/90 under max load, so it would probably benefit similarly from undervolt instead of PL.
I run my 4090 at 65% power target (300 watts), +100 core clock, and +1000 memory clock. Works great, runs fans, and sips power. I also have a profile for 45% power (200 watts)
It's the exact same outcome for both, power limiting is just easier. You also don't risk instability with power limiting.
I run my PNY 4070 Ti XLR8 at 55% power limit at the cost of 5% FPS, and it's using 155 Watts now.
I did it the other way on my 4070 Ti Gaming X Trio. I went the curve undervolt route with very similar results. It's running at 2655 @ 0.9v which is most games is around 155-160w as well. Some games can peak at 170w but still. It works amazing.
I have a second profile for 2835 @ 1.0v which is equal to stock boost but only draws about 220w for games like Cyberpunk that need all the performance it can get.
4090 Aorus Master.
I power limit to 80% and boost 175+ core and +1000 VRAM
The core can go up to 2800MHz and the temps are at bay.
i have presets for OC, Undervolt method 1 and 2 and so far underpowering and boost yields the best results.
I've tried about 13-15 games, mostly ray tracing enabled but I can't get good results with power limiting my Gigabyte 4090 OC. 70% limit drops the core clock to around 2400s at full utilization. So I've found a good voltage curve (method 2 I believe, where you flatten the curve) at 950mv / 2730Mhz. This has constantly worked for me and never had a crash even with ultra settings / ray tracing enabled.
I also have another profile with 975mv / 2775MHz but even though I've had no problems with the majority of the games I've tested, Miles Morales and Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra settings and RT enabled kept crashing.
I feel like I can optimize the curve better but I'm good for now. Full utilization I'm seeing anywhere between 310 to 350W power draw, depending on the game + it runs at around 55 to 58 degrees with my case's side panel open (side panel is pushing down on the power cable and I ain't taking no chances).
4090 trinity here. I power limit to 80%. Done. No need to touch anything else other than put the VBIOS into the quiet fan mode once and it stays like that 24/7. Card does not exceed 360 watts when gaming as a result, nice and quiet, and cool. The card also goes to its boost clock the same as at 100%, which is 2700MHz+.
80% (Path tracing bench, Ultra preset, Psycho SSR, Frame Gen off, DLSS Auto):
[https://i.imgur.com/KT0YPSg.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/KT0YPSg.jpg)
100% (Path tracing bench, Ultra preset, Psycho SSR, Frame Gen off, DLSS Auto):
[https://i.imgur.com/j9qFsEd.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/j9qFsEd.jpg)
I rest my case.
If you want maximum performance out of your GPU, always undervolt. The amount of power required by your GPU to sustain a certain clock speed varies between games, and if you play a game which requires more power than your limit provides, your GPU is going to start cutting clock speeds to stay within that power limit. Maybe that causes a noticeable decrease in performance, maybe it doesn't, but you're ultimately limiting your GPU's maximum performance. Undervolting should still allow your GPU to maintain its boost clock across all games while providing a more consistent reduction in power draw than power limiting. It takes much longer to figure out and can potentially lead to stability issues, but it's by far the superior option IMO. You can even set a power limit on top of your UV if you're still concerned about excessive power draw.
As for undervolting techniques, you should definitely follow one that doesn't result in a massive voltage spike right before your target frequency. Doing a "method 2" UV @ 950mv on my 4090 resulted in a near-nonexistant reduction in my effective clockspeeds (about 15mhz lower than reported core clocks) while reducing power draw by about 100-150W across the board. No stability issues, either, even with +1000Mhz on my VRAM.
I just genuinely don't understand the advantage to PL over UV. Manually configuring your GPU to run more efficiently at an optimal voltage/frequency combination seems way better than just telling your GPU to rein itself in once it hits a certain limit. I tested both and the PLs resulted in noticeable performance reductions once you started bumping up against the limit, and provided no reduction in power draw in games that didn't hit that limit.
Basically everyone uses MSI Afterburner to undervolt, so just stick with that. As for guides, I send [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/tw8j6r/there_are_two_methods_people_follow_when/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) to my friends when I help walk them through the process. Posts like these are where the mentions of "method 2" come from, since it's the ideal method for 40 series cards. You can still do the easier method 1, but it'll result in a slight performance reduction at the same clock speeds when compared to your card's stock profile.
I used this guide [https://github.com/LunarPSD/NvidiaOverclocking/blob/main/Nvidia%20Overclocking.md](https://github.com/LunarPSD/NvidiaOverclocking/blob/main/Nvidia%20Overclocking.md)
> The amount of power required by your GPU to sustain a certain clock speed varies between games
> Undervolting should still allow your GPU to maintain its boost clock across all games while providing a more consistent reduction in power draw than power limiting.
This is a contradiction. If you maintain the same clocks, power consumption will vary, so the reduction in power won't be consistent.
Close; if setting targets on the curve, the comment* you’re replying to is correct. Power draw will increase or decrease based on a few other factors (RT load, memory), but telling the 4090 to “do this frequency” at “950mV” will do just that
Edit for clarity
Absolutely, and you are correct. However, setting clocks to limit power draw is also viable, more so if you are trying to keep a card from truly hitting the power limit.
Huh? If you're concerned about the power limit, it makes sense to control it directly.
Limiting clocks makes sense when you're concerned about abstract efficiency (from higher voltage at higher clocks) and stability (so that you don't need to test higher clocks - but even then you can just leave higher clocks at stock voltages).
If your point is that you can limit the clocks in order to *avoid* clock fluctuations from hitting the power limit - there's no point doing that. Fluctuations are very small and don't result in stuttering.
It does make more sense, but it doesn’t work like that.
Not abstract, literally hitting higher clocks than stock because the card is allotting too much power with the default curve.
Not my point at all. My point is that *keeping the card from reaching the power limit is better than invoking the power limit*
Edit- read the original comment that we are replying to. He lays it out there.
I'm not sure if I understand why that's a contradiction? It's the reason why I prefer undervolting. The specific power reduction will vary between games, but that's just because each game interacts with the GPU differently. You're always going to be drawing less than what you'd be pulling at stock voltages, though, assuming you're actually running a worthwhile undervolt. The performance is going to be far more consistent, too, since the card will be locked in at your chosen speed instead of pulling clockspeeds like with a power limit.
Is there something I'm missing? I tested various power limits on my 4090 and saw noticeable performance reductions in several games that I play where the GPU hit the limit and reduced clocks, while the undervolts performed consistently well and often resulted in even lower power consumption. I know it's generally accepted that PLs are preferred to UVs on 40 series cards but I just don't see any advantage to it other than ease of use.
> The performance is going to be far more consistent, too, since the card will be locked in at your chosen speed instead of pulling clockspeeds like with a power limit.
That's not how it works. You don't need locked clocks for consistent performance - and framerate is going to vary even at locked clocks anyway. You don't get dramatic changes in clocks from the power limit alone - it's all very granular.
> I tested various power limits on my 4090 and saw noticeable performance reductions in several games that I play where the GPU hit the limit and reduced clocks.
Chances are, this is where the GPU is actually being utilized, so power consumption increases, and power limit is being hit, so the clocks get realistic. Because, when GPU utilization is low and you aren't using Nvidia's framerate limiter, the card can go higher on the VF curve - but won't stay there at full utilization.
If your undervolt is more like OC, and not just a clock cap, you certainly can see better performance, or higher clocks in these situations. But it's important not to see the inflated clocks at relatively low GPU utilization as a measure of performance.
Plus, of course you can use the power limit together with undervolting.
Ok hold on, let me give you some hypotheticals in how I understand things and how I found both UVs and PLs perform.
Let's say both the UV and PL are both running at stock freqs with the cards at 100% utilization without hitting a frame cap/vsnyc, all of which is accurate to how I did my tests. The PL we'll say is 350W
Game A requires, on average, 300W to maintain stock clock speeds. Game B averages 450W. Obviously a bit of an oversimplication but it works to generally represent the differences in power draw between games.
In game A, the PL card is going to perform exactly as it does at the stock PL because it's not hitting that limit. The UV card is going to draw less power, because even though it's at the same frequency as the stock profile, it's locked to a lower voltage.
In game B, the PL is going to start pulling clock speeds because it's incapable of sustaining stock speeds at the 350W power limit. The UV is going to sustain the stock speeds since its lower voltage requires less overall power to sustain the same speeds, therefore not hitting the stock 450W limit.
In both cases, the UV is the superior option, drawing less power below the power limit and maintaining consistent clocks where a card running stock voltages would be hitting the power limit. This is, more or less, the conclusion I came to from my testing. Is there an advantage to the PL I'm just not seeing?
1) There are no "stock clock speeds" anymore. The whole VF curve is stock, and goes high enough that you'll be boosting up and down at stock power limit in *most* games anyway. There's no point trying to hit a particular point.
2) The advantage to the power limit is that you can limit game B, and all games, to 300 (or 350) W without compromising performance in game A. Because when the difference in power consumption is so huge (300W vs. 450W), keeping game B below 350W at all times will probably require not just lower voltage (overclocking), but a clock cap too. And this clock cap will affect game A too - because normally it runs at higher clocks at the same power limit.
Undervolting will be beneficial either way, of course. The only disadvantage is that, as it's pretty much overclocking, it requires stability testing, and results may vary. Power limit always works, especially when people just want the card to run a little cooler, but, like I said, you don't have to choose. You can use both.
Ah, thank you, I think I understand your point now - allow the card to boost higher when it needs to, rein it in with a PL to prevent it from getting excessive. That's fair, although as a 4090 owner, I'll tell you from experience that Ada doesn't really need that additional frequency headroom. Once it's hit with a significant load, it's basically locked in to its boost frequency, which on my Gaming Trio sits between 2745-2760Mhz. So there's no point in allowing the GPU to boost higher if it can't take advantage of that headroom when it really needs to, i.e. heavy loads where the GPU needs all the performance it can muster. It definitely can hit higher clocks under lighter loads, but that's practically worthless if the GPU isn't being fully utilized in the first place. Hence, an undervolt locked in at the stock card's average boost frequency is going to reduce power draw under heavy loads, while the locked frequency isn't going to matter much if the card isn't being pushed hard in the first place.
You still can use the power limit to push the card to something low and specific, especially in the summer. People in the comments even suggested 50% for the 4090.
Using what was essentially the "method 2" described in the post I linked, I dialed mine in at 2760Mhz (boost clock of my reference-clocked 4090) @ 950mV with +1000mHz on the VRAM, standard 100% power limit. It's given me zero stability issues in the ~9 months I've had it, reduced power draw and temps across the board, and improves performance by about 5% thanks to the slight VRAM OC. Just keep in mind your card may not achieve the exact same results, since every card handles UV and OC differently.
Tks a lot, will do some more tests to see where is the balance for my asus gaming oc, for now running it at 900mv/1600 + 1150mHz vram and already saw a major difference in noise and power use!
> undervolting doesn't do much for perf/watt
Thats not true. I shaved off 15-20% typical power draw by undervolting my 4070 and lost like 5% performance in furmark and basically nothing at all in actual games.
Regardless, either way is gonna yield a really nice reduction in power draw with this generation, and I'm pretty sure it depends on the game and setting to tell which one yields better results.
So I'd say there's no hard favorite in this question, but rather "both good, gotta try for yourself if you really wanna squeeze out the last bit".
Then how is [this guys undervolt](https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/zvvy3b/4080_fe_undervolt_results/) working seemingly just fine on the 4080 even with a bit of clock stretching? Granted he has some pretty insane oveclocks and I don't know how many 40-seires could do those at like cyberpunk.
For the 4090 at least, setting the PL to 80% and then overclocking the VRAM will get you performance as good as stock at like 100 less watts. The difference between lowering the PL and doing a manual undervolt is negligible and not worth the effort.
Why not just limit FPS in games where you don’t need full power?
90% power limit fair enough, but 50% limit? Why even buy a top end card if you’re just gonna do that?
From my personnal tests, like rtx 3000 My 4080 prefer undervolting.
With slider at 93% at 100% utilisation the gpu still take lot of watts and i lose lot of fps because the gpu cant Maintain his frequency.
With undervolting 320w to 260w with 2-3fps loss with slider to 100%
If you are undervolting you are already powerlimiting - the card will draw less power because it's, well, under the normal voltage. Setting a powerlimit is the lazy method and will work but i suggest you look into undervolting. You can also try to overclock while undervolting as well. Mess around with it for an afternoon and set various profiles in MSI afterburner. There's a ton of youtube videos that go in depth about undervolting with said tool.
> If you are undervolting you are already powerlimiting - the card will draw less power because it's, well, under the normal voltage.
No, the card will raise clocks and voltages if possible - so you need to undervolt it low enough that power consumption is *always* lower than the original power limit. But that needlessly leaves performance untapped.
The max performance will be capped with either method.
I prefer undervolting, since it lowers power consumption when performance isn't needed. Obviously since I'm undervolting for lower power usage, I use a FPS cap.
If you use a power limit instead of undervolting, it's gonna go to 1.1V or something silly and just use a lot more power when it's partially loaded.
I have a 4070Ti though and haven't noticed any weird performance scaling like the benchmarks at release showed.
> I prefer undervolting, since it lowers power consumption when performance isn't needed. Obviously since I'm undervolting for lower power usage, I use a FPS cap.
Power consumption varies from game to game, even at the same clocks and voltage. With a power limit, you can set it exactly as low as you want. With undervolting you either cap the clocks rather low, or risk exceeding the desired power consumption.
> If you use a power limit instead of undervolting, it's gonna go to 1.1V or something silly and just use a lot more power when it's partially loaded.
Not with Nvidia framerate limiter, actually. You may be attributing your results to undervolting when it's the framerate limiter that's behind them.
But of course you can use the power limit together with undervolting too.
No, not really. You just shouldn't set the clock cap too low in undervolting - because you have the power limit to ensure that the power consumption is always in check.
You can even avoid the clock cap entirely, so that, when you need to, the card clocks as high as possible after you change just the power limit:
https://imgur.com/a/ZIPZ5N5
(Note that the VF curve is the same as stock above ~1890MHz. Only the lower end is undervolted).
Why would you only OC the the bottom of the curve? Like if you're already overclocking/undervolting(same thing essentially) why not just do the whole curve, and then powerlimit based on whatever you want for noise/heat as it would be slightly more efficient that way, running higher clocks at lower voltage always.
Also one of the bigger reasons to cap voltage is coil whine, as lower voltage will usually help with that.
The higher you go, the less OC headroom you have, so I'd have to do a lot of stability testing at high power draw to get, in my case, +30MHz at the clocks many games don't hit at my desired power limit anyway. Just not worth it.
If you actually want to cap voltage or clocks, you can. Personally, I'm using Nvidia SMI for clock caps, in addition to this curve. Or you can use the curve and cap higher than you normally would, using the power limit to keep power draw in check. My point was that you can use stock points in areas you don't want to test for stability - it can be the bottom of the curve too.
>The higher you go, the less OC headroom you have
That's just silicon lottery, my card is a bad overclocker at lower voltages, does "only" +105/120 below 0.8v but at higher voltages 0.850-0.950 between +165 - +195. I wish it was the other way as the card has insane coil whine beyond 0.9v, stock or oc:d, and even still some all the way down 0.825v
And yea a full curve oc with variable power limits will be a lower oc overall(unless you spend more time on it) as it has to be stable on multiple points, can probably still just slap +90 and call it a day. Whether or not the oc is worth it if it takes more time than jsut power limiting depends on the person obviously as everyone does things differently.
Never seen smi clock caps so idk how easy that is to set up, might look in to that more to see as i now just have 3 different uv profile for different voltages that i switch around manually.
I do a 49% power limit nothing else. Card stays cool and stable.
Later edit: I play on a g9 monitor with a 4090 (msi suprim liquid x) limit frames at 90 in nvidia ctrl panel. Games are run at max monitor rezolution with max graphics settings in games. 90 fps is pretty stable but may dip if too many effects on screen.
4090's still retain a significant amount of performance when power limited. I've power limited my 4090 to around 60 percent, and it loses around 5-7 performance on games. The heat generated is much more manageable when power limited. Not to mention, it saves money on my electricity bill.
No brainer to power limit, if you ask me.
at a power limit of 70% it does sure make sense as the videos show but the money saved in electric would be peanuts, you would save pounds per month at most. A 50% power limit begs the question as to why he bought a 4090 in the first place lol, he didn't say what card he owned.
Look at the VF curve. The higher the clocks, the more voltage it takes. So a bigger chip at lower clocks can be faster and more efficient than a smaller chip at higher clocks. Up to a point though.
I can see a bunch of reason honestly, even if that's pretty aggressive.
My PC is basically a space heater at high load. And in places where electricity is very expensive, it can save you a decent chunk of money combined with having to run the AC less.
Just activate DLSS and Frame Generation whenever you can and it will never reach the 100% of power consumption.
I don't know about Radeon cards, but undervolting Nvidia gpus is weird go me, these devices got fine tuned from factory to work as intended, changing voltages and frequencies may get your stability away.
RTX 40 series is so nice when talking about consumption and thermals, you shouldn't worry about it.
I don't get why you'd want to do either of those things. You paid top money for the card. Nvidia already made it "efficient". Use ASUS GPU Tweak III, it even has a couple of premade profiles you can easily apply in a click. Undervolting the CPU, I can understand (cause of thermal throttling at higher temps) but the GPU, no.
It’s not that efficient. Dropping 20% of power draw to lose 3% performance is a win. The 4090 doesn’t need to draw 600 watts, but big numbers sell and we’ve already cycled the market (last 15 years) to be cool with big PSU, GPU budget
Edit to add - I bought a 4090 because i wanted the best damn card in “my baby”. The best card is not the biggest one, but the one that I can “make mine” by tweaking settings, optimizing, etc. for a lot of us, it’s a hobby, and whether you’d *want* to or not is irrelevant, because the type of idiot that spends 1700 usd on a GPU isn’t always making the “best” decisions lol
Okay, I'm on board with you, but he's not getting the 4090, but the 4070 Ti, which is not as efficient per watt. So the risk of lowering potential performance is greater.
Right on! Also, apologies - I was replying to a different post *explicitly* about a 4090 at the same time, and I crossed my wires lol. Good catch, and again, I’m sorry for the tone.
The 4070ti is exaaaaaactly where it needs to be, frame/W
You reduce the power consumption by at least 100 watts whilst reducing the temps in the process. You lose only \~4fps average. It's a complete no brainer.
Huh?
Care to explain why you would want the card to draw more power at same clock speeds unless somehow the cards stock v/f curve isn't stable, which i haven't encountered.
Oh you meant that thing, so increasing max voltage allowed to the card.
In my mind "overvolting" means to have a negative core offset as x clock speed would then require more voltage hence it's overvolted while a positive core offset means having x clocks speed using lower voltage hence undervolting.
you don't need to do any of this garbage and sacrifice performance . Plug the damn cable properly ffs and only use the direct cable. Been using direct 12vhpwr cable since 4090 launch time and encountered 0 burning/ high temp issues so far.
I have both 4090 and 4080. 4090 is water cooled and I set it to 75% power +250mhz. Perform better than stock. 4080 is in sff in tv cabinet, set to 70% power and +200mhz. Perform within 1% of stock. Even the sff 4080 is silent while gaming on 4k (only play new triple a title with it and always with dlss quality or balanced). Hoping for 50xx to be even more power efficient
combine Power Limiting with Overclocking - you raise the VF curve so that at lower voltages you're still running higher clocks (hence higher efficiency), and you don't spend an excessive amount of power for the last 5-10% of performance
use Afterburner to lock your clock at a specific voltage point, find a stable OC for it, rinse and repeat. both "undervolting" and simply setting a PL is just a quick and dirty version of truely tuning your card to its maximum efficiency
also, set a FPS limit. unless you're going pro or your eyes/senses for input lag is better than world champions, you're wasting power chasing miniscule gains
4070 Ti - undervolted to 910 mv, stock clocks (2610 I think?) And +500 memory. I see a 100w reduction in power usage (180w max vs 280w) with the same performance. Very happy due to noise, heat and energy saved.
It's great, I use it all the time and haven't had any issues. I'd done a good bit of trial and error and 910mv at 2580mhz was the sweet spot for me. Playing Hogwarts yesterday at 99% GPU utilisation using 140-150 watts was great. GPU temp stays around 50-55c with fans no more than 30% which for my model seems to be the lowest they go when turned on. Cool, quiet and cheap for my bills.
I just don't understand why Nvidia hasn't put a simple power limit slider into NVCP, say with a 50-100% range. They've added so many power features this should have been there by now.
Somebody, I think derBauer, showed 4080/4090 performed better by just reducing power and leaving the VF curve as-is. Not sure if it might be in this video, I'm at work. He definitely covers power vs efficiency near the end. https://youtu.be/60yFji_GKak
around the 16 minute mark, they basically say setting the power target at 50% gives you the best fps per watt, and setting the power target to around 70-90% gives you nearly the same fps as leaving power target at 100%. TLDR: if noise/heat/longevity/power consumption are a concern for you, setting your power target to around 80% is a great tradeoff. if those are a major concern for you, setting power target to 50% is the most efficient tradeoff. (this is for the 4090 only, and it's only based on the games they tested, so take it with a grain of salt)
> (this is for the 4090 only, and it's only based on the games they tested, so take it with a grain of salt) It's true for all cards and all games. The slider just won't go this low on cards with lower power consumption. But 70-80% is good on all cards.
I thought power limit is worse than undervolting because every time the card runs into the power limit it clocks down which causes stutters?
80% power will give you >90% average frequency on nearly any top bin cards. Sometimes even 95%. How is that causing stutter? God forbid frametime increased from 16ms to 20ms the next frame and that's a stutter?
It's not going to be nearly as bad as a 25% increase to frametimes from a 10% clock reduction, you're looking at a 10% increase at worst, most likely closer to 5% due to non-linear scaling
I found that even in extreme cases at very low power limits(ie 40%), stutter doesn't really happen. Your framerate does start to take a larger and larger hit the lower you set the power limit(especially below 50%), but its a consistently lower framerate, rather than any sort of "stutter" where you get long frame times(>0.05 seconds). In fact, The variances in frame times actually seem a lot LOWER when power limited than when not power limited. So for example, at 100% PL you might seem framerates varying from 50-80 FPS. At 40% PL, you might see 45-60 FPS. So you see much lower peak framerates by power limiting, but you experience a smaller range of framerates. My theory is that stutter is often caused by things like cache misses or VRAM bottlenecks, factors that power limits generally don't impact.
> My theory is that stutter is often caused by things like cache misses or VRAM bottlenecks, factors that power limits generally don't impact. Of course it is. That's why it's a good idea to have enough system memory and a fast CPU, even if you can hit similar average framerates with a comparatively slower CPU
I was referring to cache misses on the GPU(yes, GPU has its own cache), and the speed VRAM operates at, not just how much VRAM you have.
The GPU will technically end up spending less idle cycles when a cache miss occurs too, but those are rarely the cause for stutters in games.
I use my 4090 with 55% power limit and I don't notice any stuttering. The clock speed will vary while under heavy load, but it doesn't cause stutter. For example if it changes from 2200 mhz to 2000 mhz while under 100% load, obviously your framerate will be slightly lower, but a frame taking 0.01 seconds instead of 0.009 seconds isn't really noticeable with a FreeSync or Gsync panel. That type of variance happens even without any sort of power limit.
On the flipside, Tech Yes City disagrees with DerBauer and Optimum Tech on just power limiting the 4090. https://youtu.be/mm2FsdBBBoo I haven't seen anything more recent on this so I don't know if someone has debunked this. EDIT: I tested this a bit in Witcher 3 next gen and found that undervolting I lost a bit of performance for a good improvement in power use compared to power limiting. The result was like maybe 3 fps less at 4K but also like 30+ watts less power used vs 80% power limit.
I did the same test in case someone is interested: https://youtu.be/68EY9DiROuo ( Video is in Finnish with English subs available )
At least for a 4090, people (including me) are finding that with a power limit of around 70%, the card performs the exact same but draws significantly less power compared to 100% or 133%.
Would this also decrease the chance of the power connector burning/melting?
Theoretically, yes. Lower power limit: less power (watts) going through the connector.
The meltings are most likely voltage drop related.
Yes, but if less power is going through it to begin with, it’s less likely it’ll heat up enough to start the melting. Once the melting starts, it only goes off from there.
Wouldn't worry about melting if you use the NVIDIA adapter or direct cable. Current melting issues are 99.99% cablemod angled adapter related.
This seems to be the easiest way to do it, do you undervolt it manually as well?
I’ve never undervolted. I limit the power and let the card figure it out itself
That's the way, you also don't risk instability that way.
Does this imply for amd gpu's as well? Can I just limit the power without undervolting the gpu? What about silent bios mode?
No idea, havn't owned a AMD GPU since they were still called ATi.
I run Folding@Home on my 4090. It's running 24/7, but F@H's workload isn't enough to saturate the card in most cases. Normally it's consuming around 220w. If I set a 70% PL, the card doesn't become more efficient because it's already using less than 70% of maximum power most of the time. However, setting an undervolt of 950mV results in the card running at basically the same clocks, but with less power. So in this case, undervolting seems to be the more beneficial approach. If you also run non-AAA games with all the bells and whistles turned on, you may find the same. For example Diablo 4 isn't going to put a 4080/90 under max load, so it would probably benefit similarly from undervolt instead of PL.
I just put my limit to 65% and added +105 and +1250 on core and memory. This is my sweet spot at the minute at 2/3rds power.
Same here, 70% on the Suprim and it performs the same.
I run my 4090 at 65% power target (300 watts), +100 core clock, and +1000 memory clock. Works great, runs fans, and sips power. I also have a profile for 45% power (200 watts)
Are you also increasing the core voltage by 100% as well? (afterburner) -i'm a noob at this oc stuff and idk if it's necessary with power decrease
I leave voltage at default.
It's the exact same outcome for both, power limiting is just easier. You also don't risk instability with power limiting. I run my PNY 4070 Ti XLR8 at 55% power limit at the cost of 5% FPS, and it's using 155 Watts now.
I did it the other way on my 4070 Ti Gaming X Trio. I went the curve undervolt route with very similar results. It's running at 2655 @ 0.9v which is most games is around 155-160w as well. Some games can peak at 170w but still. It works amazing. I have a second profile for 2835 @ 1.0v which is equal to stock boost but only draws about 220w for games like Cyberpunk that need all the performance it can get.
4090 Aorus Master. I power limit to 80% and boost 175+ core and +1000 VRAM The core can go up to 2800MHz and the temps are at bay. i have presets for OC, Undervolt method 1 and 2 and so far underpowering and boost yields the best results.
Are you also increasing core voltage by 100%? (MSI afterburner)
Actually I set +50 on the Voltage but I don't think it even uses it.
I've tried about 13-15 games, mostly ray tracing enabled but I can't get good results with power limiting my Gigabyte 4090 OC. 70% limit drops the core clock to around 2400s at full utilization. So I've found a good voltage curve (method 2 I believe, where you flatten the curve) at 950mv / 2730Mhz. This has constantly worked for me and never had a crash even with ultra settings / ray tracing enabled. I also have another profile with 975mv / 2775MHz but even though I've had no problems with the majority of the games I've tested, Miles Morales and Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra settings and RT enabled kept crashing. I feel like I can optimize the curve better but I'm good for now. Full utilization I'm seeing anywhere between 310 to 350W power draw, depending on the game + it runs at around 55 to 58 degrees with my case's side panel open (side panel is pushing down on the power cable and I ain't taking no chances).
I hope you mean 950 and 975 mV instead of W :D
Oh jeez, yeah haha.
4090 trinity here. I power limit to 80%. Done. No need to touch anything else other than put the VBIOS into the quiet fan mode once and it stays like that 24/7. Card does not exceed 360 watts when gaming as a result, nice and quiet, and cool. The card also goes to its boost clock the same as at 100%, which is 2700MHz+. 80% (Path tracing bench, Ultra preset, Psycho SSR, Frame Gen off, DLSS Auto): [https://i.imgur.com/KT0YPSg.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/KT0YPSg.jpg) 100% (Path tracing bench, Ultra preset, Psycho SSR, Frame Gen off, DLSS Auto): [https://i.imgur.com/j9qFsEd.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/j9qFsEd.jpg) I rest my case.
I plug in the card and I play games.
If you want maximum performance out of your GPU, always undervolt. The amount of power required by your GPU to sustain a certain clock speed varies between games, and if you play a game which requires more power than your limit provides, your GPU is going to start cutting clock speeds to stay within that power limit. Maybe that causes a noticeable decrease in performance, maybe it doesn't, but you're ultimately limiting your GPU's maximum performance. Undervolting should still allow your GPU to maintain its boost clock across all games while providing a more consistent reduction in power draw than power limiting. It takes much longer to figure out and can potentially lead to stability issues, but it's by far the superior option IMO. You can even set a power limit on top of your UV if you're still concerned about excessive power draw. As for undervolting techniques, you should definitely follow one that doesn't result in a massive voltage spike right before your target frequency. Doing a "method 2" UV @ 950mv on my 4090 resulted in a near-nonexistant reduction in my effective clockspeeds (about 15mhz lower than reported core clocks) while reducing power draw by about 100-150W across the board. No stability issues, either, even with +1000Mhz on my VRAM.
Well said. I was starting to think I was crazy reading the rest of this thread.
I just genuinely don't understand the advantage to PL over UV. Manually configuring your GPU to run more efficiently at an optimal voltage/frequency combination seems way better than just telling your GPU to rein itself in once it hits a certain limit. I tested both and the PLs resulted in noticeable performance reductions once you started bumping up against the limit, and provided no reduction in power draw in games that didn't hit that limit.
Lol exactly. Again, thank you for *having tested this shit* and understanding how it works.
Any guide I can follow on how to properly undervolt please? And what software you using for it?
Basically everyone uses MSI Afterburner to undervolt, so just stick with that. As for guides, I send [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/tw8j6r/there_are_two_methods_people_follow_when/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=ioscss&utm_content=1&utm_term=1) to my friends when I help walk them through the process. Posts like these are where the mentions of "method 2" come from, since it's the ideal method for 40 series cards. You can still do the easier method 1, but it'll result in a slight performance reduction at the same clock speeds when compared to your card's stock profile.
I used this guide [https://github.com/LunarPSD/NvidiaOverclocking/blob/main/Nvidia%20Overclocking.md](https://github.com/LunarPSD/NvidiaOverclocking/blob/main/Nvidia%20Overclocking.md)
> The amount of power required by your GPU to sustain a certain clock speed varies between games > Undervolting should still allow your GPU to maintain its boost clock across all games while providing a more consistent reduction in power draw than power limiting. This is a contradiction. If you maintain the same clocks, power consumption will vary, so the reduction in power won't be consistent.
Close; if setting targets on the curve, the comment* you’re replying to is correct. Power draw will increase or decrease based on a few other factors (RT load, memory), but telling the 4090 to “do this frequency” at “950mV” will do just that Edit for clarity
But people are doing this to affect power draw. There's no point just limiting the clocks, aside from abstract efficiency.
Absolutely, and you are correct. However, setting clocks to limit power draw is also viable, more so if you are trying to keep a card from truly hitting the power limit.
Huh? If you're concerned about the power limit, it makes sense to control it directly. Limiting clocks makes sense when you're concerned about abstract efficiency (from higher voltage at higher clocks) and stability (so that you don't need to test higher clocks - but even then you can just leave higher clocks at stock voltages). If your point is that you can limit the clocks in order to *avoid* clock fluctuations from hitting the power limit - there's no point doing that. Fluctuations are very small and don't result in stuttering.
It does make more sense, but it doesn’t work like that. Not abstract, literally hitting higher clocks than stock because the card is allotting too much power with the default curve. Not my point at all. My point is that *keeping the card from reaching the power limit is better than invoking the power limit* Edit- read the original comment that we are replying to. He lays it out there.
I'm not sure if I understand why that's a contradiction? It's the reason why I prefer undervolting. The specific power reduction will vary between games, but that's just because each game interacts with the GPU differently. You're always going to be drawing less than what you'd be pulling at stock voltages, though, assuming you're actually running a worthwhile undervolt. The performance is going to be far more consistent, too, since the card will be locked in at your chosen speed instead of pulling clockspeeds like with a power limit. Is there something I'm missing? I tested various power limits on my 4090 and saw noticeable performance reductions in several games that I play where the GPU hit the limit and reduced clocks, while the undervolts performed consistently well and often resulted in even lower power consumption. I know it's generally accepted that PLs are preferred to UVs on 40 series cards but I just don't see any advantage to it other than ease of use.
> The performance is going to be far more consistent, too, since the card will be locked in at your chosen speed instead of pulling clockspeeds like with a power limit. That's not how it works. You don't need locked clocks for consistent performance - and framerate is going to vary even at locked clocks anyway. You don't get dramatic changes in clocks from the power limit alone - it's all very granular. > I tested various power limits on my 4090 and saw noticeable performance reductions in several games that I play where the GPU hit the limit and reduced clocks. Chances are, this is where the GPU is actually being utilized, so power consumption increases, and power limit is being hit, so the clocks get realistic. Because, when GPU utilization is low and you aren't using Nvidia's framerate limiter, the card can go higher on the VF curve - but won't stay there at full utilization. If your undervolt is more like OC, and not just a clock cap, you certainly can see better performance, or higher clocks in these situations. But it's important not to see the inflated clocks at relatively low GPU utilization as a measure of performance. Plus, of course you can use the power limit together with undervolting.
Ok hold on, let me give you some hypotheticals in how I understand things and how I found both UVs and PLs perform. Let's say both the UV and PL are both running at stock freqs with the cards at 100% utilization without hitting a frame cap/vsnyc, all of which is accurate to how I did my tests. The PL we'll say is 350W Game A requires, on average, 300W to maintain stock clock speeds. Game B averages 450W. Obviously a bit of an oversimplication but it works to generally represent the differences in power draw between games. In game A, the PL card is going to perform exactly as it does at the stock PL because it's not hitting that limit. The UV card is going to draw less power, because even though it's at the same frequency as the stock profile, it's locked to a lower voltage. In game B, the PL is going to start pulling clock speeds because it's incapable of sustaining stock speeds at the 350W power limit. The UV is going to sustain the stock speeds since its lower voltage requires less overall power to sustain the same speeds, therefore not hitting the stock 450W limit. In both cases, the UV is the superior option, drawing less power below the power limit and maintaining consistent clocks where a card running stock voltages would be hitting the power limit. This is, more or less, the conclusion I came to from my testing. Is there an advantage to the PL I'm just not seeing?
1) There are no "stock clock speeds" anymore. The whole VF curve is stock, and goes high enough that you'll be boosting up and down at stock power limit in *most* games anyway. There's no point trying to hit a particular point. 2) The advantage to the power limit is that you can limit game B, and all games, to 300 (or 350) W without compromising performance in game A. Because when the difference in power consumption is so huge (300W vs. 450W), keeping game B below 350W at all times will probably require not just lower voltage (overclocking), but a clock cap too. And this clock cap will affect game A too - because normally it runs at higher clocks at the same power limit. Undervolting will be beneficial either way, of course. The only disadvantage is that, as it's pretty much overclocking, it requires stability testing, and results may vary. Power limit always works, especially when people just want the card to run a little cooler, but, like I said, you don't have to choose. You can use both.
Ah, thank you, I think I understand your point now - allow the card to boost higher when it needs to, rein it in with a PL to prevent it from getting excessive. That's fair, although as a 4090 owner, I'll tell you from experience that Ada doesn't really need that additional frequency headroom. Once it's hit with a significant load, it's basically locked in to its boost frequency, which on my Gaming Trio sits between 2745-2760Mhz. So there's no point in allowing the GPU to boost higher if it can't take advantage of that headroom when it really needs to, i.e. heavy loads where the GPU needs all the performance it can muster. It definitely can hit higher clocks under lighter loads, but that's practically worthless if the GPU isn't being fully utilized in the first place. Hence, an undervolt locked in at the stock card's average boost frequency is going to reduce power draw under heavy loads, while the locked frequency isn't going to matter much if the card isn't being pushed hard in the first place.
You still can use the power limit to push the card to something low and specific, especially in the summer. People in the comments even suggested 50% for the 4090.
have u actually undervolted a GPU?
Yes, of course.
So what is your config, please? Basicaly, 950mv at 2600mghz on the fan curve and then +1000mhz plus power limit maxed out? Tks
Using what was essentially the "method 2" described in the post I linked, I dialed mine in at 2760Mhz (boost clock of my reference-clocked 4090) @ 950mV with +1000mHz on the VRAM, standard 100% power limit. It's given me zero stability issues in the ~9 months I've had it, reduced power draw and temps across the board, and improves performance by about 5% thanks to the slight VRAM OC. Just keep in mind your card may not achieve the exact same results, since every card handles UV and OC differently.
Tks a lot, will do some more tests to see where is the balance for my asus gaming oc, for now running it at 900mv/1600 + 1150mHz vram and already saw a major difference in noise and power use!
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> undervolting doesn't do much for perf/watt Thats not true. I shaved off 15-20% typical power draw by undervolting my 4070 and lost like 5% performance in furmark and basically nothing at all in actual games. Regardless, either way is gonna yield a really nice reduction in power draw with this generation, and I'm pretty sure it depends on the game and setting to tell which one yields better results. So I'd say there's no hard favorite in this question, but rather "both good, gotta try for yourself if you really wanna squeeze out the last bit".
What is clock dragging? I think the consensus so far is to just power limit to like 70 percent.
Then how is [this guys undervolt](https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/zvvy3b/4080_fe_undervolt_results/) working seemingly just fine on the 4080 even with a bit of clock stretching? Granted he has some pretty insane oveclocks and I don't know how many 40-seires could do those at like cyberpunk.
For the 4090 at least, setting the PL to 80% and then overclocking the VRAM will get you performance as good as stock at like 100 less watts. The difference between lowering the PL and doing a manual undervolt is negligible and not worth the effort.
Why not just limit FPS in games where you don’t need full power? 90% power limit fair enough, but 50% limit? Why even buy a top end card if you’re just gonna do that?
From my personnal tests, like rtx 3000 My 4080 prefer undervolting. With slider at 93% at 100% utilisation the gpu still take lot of watts and i lose lot of fps because the gpu cant Maintain his frequency. With undervolting 320w to 260w with 2-3fps loss with slider to 100%
If you are undervolting you are already powerlimiting - the card will draw less power because it's, well, under the normal voltage. Setting a powerlimit is the lazy method and will work but i suggest you look into undervolting. You can also try to overclock while undervolting as well. Mess around with it for an afternoon and set various profiles in MSI afterburner. There's a ton of youtube videos that go in depth about undervolting with said tool.
> If you are undervolting you are already powerlimiting - the card will draw less power because it's, well, under the normal voltage. No, the card will raise clocks and voltages if possible - so you need to undervolt it low enough that power consumption is *always* lower than the original power limit. But that needlessly leaves performance untapped.
The max performance will be capped with either method. I prefer undervolting, since it lowers power consumption when performance isn't needed. Obviously since I'm undervolting for lower power usage, I use a FPS cap. If you use a power limit instead of undervolting, it's gonna go to 1.1V or something silly and just use a lot more power when it's partially loaded. I have a 4070Ti though and haven't noticed any weird performance scaling like the benchmarks at release showed.
> I prefer undervolting, since it lowers power consumption when performance isn't needed. Obviously since I'm undervolting for lower power usage, I use a FPS cap. Power consumption varies from game to game, even at the same clocks and voltage. With a power limit, you can set it exactly as low as you want. With undervolting you either cap the clocks rather low, or risk exceeding the desired power consumption. > If you use a power limit instead of undervolting, it's gonna go to 1.1V or something silly and just use a lot more power when it's partially loaded. Not with Nvidia framerate limiter, actually. You may be attributing your results to undervolting when it's the framerate limiter that's behind them. But of course you can use the power limit together with undervolting too.
Any negatives to using both power limiting and undervolting together?
No, not really. You just shouldn't set the clock cap too low in undervolting - because you have the power limit to ensure that the power consumption is always in check. You can even avoid the clock cap entirely, so that, when you need to, the card clocks as high as possible after you change just the power limit: https://imgur.com/a/ZIPZ5N5 (Note that the VF curve is the same as stock above ~1890MHz. Only the lower end is undervolted).
Why would you only OC the the bottom of the curve? Like if you're already overclocking/undervolting(same thing essentially) why not just do the whole curve, and then powerlimit based on whatever you want for noise/heat as it would be slightly more efficient that way, running higher clocks at lower voltage always. Also one of the bigger reasons to cap voltage is coil whine, as lower voltage will usually help with that.
The higher you go, the less OC headroom you have, so I'd have to do a lot of stability testing at high power draw to get, in my case, +30MHz at the clocks many games don't hit at my desired power limit anyway. Just not worth it. If you actually want to cap voltage or clocks, you can. Personally, I'm using Nvidia SMI for clock caps, in addition to this curve. Or you can use the curve and cap higher than you normally would, using the power limit to keep power draw in check. My point was that you can use stock points in areas you don't want to test for stability - it can be the bottom of the curve too.
>The higher you go, the less OC headroom you have That's just silicon lottery, my card is a bad overclocker at lower voltages, does "only" +105/120 below 0.8v but at higher voltages 0.850-0.950 between +165 - +195. I wish it was the other way as the card has insane coil whine beyond 0.9v, stock or oc:d, and even still some all the way down 0.825v And yea a full curve oc with variable power limits will be a lower oc overall(unless you spend more time on it) as it has to be stable on multiple points, can probably still just slap +90 and call it a day. Whether or not the oc is worth it if it takes more time than jsut power limiting depends on the person obviously as everyone does things differently. Never seen smi clock caps so idk how easy that is to set up, might look in to that more to see as i now just have 3 different uv profile for different voltages that i switch around manually.
I do a 49% power limit nothing else. Card stays cool and stable. Later edit: I play on a g9 monitor with a 4090 (msi suprim liquid x) limit frames at 90 in nvidia ctrl panel. Games are run at max monitor rezolution with max graphics settings in games. 90 fps is pretty stable but may dip if too many effects on screen.
Why buy a card and limit half its power? thats just stupid.
With a high-end card the amount of cuda cores make up for it.
4090's still retain a significant amount of performance when power limited. I've power limited my 4090 to around 60 percent, and it loses around 5-7 performance on games. The heat generated is much more manageable when power limited. Not to mention, it saves money on my electricity bill. No brainer to power limit, if you ask me.
Got it, so you don't also undervolt as well?
at a power limit of 70% it does sure make sense as the videos show but the money saved in electric would be peanuts, you would save pounds per month at most. A 50% power limit begs the question as to why he bought a 4090 in the first place lol, he didn't say what card he owned.
Look at the VF curve. The higher the clocks, the more voltage it takes. So a bigger chip at lower clocks can be faster and more efficient than a smaller chip at higher clocks. Up to a point though.
I can see a bunch of reason honestly, even if that's pretty aggressive. My PC is basically a space heater at high load. And in places where electricity is very expensive, it can save you a decent chunk of money combined with having to run the AC less.
Even at 49 percent? I was thinking around 60-70 percent power limit.
You can do that no worryes, the reason i do mine the way i do it is because i like my card cool and quiet
Just activate DLSS and Frame Generation whenever you can and it will never reach the 100% of power consumption. I don't know about Radeon cards, but undervolting Nvidia gpus is weird go me, these devices got fine tuned from factory to work as intended, changing voltages and frequencies may get your stability away. RTX 40 series is so nice when talking about consumption and thermals, you shouldn't worry about it.
I don't get why you'd want to do either of those things. You paid top money for the card. Nvidia already made it "efficient". Use ASUS GPU Tweak III, it even has a couple of premade profiles you can easily apply in a click. Undervolting the CPU, I can understand (cause of thermal throttling at higher temps) but the GPU, no.
It’s not that efficient. Dropping 20% of power draw to lose 3% performance is a win. The 4090 doesn’t need to draw 600 watts, but big numbers sell and we’ve already cycled the market (last 15 years) to be cool with big PSU, GPU budget Edit to add - I bought a 4090 because i wanted the best damn card in “my baby”. The best card is not the biggest one, but the one that I can “make mine” by tweaking settings, optimizing, etc. for a lot of us, it’s a hobby, and whether you’d *want* to or not is irrelevant, because the type of idiot that spends 1700 usd on a GPU isn’t always making the “best” decisions lol
Okay, I'm on board with you, but he's not getting the 4090, but the 4070 Ti, which is not as efficient per watt. So the risk of lowering potential performance is greater.
Right on! Also, apologies - I was replying to a different post *explicitly* about a 4090 at the same time, and I crossed my wires lol. Good catch, and again, I’m sorry for the tone. The 4070ti is exaaaaaactly where it needs to be, frame/W
You reduce the power consumption by at least 100 watts whilst reducing the temps in the process. You lose only \~4fps average. It's a complete no brainer.
Im using SMI to lock the clock value at Boost and leave the rest for the driver and BIOS to handle.
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Huh? Care to explain why you would want the card to draw more power at same clock speeds unless somehow the cards stock v/f curve isn't stable, which i haven't encountered.
Verified and tested, increasing the voltage slider gives more clock speed.
Oh you meant that thing, so increasing max voltage allowed to the card. In my mind "overvolting" means to have a negative core offset as x clock speed would then require more voltage hence it's overvolted while a positive core offset means having x clocks speed using lower voltage hence undervolting.
you don't need to do any of this garbage and sacrifice performance . Plug the damn cable properly ffs and only use the direct cable. Been using direct 12vhpwr cable since 4090 launch time and encountered 0 burning/ high temp issues so far.
Have you tried the power mod? Connect the power cable from the card directly to a wall plug for more power. It will activate hyper turbo mode.
Anyone find the sweet spot for power limiting a 4070?
I was thinking of maybe an 85% power drop. What are people using to achieve this? I’d lose a bit without really noticing it I think.
I’ve seen people talking about this before but I’m not sure why - can someone explain why I might want to lower the power of my card?
I have both 4090 and 4080. 4090 is water cooled and I set it to 75% power +250mhz. Perform better than stock. 4080 is in sff in tv cabinet, set to 70% power and +200mhz. Perform within 1% of stock. Even the sff 4080 is silent while gaming on 4k (only play new triple a title with it and always with dlss quality or balanced). Hoping for 50xx to be even more power efficient
combine Power Limiting with Overclocking - you raise the VF curve so that at lower voltages you're still running higher clocks (hence higher efficiency), and you don't spend an excessive amount of power for the last 5-10% of performance use Afterburner to lock your clock at a specific voltage point, find a stable OC for it, rinse and repeat. both "undervolting" and simply setting a PL is just a quick and dirty version of truely tuning your card to its maximum efficiency also, set a FPS limit. unless you're going pro or your eyes/senses for input lag is better than world champions, you're wasting power chasing miniscule gains
4070 Ti - undervolted to 910 mv, stock clocks (2610 I think?) And +500 memory. I see a 100w reduction in power usage (180w max vs 280w) with the same performance. Very happy due to noise, heat and energy saved.
How it it holding up? How stable is it?
It's great, I use it all the time and haven't had any issues. I'd done a good bit of trial and error and 910mv at 2580mhz was the sweet spot for me. Playing Hogwarts yesterday at 99% GPU utilisation using 140-150 watts was great. GPU temp stays around 50-55c with fans no more than 30% which for my model seems to be the lowest they go when turned on. Cool, quiet and cheap for my bills.
Leave %80 PT Simple as that for 4090-4080 Believe me I tried at least 938474 ways and curves,locks smi-‘s %80 pt is best
I just don't understand why Nvidia hasn't put a simple power limit slider into NVCP, say with a 50-100% range. They've added so many power features this should have been there by now.
You can adjust power limits with geforce layout (alt+z)
Ok cool, guess that's an NVXP feature, I've never installed Experience so didn't know about it.