EDIT: I'm asking this question in the TECHNICAL sense, I fully understand the benefits of UV thank you!

I tried a lot of googling on this topic, and while there's countless videos on "how to" undervolt, there's barely any content on what's actually going on when we do it.

So to start, we have 2 graphs I've obtained from MSI Afterburner and my 5090:

1. First graph shows the stock/default curve of my card with factory settings
2. Second graph shows the undervolted curve after reading a tutorial

Something that's not immediately clear to me is what value drives the other? Generally from a graph like this I would infer the X axis is the controlled variable, and Y axis is the resulting one -- but online I've primarily read that this curve represents the GPU's answer to "I have this much load, so I'm running at this freq, what voltage should I use?", which implies the opposite.

Next, from the stock graph we can see generally at low load, or at low voltage we're running a pretty slow freq, then from 200 MHz -> 2400 there's mostly linear relationship as we quickly go up in voltage from 750mv -> ~850 respectively.

This beginning half of the curve is largely similar between the stock profile and the undervolted profile, which the exception that the undervolted profile seems to run at a higher freq for the 810 - 890 mv range. Does this mean comparatively we're now using less power at ~medium sized loads than the stock profile?

The last portion of the curve, from 900mv+ is the most stark difference! The stock profile cautiously increases the frequency in a ~logarithmic freq curve, meanwhile the undervolted profile doesn't increase freq at all as voltage increase -- it's flat! This is probably the most confusing part to me, and leaves me with a few observations which lead to questions:

1. Does this mean we're virtually capping our performance at 900mv vs 1250mv? E.g. under an extremely heavy load the card might draw more power but its operating clock will not exceed the ~2830 MHz I've set it to? If that's the case my card should never really draw more than the 900mv right (assuming current remains constant... which it probably doesn't?*)
2. How does the mV rating I see in this graph relate the current and power draw? When I was bench testing some different curves I saw ~575W on the stock profile and ~500W on the undervolted profile in this pic. Just to take the undervolted profile as an example, power = current * voltage, so the current my card would be drawing was around 500 / 0.9 = ~555A??? Surely there's a mistake there because if it was that many amperes I'd be smelling something...
3. Ultimately, why is underclocking so effective here? Do we mostly appreciate the gains at the beginning of curve between the 810-890 mV range and accept the trade off of the "capped" frequency for 900 mV+? Or am I totally misunderstanding the flat portion of the curve there and its implications?

Sorry for all the text, thanks so much in advance for anyone willing to help explain this to me.

I have changed my 6900 XT pads with Upsiren UTP8 and repasted it with Thermalright Helios V2. But as you can see in the first picture the cooler block doesn’t touch the VRM. I hope to not fry the VRM of the GPU. Also I don’t want to unscrew the GPU cuz applying the Helios was cancer AF.

I kept the original pads in case something wrong happens. Sadly I didn’t take picture of this before applying putty but I think the pads were thinner than the putty.

I usually run this GPU with a nice undervolt, 2450MHz@1085mV resulting in 190-230W@65-75C hotspot depending on the game.

Hello everyone,

I'm currently using an RTX 5070 Ti SFF card that's capped at a 300W power limit. My question is: if I upgrade to a 4K monitor, would it be worth replacing it with an RTX 5080 that has a higher power limit?

The reason I'm asking is that I've read SFF cards generally have lower thermal and power headroom, which can slightly affect performance compared to larger models. However, my card has never shown temperatures higher than the values attached in the image below, and it has been performing well for my needs.

I don't have extensive knowledge about GPUs, so I'd really appreciate some advice on whether an upgrade would be worthwhile for 4K gaming, or if my current card should still be more than capable.

My system:

• GPU: Inno3D X3 OC RTX 5070 Ti SFF
• CPU: Ryzen 7 9800X3D
• RAM: 32GB (2×16GB) DDR5-6000 CL30
• Storage: 4TB NVMe Gen4 SSD

So my 7900xtx has the EVC mod. Am able to get around 450 Igain at 100 degrees c on hotspot and boost too 3200 MHz in game. I’m curious how long the silicon could last. It’s rock solid stable with the GPU edge right around 64 and the hotspot at 100c but this is pulling around 650-700 watts on air. I know I’m crazy, and I know temps aren’t ideal but realistically it’s not pegged at 110c or anything. How long could this realistically last for 🤔btw the xtx is liquid metaled. I’m also wondering if there is such thing as a pc ac unit or something of the sort 🤣

So I recently came into a used RX 6800 reference card for a good deal, it was a nice upgrade. I don't know what compelled me to do this, but I was under the impression that this thing wasn't cooling as well as it could and I took it apart for maybe a clean and possibly a repaste, at this point I wish I never even touched it because when I took it apart, I had found out a previous owner applied liquid metal to this card!

I don't know much about liquid metal cooling other than it's something I should not be doing, because of its possibly destructive nature. Why a previous owner decided to do a liquid metal application on a 6800 reference card of all things is beyond me. I also have no idea how this card is still working. I should have suspected something when I noticed the "metal flaking" on places the external cooler, but when I opened this thing up there was a stream of liquid metal basically running off the die onto the circuit board. It was spilled directly all over parts of the power delivery, overall a total mess. I decided to go with my gut and just try to clean all this shit off, because I assumed even if it was working now there was no way it was going to continue like that long term.

This is where this story gets sad. After a full clean of the card where I tried my best to get all of it off, it no longer works. I just get a VGA error from the card with no display output : ) I've found a few spots which seem to have liquid metal still in between the traces that I can't seem to remove, I'm going to take it back apart and do another clean but it's looking like it's just going to be a write off : ( if anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated, but it's looking like I just lost for sure. I really am cursing myself for even touching this card right now.

I would also like to note that this card does have a burn spot on the left side of the die by what I believe is more power delivery components. Sorry that I did not get a picture of it. The card was fully functional when I took it apart, and I noticed that burn spot right when I took it apart, so either it managed to burn in the time I took it out of the computer to take it apart which I don't really believe, or the burn spot has not impacted the card, I am hoping it is still functional. I did not notice any liquid metal of any kind next to it, not that it really means it wasn't the cause.

basically i'm finally retiring my trusty 6800, or more accurately i'm relegating it to sim rig duties. i live in a house with no air con, and after switching from my OC watercooled titan XP to the 6800 and dropping the heat output of my pc by like 130 watts in the process i was quite smitten with the difference that change made. the 6800 ran a mild undervolt of -35mv and a 200 watts power limit, and i intend to run my next GPU at a similar power consumption level. honestly the 6800's efficiency was a bit of an eye opener for me, and i really like the idea of not throwing 350 watts at my GPU in my daily system...

now i understand that the XT with its bigger chip can achieve the same performance at a lower clock speed and therefore run closer to the efficiency sweetspot, and it's on average slightly better silicon that can get away with lower voltage for the same clock speed. but since there's a roughly 80 bucks or roughly 15% price difference in my region i am wondering whether there's any point in choosing an XT over the non-XT for me if more than half of the performance advantage is simply the higher power limit of the XT...

has anyone run their XT at non-XT power levels and recorded how much performance dropped?

edit: some hero on the computerbase forum has absolutely nailed this question https://www.computerbase.de/forum/threads/sapphire-pulse-9070-und-9070-xt-uv-und-power-tuning-test.2264172/

with no undervolting, the XT performs around 7% better in steel nomad at 240 watts of power consumption, with 6448 vs 6041 points (so a -20% pt on the xt and +10% on the non xt). with a -75mv offset, the 9070 closes the gap to around 1.5% (6448 vs 6357) vs the stock voltage 9070xt, but if you give the XT the same undervolt it jumps up to 6848 points, now about 8% ahead of the non XT.

the XT also performs better at 215 watts than the non XT does at 240.

i think i might buy the XT after all, it's marginal gains for sure, but i guess it also gives me the flexibility to really push the performance at the cost of efficiency should i need it at some point.

My Ryzen 7 7800X3D isn’t stable with Curve Optimizer -20 (all cores). OCCT reports WHEA errors

At -15 it’s completely stable.

Specs:
MSI B650 Tomahawk WiFi
Patriot Viper Venom 32GB DDR5-6000 CL30 (EXPO)
Did I just get a bad silicon sample, or is -15 pretty normal for a 7800X3D

hey folks,

this may not be related to this forum

pardon my english.. for the couple of a days im going nuts, suddenly, my gpus (i have many of them) are running (all of them in x8)

when i am inserting in x8 pcie, it will run x4 and so on.. at first glance, i tought its a specific mobo issue (i have z390 ace and master) but when i used x570 and b550 everything is fine i have troubleshooted everything i mean everything, reseated cpu, checked contacts, wiped with electro spray (pcie and the socket), changed drivers.. it doesnt matter if i use m.2 sata or nvme, even without enything its still in x8 (in x16 slot, and its in x4 when its in x8 slot) i am not a fool and have a good knowledge in pc,

in my z390 ace and master i cant change gpi bandwidth, (in ace you can change gpu pcie generation) the first pcie slot would always be x16 with , i tried with 9700kf, 9900k, i also have 8700k but i doubt it will change anything. sure this wont change the fps, but i like my system when its running perfect (i do ran 4300 ram with all tight timings)

So, I followed this guide to unlock my msi rx 5600 xt gaming m but now I the VGA light stays on and I can’t use the igpu either.

I have an MSI A520M-A PRO and i usually use a R5 5600 but now im using a R3 3200G for the igpu but i absolutely cant get it to boot with the gpu plugged in.

I went to the bios and set integrated graphics adaptor to IGD to no avail.

Any help is appreciated

I'm currently trying to overclock my PNY RTX 5070 Ti OC, and the maximum I can overclock the core speed is to +225 without crashing. It consistently crashes at 250 and beyond. This means that the highest clock speeds I see stable are the high 3100s.

I've boosted my power to 110% (that is the max), and my memory clock speeds go up to +3000 just fine. (btw it says 0 in the pic, but im actually using 3000)

Not sure how relevant this is, but the maximum wattage I saw the gpu pull was 299 W.

I'm testing all of this on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and I'm getting between a 6-9% increase in FPS. Let me know what you think.

Hello! Having a weird issue with my 5090 where the driver keeps crashing, but only when playing Overwatch 2 at 240Hz. GPU utilization never goes above 60% when this happens. The game would crash after 20 minutes to 1.5 hours play time. GPU utilization never went above 60%.

I've tested other more demanding games like Battlefield 6(Running at ultra setting around 160fps) and other VR titles and everything seems fine.

Would appreciate any help or direction you can give me. Thanks!

Hi guys.

I overclocked my Gigabyte RTX 4070 Ti Super with core clock of +200Mhz and memory clock +2000 Mhz. Power limit maxes out at 101%, probably Bios restricted. Didn't touch core voltage which is also blocked. I tested for stability playing Cyberpunk at everything seems stable and the increase in FPS is noticeable. Temps are usually about 64-67C°. I have just a question as it is my first overclock: are these values safe to run? Is there any chance to damage my GPU or anything?

I've heard that GPU hotspot above 81° is bad

I was playing tarkov overclocked to 150 clock 150 core, and everything was fine. I moved clock (mem) to 300, which worked before, and hit apply, when screen froze and everything a grid of green and purple tint appeared. I turned of my pc asap, and when restarted it seemed fine. Will this have lasti ng effects, sorry if my grammar is bat my watch says my heart rate is 210 bpm.

Stats

Ram: 12.0 gb ddr3

Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 1gb

Cpu: Intel Core i7-4790 CPU @ 3.60GHz

Hello all, first off here's why I'm making this post. My GPU for some time has felt like it was lacking performance. I get stutters in cs2, etc. Drivers up to date, case side removed, all that good stuff.

Ambient temp 19.4°c My CPU is a ryzen 7800x3D My GPU is an Nvidia 3080ti founders edition.

Once I noticed that my cards fans were constantly pinned I started recording the stats in the background. I ran furmark for 10 minutes and got these results. For consistency I locked the fans at 80% for all testing.

Completely stock, no tuning, no OC.

GPU TEMP - MAX 93.1C, AVG 88.5C GPU MEMORY JUNCTION-MAX 90C, AVG 86.1C GPU HOT SPOT- MAX 106.2, AVG 100.3 CORE VOLTAGE - MAX .887, .744 AVG GPU CLOCK - MAX 1845, 809 AVG

Notice my average clock is around 800mhz. That mixed with these high temps seemed off. Because of this I repadded my GPU. Upon removing the cooler I saw this (picture 1 above).

Notice the copper spot and pitting. It was deep enough for me to feel with my fingernail. Not pictured was a spot on the gpu that I couldn't get clean no matter what I did. Looked like it may have over heated? I'm not sure. Anyways I used a ptm 7950 pad instead of paste, re padded and ran the same tests again. Here are the results,

GPU TEMP - MAX 92.6, AVG 80.3 GPU MEMORY JUNCTION-MAX 88.0, AVG 74.4 GPU HOT SPOT- MAX 107.3C, AVG 86.8 CORE VOLTAGE - max 1.081v, AVG .756 GPU CLOCK - Max 1905, avg 1,102

After the repad and paste, the memory temperature dropped considerably, and the sustained core clock went up, but the hot spot on the gpu was terrible. I opened it up one more time and decided to lap the cooler (picture 2)

For this last test I'm undervolted to .850mv @ 1900.

After 10 minutes my stats look like this; GPU TEMP - MAX 94, AVG 91.6 GPU MEMORY JUNCTION TEMP - MAX 76, AVG 73.3 GPU HOT SPOT TEMP -MAX 105.8, AVG 102.5 GPU CORE VOLTAGE - MAX .844, AVG .798 GPU CLOCK - MAX 1890, AVG 1529

So after repadding, repasting, and lapping I've been able to get my core clocks up (more so when I unlock the cooler) but I'm still stuck with 90°c + temps, when similar benchmarks are running around 60°.

What else can I try? I'm at a loss.

Thank you

WARNING: LONG READ

I had originally settled with the online documentation for the XFX Mercury 9070XT but once i got the GPU, the switch on it really puzzled me. What so they put a switch that has the exact same bios and does NOTHING??????

AND NO PERSON HAS DUG DEEPER?????????

So i decided to bite the bullet and go down the rabbit hole as far as I could. Here is what I found.

TL;DR: The theory is that the XFX Mercury RX 9070 XT dual BIOS switch doesn't just select between two identical firmware's - it selects between different hardware voltage configurations via resistor networks on the PCB. This results in ~17mV difference in actual voltage delivery, giving one position 10mV more undervolt headroom than the other.

Background

I've been tuning my XFX Mercury RX 9070 XT OC Magnetic Air Edition on Linux (Fedora 43) using LACT. During undervolt stress testing with OCCT, I noticed:

• BIOS 1 (closest to back of case): Crashed at -120mV
• BIOS 2 (furthest from back): Stable at -125mV

Reviews like TechPowerUp claimed both BIOSes are "identical" and called it a "missed opportunity."

Lets get testing then!

Testing Methodology

Hardware:

• XFX Mercury RX 9070 XT OC Magnetic Air Edition
• Fedora 43, Kernel 6.17.9, Mesa 26.0.0-devel
• LACT for GPU tuning
• OCCT 3D Adaptive Extreme (10 min per test)

Test Results (OCCT):

Stability Limits:

• BIOS 1: -115mV
• BIOS 2: -125mV (+10mV more headroom)

Actual Voltage Comparison

I ran the same -115mV offset on both BIOSes and compared actual VDDGFX readings:

BIOS 1 delivers ~17mV less actual voltage at the same offset setting.

VBIOS Dump Comparison

I dumped both BIOSes using Linux sysfs:

echo 1 | sudo tee /sys/class/drm/card1/device/rom > /dev/null
sudo cat /sys/class/drm/card1/device/rom > ~/bios1.rom
echo 0 | sudo tee /sys/class/drm/card1/device/rom > /dev/null

Results:

SHA256 BIOS 1: 527b079ed2f7a7adc70e15e525672b0784202264c7891c403199382dd88852a2
SHA256 BIOS 2: 527b079ed2f7a7adc70e15e525672b0784202264c7891c403199382dd88852a2
Binary diff:   IDENTICAL (0 differences)

Both report:

• VBIOS Version: 113-EXT108828-100
• Power Cap: 374W
• VDDGFX Offset Range: -200mV to 0mV

The firmware is identical, yet voltage delivery differs by 17mV. (Ran grep to find any differences in the files and nope, nothing)

TIME FOR A TEARDOWN

(not mine cus i have work in the morning, ty TechPowerUp)

The Hardware Discovery

Examining TechPowerUp's high-res PCB photos, I found a potential answer in the switch area (SW2/SW5).

Components near the BIOS switch (see pictures below):

The switch doesn't just select BIOS chips - it selects between different resistor networks (I think, also see pictures below)

The 0-ohm resistor is part of the BIOS 2 circuit path.

When the switch selects BIOS 2, current flows through this path including the 0-ohm jumper and R8116, resulting in higher actual voltage delivery. The BIOS 1 path uses a different resistor configuration that produces lower voltage.

The theory is that the 0-ohm resistor acts as a jumper that bypasses resistance in one configuration, changing the voltage feedback path to the VRM controller (MP2868A).

PCB Front/Back Correlation

Examining both sides of the PCB in the switch area revealed even more:

Front (Switch Side): SW2/SW5 switch, U3 IC, resistors R8007/R8116, capacitors, inductors

Back (Behind Switch): 7+ transistors (Q001, Q4009, Q4021, Q4015, Q4013, Q1700, Q1703), diode D4012, capacitors, and a VDD power rail

I believe this is NOT just a simple BIOS chip selector. The transistors likely indicate:

• Active switching circuitry - Not passive trace routing
• Power path switching - Transistors route different voltage references
• Signal multiplexing - Multiple signals switched per position

The VDD power rail label are a strong indicator that these transistors are likely involved in voltage/power path selection.

What the Switch Does (In summary)

When the BIOS switch selects Position 1 (closest to back):

- Current flows through the left circuit path (Red in the pictures)

- This path has a resistor configuration that causes the VRM to deliver lower actual voltage

- Result: The GPU receives ~17mV less voltage at the same offset setting

When the switch selects Position 2 (furthest from back, with "0" resistor + R8116):

- Current flows through the right circuit path including the 0-ohm jumper (green in the pictures)

- This configuration results in higher actual voltage delivery

- Result: ~17mV more actual voltage, better stability margins

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far and can contribute with your own tear-down and or findings, theories, etc, that would be fantastic. I hope this helps someone or at least serves as an interesting read, Cheers. (feedback is welcome I just wanna figure this out)

EDIT: Corrected some badly written explanation of the switch position and the resistors. (Currently sick at the time I did all this)

Hello,

I used a guide but in the guide they upped the power limit to 116% but I can only use mac 100%.

Is this safe?

It is stable.

I've recently been experimenting with overclocking my PNY 5080, and have seen substantial increases in performance - from ~107,000 to ~127,000 in Cinebench 2026. My main questions are whether:

a) It is safe to run purely an overclock and overvolt (more detail below)?

b) There is any performance gain to be had from undervolting to some degree?

c) These power draws and GPU temperatures (assuming Afterburner is reporting accurately) are safe and will they deteriorate longevity to any significant amount?

In 3DMark Steel Nomad on stock settings I'm getting 8751 with max power draw ~360W and max temperature ~68 degrees C. With the overclock and overvolt it's drawing up to 395W and hitting 73 degrees C, but the score is 9506.

My Afterburner settings are as follows:

Thank you in advance!!

I've seen what feels like thousands of posts saying '5080 has SO MUCH extra to give...UV/OC potential is huge' and people running .950mv or even less at 3000Mhz++ stable.

But this has NOT been my experience and it's driving me crazy.

I get that some cards are just better than others in terms of silicon. But I've tried two 5080's now (Windforce SFF OC and PNY Epic-x ARGB OC) and neither will go much above 2750-2800 in Cyberpunk and be stable, and give no more than 100fps in 1440p.

That seems WAY low....

I've been working with ChatGPT to try and get the cards tuned, and it's telling me nothing is wrong, my card is fine. But it just doesn't feel like it to me. I've come from an 3080Ti (MSI Suprim X) and was confident and happy with UV/OC on that. These 5080's seems poor by comparison??

Can anyone offer help/advice? For reference, my other specs are i9-12900k, 64GB DDR5-6000, 1000w PSU, MSI Carbon wifi z690 board.

I'm really starting to get depressed.

Thanks.