What does core voltage do?

[M0SIE]

I currently trying to overclock my 1080ti just wondering what does core voltage do?

[MartinKweh]

as much as possible dont touch it. just increase the max power then increase the core and memory frequency. but if you want to go further , you need to increase the core voltage to accommodate higher frequency. but mind you, higher voltage =higher temp

[Jurrunio]

Core voltage runs the GPU, in other words the electrical potential of electrons flowing in the GPU's compute cores.

 

whether you should touch it depends on the cooler and PCB.

[Mark Kaine]

Core voltage can allow you to squeeze out more performance but not necessarily.  Also Nvidia Pascal GPUs have a lot of protections in software so as long you know what you're doing and don't disable these protections it's nearly impossible to break the GPU by giving "too much" core voltage, the GPU simply won't do it if it could possibly damage it. 

 

 

From my own testings on a 1060 it's a pretty useless feature as it may improve test results in benchmarks (at +100%) but in games the GPU will throttle exactly the same with +0 or +100,  there's literally no real world difference except it's more stable without a core voltage OC, which might depends on individual games though. 

 

 

So,  really,  if you don't know exactly what you're doing *do not touch the core voltage*  whatsoever,  it's not worth the risks, however small they night be. 

[Mick Naughty]

Tend to run it as max on all my cards. Except when I had 550ti’s. 

Some pcb’s need it more than others. Hard to maintain an oc worth the time without a bit more voltage. 

[Man]

9 hours ago, M0SIE said:

I currently trying to overclock my 1080ti just wondering what does core voltage do?

Avoid any sort of overclocking if you don't even know what core voltage means. 

 

That's what common sense suggests.  

[Mark Kaine]

3 hours ago, Man said:

Avoid any sort of overclocking if you don't even know what core voltage means. 

 

That's what common sense suggests.  

Well to be fair, he probably has an idea what it would mean and I think everyone was there once when starting out - I didn't know either but with a little research it was easy to figure out your don't need it for a slight OC. 

 

Also I was lucky to find a video of this English dude (forgot name)  that had a tutorial of exactly my card and I simply copied everything to a T even benchmarking and stuff although that really wasn't necessary because his settings worked 100% for me,  but I still learned quite a lot by doing that. 

 

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

12 hours ago, M0SIE said:

I currently trying to overclock my 1080ti just wondering what does core voltage do?

How this affects overclocking is better understood by looking at the turbo boost performance cap reason. If you use a tool like GPU-Z, you can see the so-called "PerfCap reason". This is saying why the GPU isn't boosting further. It's one of these reasons:

• Util: GPU isn't doing enough work. May indicate bottlenecking or the task is too easy.
• Therm: The GPU is thermal throttling
• Pwr: The GPU isn't getting enough power, due to the VRM reaching its limit
• Vrel: The soft voltage cap has been reached
• VOp: The hard voltage cap has been reached

Touching core voltage touches the Vrel limit. It's a soft cap because the value set by default is there for reliable operation set by the manufacturer. It can be pushed if you want to eke out more clock speed, but once you hit the VOp limit, that's it.