maxing out the powerlimit is kinda dumb.

[K0NG]

So i was bored and played with MSI Afterburner.
my 24/7 clock on my 2080 ti amp extreme is at around 2085 Mhz when it is on it's operating temperature. the average in HWinfo64 after 10 minutes on full load is 2075 Mhz.

Now i thought. what happens when i decrease the powerlimit a bit to 100% (the stock bios is at 300W already and goes up to around 360W with the slider maxed out.)

at 360W the card gets around 75°C Hot and runs at 2070-2085 Mhz.
with 300W the card is 9°C Cooler and that causes a higher boost than at 75°C... to exactly 2070-2085 Mhz with 60W less power draw.

where is the point? except of having a custom water cooled card that does not even exceed 50°C and boosts to oblivion due to the thermal headroom.

on Air the card gets just hot enough to make GPU Boost 4.0 dialing back the speed to the same as with stock TDP Limit. but it consumes way more power during that time.

i found the exact same "problem" with my 5700XT Pulse.

maxed out at 1.2v the card reaches 80°C and clocks down to 1950 Mhz.
with a 200W Powerlimit and 1.05V the card runs at 65°C and boosts up to 1950 Mhz aswell.

 

[TheKDub]

Upping the power limit is for when you're hitting your card's current power limit and thus not able to overclock higher. If your card can't handle the additional heat, then you'd be best off leaving it set to default, or maybe even reduced a bit.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I'd argue that speed is not a good indicator of how much power is needed. If you're only running games on the RTX 2080 Ti that don't peg the tensor and RT cores, then the card isn't going to need all the power it can consume. It'll still run fast because the FP and INT cores can still use the speed.

 

The only reason why it's not clocking faster is some other reason. Likely Vrel or Vop.

[K0NG]

in GPU Z the GPU is limited by current "pwr" at 300 and 360W.
it's not voltage limited in any scenario except of very high framerate gaming.