Will undervolting a card decrease the performance on it?

[Giga Bus Driver]

Looking to purchase a RX 5700 XT, choices are between the Red Devil and Nitro+ Special Edition.

I've heard that undervolting any 5700 XT would be good since they apparently have way higher than necessary power draw out of the box. I'm leaning towards the Nitro+ Special Edition because of its higher factory overclock where even the memory was overclocked. I'm concerned that if I undervolt this Nitro+ SE to Red Devil level then I would reduce its performance, making the purpose of buying the highest overclocked card pointless. Is this the case? Because from TechPowerUp review, the Nitro+ SE at stock sometimes pulled 270-300W of power alone. Preferably, I would like the keep the card speeds at stock factory OC while undervolting it, while I do recognize that it will mostly depend on silicon lottery, 270-300W seems quite excessive.

 

Also another question is that, is it possible for the Red Devil to OC to the Nitro+ SE level, in both clock and memory speed? I've read that it was getting limited to 19Gbps by the Wattman slide, whereas the Nitro+ SE memory is OC'd to 19.4Gbps stock. Not saying I will do this, just curious to know if its possible. Asking this because while I would like to purchase the Red Devil more than Nitro+ SE because of the looks (back plate of Red Devil looks incredible), Nitro+ SE seems to be the smarter choice. But also would like to know if undervolting will defeat the purpose of buying that super overclocked card.

[xAcid9]

I highly suggest you test it yourself. Usually even if it did, it negligible. You need to find the best spot between undervolting and increasing the power limit.

You can end up with better performance at lower power consumption if you tweak it right. 

[DailyProcrastinator]

TLDR.

 

There is a limit where undervolting can decrease thermal load therefore increase performance but you obviously not the case if you go to far. What that is on an RX 5700XT I do not know, but something to further research, or maybe someone on here has a more exact answer. 

[Giga Bus Driver]

5 hours ago, xAcid9 said:

I highly suggest you test it yourself. Usually even if it did, it negligible. You need to find the best spot between undervolting and increasing the power limit.

You can end up with better performance at lower power consumption if you tweak it right. 

When you say negligible, how little will it be affected? From the review I've read the Nitro+ SE has around 5% more performance than Red Devil. I will definitely test it myself but I still would like to know if the factory OC on memory can still be kept with undervolting. Otherwise if undervolting will reduce the memory OC on the Nitro+ SE to same as Red Devil, then really no point in getting the Nitro+ SE. I can't really just get Nitro+ SE and test it myself and just return it if undervolting reduces memory OC.

[xAcid9]

You only control the die/core voltage with undervolting, VRAM is not affected. 

If Red Devil use the same memory chip like Nitro+ SE then you can definitely get similar level of overclock with the Red Devil.