Undervolting?

[TastyGuava]

From videos I’ve watched: people mention undervolting to reduce temperatures “drastically” and improve performance? Are there any true gains and how would I undervolt if so

[Skiiwee29]

Generally that pertains to AMD cards, but can minimally be applied to Nvidia cards to some degree as well to combat thermal throttling if you're hitting the thermal limits. 

[homeap5]

Improve performance? Not really. But sometimes temperatures can be lower and if stability remains the same - you can try that.

All depends on CPU. For example - in Ryzen 3600 case I recommend to activate adaptive offset mode set it to -0.05V.

 

If we're talking about GPUs then in most cases you can just set own fan curve and disable passive mode - and you'll get much lower temps, especially when idle.

[GhostRoadieBL]

MSI afterburner will let you undervolt most cards, 

it pertains to any GPU with a boost vs temp table (so any GPU after like 2010) lower temperatures mean higher boost states as long as the power is available to the chip. lower you can get the temp the higher the frequency the chip will run at or will hold boosted clocks longer. Jayztwocents does tons of videos on this with RipGN series, he's using it to overclock the cards much higher than stock but the same can be done on a smaller scale with undervolting. 

 

[Tan3l6]

Vega cards were the ones to get better performance by undervolting.

Others just work cooler with voltage lowering, afaik.

[Jurrunio]

usually temperatures improve mildly (since fan speeds also decrease considerably), which then leads to minor clock speed increase under GPU boost algorithms. Actually it's always a balance between voltage and clock speed, so you could in theory undervolt and overclock at the same time.

 

Only few cases that it would help temperatures drastically and still increase performance, like AMD Vega cards because AMD is way too conservative with voltage, leading to massive heat issues.

[Cyracus]

On my r5 3600 stock throttles down to 3700mhz approaching 90C, I achieved a manual 4175mhz with much less voltage than stock used, temps peaked ~78C. Using CTR now, 4100/4150 1.181v (my 4175 never crashed, but it's a small reduction for a likely more stable OC)  For ryzen adaptive/offset voltage doesn't really do much (due to the boosting nature of ryzen it still pulls the same or more voltage than stock half the time) so either manual/override voltage in bios or use CTR.

  Intel adaptive/offset work great
Video of bitwit undervolting a system for some how to

 

[homeap5]

On 10/18/2020 at 7:03 PM, Cyracus said:

On my r5 3600 stock throttles down to 3700mhz approaching 90C, I achieved a manual 4175mhz with much less voltage than stock used, temps peaked ~78C. Using CTR now, 4100/4150 1.181v (my 4175 never crashed, but it's a small reduction for a likely more stable OC)  For ryzen adaptive/offset voltage doesn't really do much (due to the boosting nature of ryzen it still pulls the same or more voltage than stock half the time) so either manual/override voltage in bios or use CTR.

  Intel adaptive/offset work great
Video of bitwit undervolting a system for some how to

 

Sorry, but because of nature of Ryzen voltage behavior, offset gives you better results. It has no sense using offset when voltage is constant. Adaptive + offset makes all voltages - higher and lower - drop by constant value.

[Cyracus]

Just stumbled upon this gpu undervolting guide, of most value were the tips about using the volt frequency curve editor in afterburner, tab/shift+tab to cycle between nodes, up/down arrows to change desired frequency, ctrl+arrows to increase/decrease voltage by 10 https://sff.life/how-to-undervolt-gpu/  

It got me playing with my gpu again (Zotac 2060amp). Here's a condensed list of results
stock         7603  76C       power/volt limit  
base OC   7741  77C       power limit   
975mv-2040  7748  75C  power limit
950mv-2025  7660  73C  mem+1100 7875
900mv-1965  7492  69C  mem+1100 7759

on that 900/1950. (950mv drops to 1965-1995 when it heats up, 900mv bounces between 1935/1950)