Just found a way to fix power limit grayed out in MSI Afterburner

[trungam]

After installing the latest NVIDIA driver using DDU, I got this problem

 

 

I have tried rolling back the old driver, reinstalling AB, even reinstalling windows but still having this problem

but I found a way

 

- Open GPU-Z in advanced tab you will see registry path

 

- Open the Registry Editor and go to that path

- Change the value of RMI2cValidatedPortMask to 1c7

 

- Restart your PC

- Then check the GPU-Z again you will see the "Power Limit" area which didn't appear before

 

- Check AB again and you will see the result

 

I don't know what RMI2cValidatedPortMask and 1c7 mean, I have an old GPU which is a GTX 970 with power limit working properly, I simply compared the registry value between the 2 GPU and found it =))

 

Hope this helps.

[Crunchy Dragon]

I'd be interested to know if this is a purely visual thing or if it actually unlocks the power limit.

 

As far as your problem of having the greyed out power limit option, that was by design on Nvidia's part. They locked the power limit for....some reason back with the release of Pascal and the GTX 10-series.

 

From what I remember though, the newer cards had power limit locked in the vBIOS or somewhere else in the firmware(but I could be remembering incorrectly), so there wasn't really a software workaround.

[Levent]

Maxwell cards are the last of the vBIOS modable cards. If you have a decent VRM card with decent cooling, highly recommend modding your bios. My strix 970 does 1530mhz all day long. Meanwhile it wouldnt clock past 1320mhz in games with stock vbios.

[porina]

49 minutes ago, trungam said:

I don't know what RMI2cValidatedPortMask and 1c7 mean

i2c is a data bus. It can be monitored for sensors, and you could write values to it to change settings. Presumably this is needed by Afterburner to talk correctly.

 

32 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

As far as your problem of having the greyed out power limit option, that was by design on Nvidia's part. They locked the power limit for....some reason back with the release of Pascal and the GTX 10-series.

 

From what I remember though, the newer cards had power limit locked in the vBIOS or somewhere else in the firmware(but I could be remembering incorrectly), so there wasn't really a software workaround.

Power limit has generally been user adjustable on nvidia dGPUs since at least Maxwell. I've done it on Pascal, Turing, Ampere, Ada. The "locked" part is that the upper limit isn't far beyond default power limit. OP did not have the ability to change it at all, and that is not the expected state as far as I'm concerned.

 

On my current desktop (Win11, 4070, latest driver) Afterburner lets me adjust power limit between 50% and 110%. Standard software, no special settings.

[Limitsura]

Yup , my GTX 950 wasnt even getting close to its maximum 1225MHz boost , so i decided to modify its vBIOS of the ASUS 75W model and it turned out excellent , i went through 1025MHz base to all the way up to 1400MHz base , stable and locked , without a power conector.

[trungam]

10 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I'd be interested to know if this is a purely visual thing or if it actually unlocks the power limit.

It is not a visual thing, it is real

before this fix I can't set power limit in cmd

 

 

after this fix it works

 

 

And this is my GPU vbios https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/214978/evga-rtx2080super-8192-190701-1

you can see the "Board power limit" it has the same information as the output of the cmd command

 

Before when I changed core clock or memory clock the screen went black and reset the clock, but now everything is normal.

[trungam]

9 hours ago, porina said:

On my current desktop (Win11, 4070, latest driver) Afterburner lets me adjust power limit between 50% and 110%. Standard software, no special settings.

Latest driver also worked for me before with adjustment range -50% to +17% like GPU-Z info shown in the screenshot above but after fresh install 2nd OS on another drive it got this problem, this is my first time having this problem.

[porina]

4 hours ago, trungam said:

Latest driver also worked for me before with adjustment range -50% to +17% like GPU-Z info shown in the screenshot above but after fresh install 2nd OS on another drive it got this problem, this is my first time having this problem.

I have to wonder if something changed. Older installs have the working information, but newer ones might not?

 

For what it is worth, the value of that setting on my system is 0x000007c so it isn't the same and may vary by GPU.

[trungam]

3 hours ago, porina said:

I have to wonder if something changed. Older installs have the working information, but newer ones might not?

Yes, I don't understand why and what's even more strange is that when I change to OS 1 and reinstall the latest driver, now OS 1 has the same problem as OS 2.

 

3 hours ago, porina said:

For what it is worth, the value of that setting on my system is 0x000007c so it isn't the same and may vary by GPU.

I tried the value of your system and it works fine, if I go back to the old value or leave it at 0 it stops working.

[afterburner17]

hi everyone. i testet all the numbers (7c2 and 7c). dont work for me. msi raider ge76 12900uhs. but i found this for the "grey voltage" : VDDC_Generic_Detection=1

if u put this in the settings, its open.

if someone know a a number like 7c2 or 7c to open the power limit or fan for gpu let me know. Thanks guys

[KirkH420]

If you just roll back to Driver 528.92, you will get your voltage limit slider back on any NVIDIA laptop and it's not cosmetic.

 

I guess it was an oversight but that driver version still allows it. I was playing with it last night actually on my 4080, but then I went back to up-to-date drivers. It lets you set 116% and also the relevant OnScreenDisplay will be re-enabled in MSI Afterburner/RIVA. Nobody realized this but NVIDIA also removed OSD for the Voltage Limit, but it does return with driver 528.92

 

I wonder if anything could be hex edited to allow that feature on future drivers. Of course you'd have to use an unsigned driver then...