Question 12GB 3080 has high power consumption ?

[2spooky]

Hello fellers, I have an RTX 3080 12GB version and after many tests, I found a stable uv+oc profile with msi afterburner.

The profile is 825mv with 1815mhz coreclock and +800mhz to memory clock. No crashes , no weird artefacts etc

I've learned how to undervolt from this youtube clip

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqpfYTi43TE
and I've noticed that his founder edition 3080 which is limited to 320W , when undervolted to 850mv with 1850mhz core clock , only consumed 231W , I know my 3080 is actually a 12gb version which has different power limits to 370W but still why did I only manage to reduce to a poor 344W with 825mv as you can see in the images I posted ? Am I doing something wrong or am I not understanding something ? Wish someone who knows to explain this thing .

The current values from the photos are from a playing session of Dying Light 2 @ 1440p maxed out(RT on) native resolution. Basically at 825mv I only managed to reduce 26W which is pathetic. 344W from 370W(which is the limit of this model)

 

[Eximo]

Was that max sustained for long? Screenshot appears to be post testing, so hard to say.

If the card can still pull 344W at 825mV then I would say that is an extremely stable chip, a golden sample if you will. Probably should have been binned for a mobile solution. Alternatively it is extremely leaky and bleeds power.

Either way, just start limiting the power until the clock speed starts to rapidly decline.

I want to say my 3080 Ti likes to max around 2100Mhz, but it has been a while since I messed with it.

 

[2spooky]

I made a short clip after a few minutes of playing, it seems here in the safe zone consumes the most power, when I go outside it goes down to around 310W , but even after a few hours of playing , it maxes out at around 345W , I don't know why and how , since it's undervolted to 825mv...

clip of testing => https://jumpshare.com/share/174YJHqPyAkh6LF5Xnig

Btw don't mind the gpu temps, I just limited the fan to 68% where it's pretty much silent how I like it. And yes, these settings are stable, I have this gpu since last year, bought it on second hand, never had any problems with it, I just mind the high power draw even after undervolt, I don't want to limit the power cause then my core clock goes to poop, I wanna retain the performance of 1800mhz but reduce the power under 300W.

 

[Eximo]

Try setting a power limit and watch the clock speeds.

Being a used card it is possible you have a modified vBIOS that is showing you erroneous numbers. I would verify that, or flash it to the latest version you can find.

 

[2spooky]

I did limit the card to 80% of power and my core clock went to like 1600mhz ... and I double checked the vbios version and it matches up exactly what it says in gpuZ.

This is the bios it has from the factory. https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/242722/gigabyte-rtx3080-12288-211123

However I did a test in unigine heaven benchmark and indeed with the undervolt setting the card draws only 260W but I don't know why it doesn't stress the card more, if I use furmark for example it goes right up to 360W even with the 825mv , I thought once you undervolt the card , then it caps out to a certain power draw but it seems in furmark that it draws exactly like on default settings. Also Dying Light 2 with the maxed settings 1440p native, it's quite demanding and it stresses the card a lot, reaching almost furmark power consumption values even undervolted to 825mv. It's so confusing, either I'm missing something or idk.

 

[Eximo]

I'm beginning to wonder if your voltage limit is effective. This is when I would whip out the multimeter and check myself.

 

[2spooky]

Ok I flashed 2 bioses for testing.

1st one flashed was gigabyte eagle with 350W target and 370W limit
2nd one flashed was asus strix oc with 390W target and 450W limit

my original bios is gigabyte gaming oc with 370W target and same limit

I went back to the original bios, with the eagle bios all it did was reduce the power limit to 350, so when it hit around 340 it started downclocking from 1800mhz to around 1700 but was still consuming 340W even with 825mv, with the strix oc bios was all over the place, my coreclock was 1400-1500-1600 and power consumption 380W , it wouldn't even let me undervolt or do anything in msi afterburner.

So in conclusion, all this bios swap messes up with your card power limits and fans, the power consumption was the same or way worse in the case of strix oc bios.

I give up, gonna live with it until I upgrade to a lower power consumption card in the future, for now I'll just pay my electricity bills thanks for trying to help.

 

[helper800]

With the chip pulling 175 watts at 0.825 volts that means the card is pushing ~212.12 amps. Seems you got a golden sample. I would test by putting the card in a stock MSI profile and limiting power to 75%. See what it clocks to. 370 watts * 0.75 power budget = 277.5 watts.

 

[2spooky]

I made another clip where I tested the following: https://jumpshare.com/share/f5zT4GiyOciKnz4vizxh

Stock profile but 75% power , as you can see in the clip:
voltage between 800mv-825mv
core clock is between 1500-1600mhz
power between 270-280W

Stock profile
voltage between 893mv-912mv
core clock between 1700-1800mhz
power between 340-350W

And my uv+oc profile
voltage 825mv(static)
coreclock 1815mhz(static)
power around 328W

As you can see, with my 825mv uv+oc profile, I barely managed to save 22W from the stock profile which goes between 893mv-912mv in this specific scenario I tested. I don't know and most likely I don't care if it's a golden sample , I just want to reduce the power consumption to under 300W but retain the 1800mhz core clock so I don't lose any more FPS.

 

[helper800]

It seems that your particular sample needs the wattage you don't want to maintain your desirable clocks. Limiting the voltage further will likely do nothing but make it unstable, but you can try lowering it in 10mv increments.

 

[thestryker]

Undervolting doesn't guarantee lower power consumption across the board. If you're looking to guarantee a certain level of power consumption that's what power limits are for. Most of the time I run mine at 75% power (this drops it to 300W) and have an undervolt applied. I would have to look up the curve I have in place, but I think my voltage is around the same as yours at that speed (I have my curve going to around 2GHz).

You've got a really steep clock vs voltage dropoff which is why your clock speeds drop so much when you put a power limit on. If there isn't a reason for that then I'd suggest trying to flatten the curve a bit so that you're around 1700MHz at 800mv.

 

[2spooky]

Yeah, well , I'm not willing to trade any more of my core clock frequency for lower power consumption. I'm just going to live with it at 1800mhz and 825mv with whatever it consumes. If I go lower than 825mv then in some games crashes.