Can’t control my RX 480s Voltage

[Marc_7979]

Hello everyone,

first of all my specs: I’m running an i5 3570k at 3.9GHz my graphics card is an ASUS Strix RX 480 at stock speed.
I’ve got the latest drivers installed and am running Afterburner 4.4.0.

I am using MSI Afterburner to get access to On Screen Display (OSD) information while playing games. In addition to that it allows me to set a specific fan-curve controlling noise during gaming.

However I want to undervolt my GPU from 1.168v to 1.060v to reduce temperatures and noise.
I tried using Wattman for that reason and reduced voltages in each power state. For some reason after few days my voltage settings get deleted and go back to stock. Even if voltages showed correctly in Wattman, the OSD from Afterburner sometimes tells me that the actual voltage while gaming is much higher.

For this reason I decided to use Afterburner as well for undervolting. Unfortunatly Afterburner doesn’t give the opportunity to set power states. However this is not my main issue but the following:

Whenever I control voltages with MSI Afterburner or even just start that program with windows (even with voltage control disabled) my voltage gets stuck at 0.800v and doesn’t go any higher than that resulting in 100% GPU load really low FPS.

I tried like every possible combination of settings in Afterburner options but couldn’t fix the issue

So what do I have to do to achieve the desired undervolt and preferably having Afterburner run to have access to OSD and custom fancurves?

 

[Guest]

The Radeon RX 480 has complicated p-states and has very complex power behavior. Nothing except Wattman can currently work.

 

[Marc_7979]

Well, but this is part of my problem. I can't even get Wattman to make the undervolt happen. Every 2 or 3 PC restarts the voltage goes back to stock. It just won't save my settings permanently.

 

[Cioby]

Some apps reset your OC after reboot. Use your AMD Control panel to OC it maybe? And check the settings. I managed to OC my GPU which was an R7 AMD at work.
Even on my Nvidia GPU I can only save the settings in some specific apps like EVGA precision or AORUS app. So maybe look for one from your exact manufacturer. Or check the option "start with Windows" then it might use your OC automatically.

 

[Marc_7979]

So I tried some things: First of all using GPU Tweak II. The ASUS OC tool. At first it seemed to be working but then the same problem as if I was using MSI Afterburner occured. THe voltage wouldn't go anywhere close to where it should. After some tinkering I gave up at this one eventhough it seemed promising in the beginning.

At the current state I'm not using any third party party programms - only Wattman. But with this solution I still can't find to have any control over my voltages. The voltage constantly goes way above my settings forcing the GPU to run hot and consume much power. It even seems unstable - voltage going up and down every second and so does the frequency. This behaviour was witnessed using high GPU load like Unigine Heaven Benchmark but also GPU loads around 50% in a game of DOTA 2.

There gotta be any way to control a modern, at the same time not brand new and fairly popular graphics card?! All I want is to run this shit below 1.1V

 

[Cioby]

So first you had trouble with it being undervolted, now it's overvolted?

 

[Marc_7979]

No,

the situation is the same: Stock voltage is 1.168V and I'm still aiming to run it at less than 1.1V (ideally 1.060v-1.070v) constantly.

 

[Cioby]

Well you said your voltage is too low and causes your GPU to heat up. Anyway. Even if you would lower the voltage it could cause crashes and such. The only thing to do is to lower it to the default value it came with. And use Vsync in your games so it doesn't have to power up higher than it can.