Can excessive undervolting damage a gpu

[TheRaginGamer]

I've just been overclocking my gpu, using valley benchmark for testing. I reached the max limit for gpu and vram frequency with satisfactory results so I decided to see how far I could undervolt my gpu to reduce heat and power consumption. My stable voltage at max settings was 1182mv, I did multiple tests until I got freezing and artifacting at 1138mv. So I went back up to a stable voltage but when I did one last test I got reduced performance and artifacting. I got worried so I restarted the computer and used the original settings with the voltage at 1182mv. The performance was almost the same but the artifacting got worse and worse during the test. I read some forums and most people say you cannot damage components by undervolting but my current experience showed otherwise. If you have much KNOWLEDGE about this topic then please give me some advice.

 

[nukemaster]

Over voltage can damage a part for sure. They limit voltage for a reason, but 1.182 does not seem that high for most cards. I mean a GTX 670 when boosting runs 1.175 already.

I would have thought it would take more voltage to do it. The card it self may have been defective from the start and just got worse.

You may want to try to lower your memory clock a bit to see if the artifacts go away. Defective memory looks just like a failing gpu many times.

 

[TheRaginGamer]

Over voltage can damage a part for sure. They limit voltage for a reason, but 1.182 does not seem that high for most cards. I mean a GTX 670 when boosting runs 1.175 already.

I would have thought it would take more voltage to do it. The card it self may have been defective from the start and just got worse.

You may want to try to lower your memory clock a bit to see if the artifacts go away. Defective memory looks just like a failing gpu many times.

that wasn't my question, 1182mv was my reference point which gave stable results, I undervolted my card until I reached instability @1138mv. The question was will too much undervolting damage my card.

I have turned off my pc for roughly 45mins and im back on it now, I retested the card at factory clock and my OC @1182mv with valley benchmark and didn't see reduced performance or artifacting. So im a little confused with the situation, it seems that my gpu wasn't permanently damaged due to undervolting. I think the gpu was still unstable after boosting voltage after I had reached the point of instability and testing caused things to get worse but turning off the computer seems to have solved the problem.

 

[nukemaster]

The answer is still yes, too much voltage can damage things(everything has some tolerance and it varies from device to device).

I have never seen "temporary" artifacts like that outside of driver bugs.

 

[TheRaginGamer]

The answer is still yes, too much voltage can damage things(everything has some tolerance and it varies from device to device).

I have never seen "temporary" artifacts like that outside of driver bugs.

yes pumping more electricity through components can surely damage or burn them out but that was never my question in the first place (the topic is about UNDERvolting -_-), nevertheless my gpu is running at my max overclock, undervolted to a lesser degree and is 100% stable in hours of bf4, just cause 2, skyrim, tf2 and WT.

but as previously stated i did get some artifacts when stress testing which produced artifacts that got worse and worse in a very short period of time. Now everything is perfect so i guess that was just some glitch/error happening with my gpu.

 

[nukemaster]

I am sorry, I must be so used to questions about overvolting.

Undervolting should not hurt things. Going too low will cause issues(artifacts), but should not cause damage.

My media center cpu has been undervolted for 5 years. I tested with prime95 and slowly lowered the voltage until it failed, then went back to the previous setting and did extensive testing with other software.

Now most of these video cards are very optimized for clock vs voltage. The top boost speed was set at the factory so undervolting may cause issues(artifacts) in some games while not cause them in other games. It is not like a cpu that has a fixed boost speed. Different video cards under the same model all have different boost speeds(even different than what is quoted by the manufacturer).