[SOLVED] Hitting the power limit before I should be.

[RedPhosphoru]

I have a GTX 1060 founders edition and while trying to overclock it I noticed I was hitting the power limit around 100% rather than the 116% that MSI afterburner says it goes to. Is there a way to change this?

 

[Pat Flynn]

The power limit will depend on the type of load on the GPU. Different games and benchmark suites will load down the GPU more or less than others - I see this all the time on my 2080Ti. It's most common when comparing Furmark to say, Unigine Heaven - Furmak will limit the GPU clock to a lower rate due to how it's taxing the GPU, where as Unigine will run peak clocks. This is similar to how Intel CPU's can't run full clock rates running heavy AVX instruction sets.

Tip - You can use GPU-Z's sensor graphs to tell you what is limiting you GPU's performance 😉
Tip2 - If you really, REALLY want to go nuts, you'll have to modify and re-flash your GPU's BIOS to go beyond the 115% limit. It's doable, but I don't recommend doing it without a TON of research, and also be prepared to replace the card if you burn it up by accident.