Question Undervolting an RX 5700 XT ?

[Fede83]

Hey so i was wondering It Is worth to undervolt the card and max out the Power limit to 50% ? It Is for Daily gaming usage but i wanna keep temps low. Is increasing the Power limit doing something other than more stability ?

 

[hotaru.hino]

Whether or not it's worth it depends on what's going on already. In my case, I do a combination of undervolting and FPS limiting, which drastically reduces the power consumption of my card in games where I don't really need the extra frames. This is on top of behavior I've observed in games where the video card power consumption goes up, but not the frame rate.

However, you can get away with just power limiting. That won't affect stability. Undervolting can affect stability and requires a lot of testing to make sure it's stable. Alternatively, you could set an FPS cap as well if you play games that card generates excessive frames per second.

 

[Fede83]

Whether or not it's worth it depends on what's going on already. In my case, I do a combination of undervolting and FPS limiting, which drastically reduces the power consumption of my card in games where I don't really need the extra frames. This is on top of behavior I've observed in games where the video card power consumption goes up, but not the frame rate.

However, you can get away with just power limiting. That won't affect stability. Undervolting can affect stability and requires a lot of testing to make sure it's stable. Alternatively, you could set an FPS cap as well if you play games that card generates excessive frames per second.

So i Guess make sense to not go at 50% pl but keep It to 0 right ?

 

[drea.drechsler]

Hey so i was wondering It Is worth to undervolt the card and max out the Power limit to 50% ? It Is for Daily gaming usage but i wanna keep temps low. Is increasing the Power limit doing something other than more stability ?

Undervolting is absolute benefit, go as far as you can with no stability problems. Undervolting lowers temperature and the card returns that by operating with higher clocks. There's no real downside, aside from loss of stability at some point, since operating at lower voltage also helps with GPU operating life (FIT).

Testing for undervolt stability is pretty simple: just run TimeSpy stress test. It will crash out of the test pretty quick if way too far, or fail the test if just a little too far

But raising power limits can have the opposite effect for performance. If done too far, it helps the card heat up faster so it lowers clocks and performs less well. It can help though, you just have to use some discretion. Spinning up fans faster lets you push it further, of course. I've never experienced stability problems from pushing too far though, just watch temperature. And if forcing too high of a temp it should be obvious it has negative effect on GPU operating life (FIT).

An interesting corelation effect: lowering voltage lowers power required, all else equal (no change to clocks). So actually you don't need to raise power limit more than just a small amount to enjoy greater performance and cooler operating from lowered voltage.

 

[hotaru.hino]

So i Guess make sense to not go at 50% pl but keep It to 0 right ?

I would say start off with 85% and set an FPS cap of what you're okay with.

 

[tennis2]

Hey so i was wondering It Is worth to undervolt the card and max out the Power limit to 50% ? It Is for Daily gaming usage but i wanna keep temps low. Is increasing the Power limit doing something other than more stability ?

You need to keep the 2 terms straight:

Power Limit: Stock 5700XT power limit is 225W. If you set that to +50%, that's a 337W max. Watts = heat.

Undervolting: This is modifying the frequency vs voltage curve. This is TYPICALLY an offset of the whole curve (although you can adjust individual points manually), but for example, if the stock curve contains 1900MHz @ 1.1V (say that's your 225W limit) and you do a -0.1V offset, the card will now do 1900MHz @ 1.0V. As Drea said, with AMD/NVidia auto boost behavior, that's just going to cause the card to boost to a higher frequency (maybe 2000MHz now) until it hits the power limit again.

Sometimes (especially with GPUs) the offset is displayed by MHz offset. In which case, a positive MHz offset is an undervolt. For CPUs, the undervolt offset is by voltage, so negative volts = undervolt. Confusing, I know.

If you want to reduce temps the main way is to apply a NEGATIVE power limit (ie, less than 100%/0%). You can also do things like a frequency cap, AMD Chill, FPS limit, and/or any other number of things that will keep the GPU from ramping up to (say) 225W.
You can also combine those methods with FSR if you feel like your frame rates have suffered too much from the power limiting.

I run my 3060Ti at 75% power limit (-25% for AMD Adrenaline) all the time.