Underclock/Undervolt 3080Ti

I have been watching videos as well as some sites on undervolting or underclocking my 3080Ti.

3080Ti run hot. I have limited cooling.

I used MSI afterburner and reduced my core clock about 200hz then adjusted the voltage to a lower boost postition.

Played a few rounds of DayZ and it worked well. Instead of boosting to 2010Mhz at 1.1v it was going to 1800Mhz at 0.8v

This reduced the watts from 350 to 280 and temperature from 82 degrees to 69 degrees. FPS remained basically the same.

Come today with no changes to MSI Afterburner (loads with windows startup) and it is basically ignoring the settings and behaving as if the changes are not there. Have looked in afterburner and the settings are there.

No idea why it will hold the settings or apply them again in game.

Thoughts or suggestions?

Cheers

 

Have you got the little 'Apply overclocking at system startup' option set to on? If not, you'd have to click 'Apply' every time you restart your computer to apply the settings.

Do the settings take effect if you do click 'Apply' and then go into game?

 

Hey cbwolf, yep I do have that setting enabled. MSI Afterburner shows up in the task bar and the settings are still there. I do note that Afterburner does not show up in Task Manager startup though.

Will do some digging around on the web and see what I can find.

Cheers

 

Just uninstall it and rivatuner and start again.

 

Will do mate and see how that goes. Hopefully sort itself out. Cheers

 

you need to save the profile to eg slot 1 after you set your undervolt curve in msi afterburner

then once saved, lock the profile and click start with windows

 

Thanks unbanable, that worked perfectly. It is now holding that profile. Makes a BIG difference to the temp of the card. Appreciate your help.

Cheers

 

No problem, I think everyone should undervolt

it makes no sense not to!

On my 3070ti which normally sucks up 320w at 1960mhz core

undervolted to .90mv i can still get 2000mhz core locked at 220w max draw

That's a wopping 100w almost 33% power reduction for 0% performance loss!

Temps also reduced about 10c from 65-70c to 55-60c

People that bitch an moan about excessive powerdraw don't know shit about gpus

 

Unless on water - in which case none of the above applies. When you're not thermal throttling you need (and can use) MORE voltage to reach higher clocks.

In this regard, RDNA2 is MUCH better than Ampere - Watts per FPS much lower. Ampere on air thermals throttles way too quick, and is only superior to RDNA2 because of RT cores, DLSS and NVEnc... otherwise RDNA2 would be the better tech by far. Ampere on water is acceptable.

Lovelace vs RDNA3 will be interesting - if AMD can create a competitor for DLSS and XeSS and can lift their RT performance they might just be on a winner given the foundation of RDNA2.

 

Strix, Aorus (with the vapour chamber bumps lapped out), Gaming X Trio, Suprim X all have great coolers that won't have any significant throttling in the 400-450W range. FTW3 pretty close behind. I've owned all except the Strix and Suprim X, but kept the Aorus in the end.

All of the above don't really throttle by any notable amount (<30°C ambient room temp, reasonably well ventilated case) in the 400W-450W range if you're willing to run custom fan curves and tolerate abit more noise than stock fan curves.

With my air conditioning out of action at the moment, I've suffered through some gaming sessions at my normal 400W profile, with it being 31°C in my room and my 3080 remains above 2000mhz on the core at all times, 1.02 to 1.06v typically, though pushing mid to high 70's for temps at that point.

Will be interesting to see what improvement Lovelace brings in that department.

 

I am more worried about the price of Lovelace. If it is a truly remarkable card and HUGE improvements for gaming, will give my son the 3080Ti and I will change over...........

I ended up changing cases from the Lian Li Dynamic to the Dynamic XL. I also added another 7 case fans to the build. All Lian Li AL120's. I love the clip together design and daisy chain of the fans, with only one cable needed.

6 fans inlet and 4 out.

With the undervolt (0.84V @ 1830Mhz) I get a max temp of 62 degrees after a few hours of gaming. It usually sits around 58. A massive drop from the 82/83 degrees I was seeing. CPU has also gone from 72 degrees to a max of 52 degrees. I am very happy with that.

Having had a lot of custom WC setups in the past, there is no doubt WC graphics cards is boss. No questions with cooling or performance. I didnt want to invest in the time or dollars this time around for this build. Back to "basics". In saying that, had I realised how much WC gear now costs, I should have sold it all separately, I would have made a killing with what I just gave away. Oh well.

Case fans are at 1250rpm for gaming and drop back to 800rpm for desktop/browsing. Almost silent at 800, more noticeable at 1250, but I game with a headset now.

Little to no performance decrease when gaming whilst under clocked. Although in some parts of the game it still boosts to 1.1V and I see the power hit 330W for a minute or two. Not sure why it is doing that. Otherwise at 0.84V I usually see 250 to 270W and the associated cooler temps.

This is my first air cool setup in a LONG time, so more noticeable and the FIRST time I have needed to under clock.

Thanks again for all of the help, I appreciate it.

Cheers

 

? *I'm assuming you're responding to my post given the reference to throttling?

GPU boost starts stepping core clock down very early, like 40C. Every 10 or so degree above it will step down.

That's my point, you're at least 100Mhz lower than you could be (on water) because of the built-in thermal throttle (GPU boost profile). On air lowering voltage helps reduce temps, which may raise core clock, but nothing like what you can achieve on water.

 

100mhz isn't worth the $1k you can drop on a custom loop though lol, I wouldn't worry about it if you're happy with the noise and thermals from an air cooler. The silence is the main win for me.

 

Absolutely, I'm not saying WC is value for money

Though to be fair, most of that $1k loop can be reused in new system builds for several years, so it's not really $1K for 100Mhz... but you already know that.

My point was, and is, that under-volting is not the holy grail - it's a work-around for some very hot and power-hungry cards. Water removes (or minimises) one of those aspects, and removes the need to undervolt (on Ampere).

 

Each step is like 12.5mhz on the core, so on air you're only going to be what 2-3 steps down vs water with a high-end aircooled card. Hence it's not any "notable" amount with water vs a high-end aircooled card.

Ironically, the high-end aircooled cards are required to have access to more than 370w power, so you'd have to spend the extra to get one of those, and then the extra on top of that to get it watercooled.

I thus agree 3x8pin power cards are important for 3080 (and even more so on 3090), but that WC isn't going to get you much extra performance over that.

 

had the same problem once, reinstalled AB+RT did the trick.

I've struggled with undervolting my 3080 Ti, thing is a mini heater at times, I've clocked it down to 0.8mV @ 1800Mhz and still my temps sit at around 80c with the power draw around 300-320w, I just can't seem to tame this card, had no such issues with my two prior 3080s.

is giving me knock-on effects where my ram heats up too much thanks to excess heat within my case even with fans running fast, makes we want to step down to a 3080 again this card.

 

What case do you have?

They are a very hot card though. I wonder why the Ventus is not responding well to the undervolt/clock?

Now my AB is behaving itself, I can consistently see 58-62 degrees. In saying that I did buy $200 worth of case fans and changed cases, another $200 change over so it would have been $400 towards WC setup as such (still need the fans for the rads). I just could not be bothered this time around.

In saying that I have enjoyed the build thread and WC threads in the forums. Just cant believe how much WC gear has gone up. In line with graphics card price increases. Not the best time to be in the hobby.

I hope you get your card sorted.

Cheers

 

80c @0.8mV doesn't seem right, what does it run like stock?
Are you on default fan curve?
Being a 3080ti I assume it's not ex mining so shouldn't need fresh paste?

 

stock fan curve, stock is about the same, suspect the main difference is fan speeds so perhaps the bios is targeting that temp?

no mining at all, new pads/paste would be an interesting exercise to see if any change.

case is a fractal define C with 2x14cm noctua fans intake and 12cm exhaust and top mount EK240 AIO also with some noctua's.

next step would be to push the undervolt even more, maybe down to 1700Mhz but cautious about losing performance then.

 

just want to add that synthetic benchmarks like time spy sees the undervolt work (290w / 70c)

seems only when I jump into a real-world game like god of war! or deathloop for example that it breaks free to 320w / 80c