Undervolting via Curve Editor
So how do we get the graphics card to reach the high clock again despite the lower power limit? It’s simple: we just assign it a higher clock for the corresponding voltage values. We can also do this relatively comfortably in Afterburner by calling the Curve Editor.
After clicking on the red marked button the following window will open. Each point on this curve represents a voltage value (X-axis) and its corresponding clock frequency (Y-axis). So the marked point means that at a voltage of 1000mV a clock of 1890MHz should be present.
So if the graphics card reaches its maximum clock at a voltage of 1250mV by default, we simply test if it might not reach this clock at 1200mV, then at 1150mV and so on. Step by step we sound out which voltage is really needed to be able to drive the intended cycle (stably). It is a good idea to run a constant load in the form of a 3D benchmark or game in windowed mode, and then gradually assign the desired clock via a low voltage value. At this point I would like to encourage you: if the voltage is too low for a desired clock, the 3D application will just crash and the curve will be reset. At most, the computer will freeze, but nothing will break right away. However, I would like to remind you of the disclaimer above!
After some testing it turned out that the graphics card used in the test can reach the desired frequency of 1920MHz already at a voltage of 925mV without crashing.
The test was done in the same place in The Witcher 3, again in QHD with maximum details (except Hairworks). Lo and behold, the same clock is reached at 925 instead of 1043mV, and at the same frame rate, we’ve reduced power consumption by a whopping 55 watts at this point. Of course, this also has a massive effect on the noise, because the fans have to turn much slower when they only have to handle 240 instead of 295 watts.
Of course, you can now use the leeway to squeeze even more clock out of the map. The card runs stable with about 2.1GHz through Time Spy and Co. but gets obnoxiously loud and needs the full power limit – exactly the opposite is what we want to achieve in this article. Out of interest I tested another setting that allows a good 100MHz more clock speed with low consumption. This was done by pulling the curve at 981mV to 2046MHz, resulting in a constant game clock of 2010MHz.
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