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Unable to achieve a stable undervolt on Asus Tuf OC 4090 [Sorted thanks]

ginjaninja

ginjaninja

ginjaninja

Associate
Joined
30 Jul 2007
Posts
1,281
So i followed a lot of youtube videos which say set curve editor in msi afterburner to 900mv at 2600Mhz and flatten curve, max power limit.
The power usage certainly went down, but im getting the odd crash.

might i just have a card that cant do 2600Mhz at 900mv and should i just repeat same but at 925mv...950mv until stable?

thanks for your help
 
I just lowered the power limit to 75%, do you see much of an improvement in manually setting the clocks and voltage?
 
fish said:
I just lowered the power limit to 75%, do you see much of an improvement in manually setting the clocks and voltage?
Click to expand...
in terms of power draw displayed by msi afterburner there is a significant difference of ~75watts (if it were stable 2600Mhz@900mv) but thats not necessarily apples for apples in terms of frame rate impact.
im testing now at 950mv and the watt difference is close to 25w...maybe my card is not a typical undervolter...
 
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Undervolting comes down to silicon lottery as much as overclocking. Try the same frequency with the next step up on the voltage graph (912mV I think) and it'll probably eliminate the crashes. Alternatively, move down one frequency step, since it can be that sensitive. My 800mV undervolt on my 1080 Ti is stable at exactly 1747MHz for example, but crashes every few hours in certain games at 1759MHz. In practice you're never going to notice any difference in real world performance in a 12MHz change.
 
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fish said:
I just lowered the power limit to 75%, do you see much of an improvement in manually setting the clocks and voltage?
Click to expand...

I did exactly this.

From what I've watched/read on the internet's, undervolting doesn't work like it did on the 30 series cards (which worked great on my old 3090). In fact it seems to have a negative effect on the 40 series performance, when you create your own power/clock curve. It would seem that it's much more beneficial to leave the curve at stock, and just tell the card to use less power by limiting it in afterburner.
Apparently.
 
FlyingFish said:
I did exactly this.

From what I've watched/read on the internet's, undervolting doesn't work like it did on the 30 series cards (which worked great on my old 3090). In fact it seems to have a negative effect on the 40 series performance, when you create your own power/clock curve. It would seem that it's much more beneficial to leave the curve at stock, and just tell the card to use less power by limiting it in afterburner.
Apparently.
Click to expand...

This is what i read too, something to do with the sync of the gpu clock, video clock and effective clock. When you undervolt a 40 series card, the video and effective clock both downclock quite abit where as in the 30 series, this isn't the case hence. Probably because its more tied to the voltage in this series rather than the power limit.


 
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Is anyones voltage slider unlocked for them on the 4090 FE card? Ive ticked the boxes in msi afterburner and restarted but its still greyed out.

Edit: nvm, got it to work. Had to reinstall afterburner.
 
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Jay85 said:
This is what i read too, something to do with the sync of the gpu clock, video clock and effective clock. When you undervolt a 40 series card, the video and effective clock both downclock quite abit where as in the 30 series, this isn't the case hence. Probably because its more tied to the voltage in this series rather than the power limit.

Click to expand...
This video is just plain wrong. Optimum Tech usually puts out good content, but he was mistaken on this one (perhaps rushing to get content out at launch). Ada undervolts the exact same way as previous architectures and produces better results than simply setting a power limit, with the only difference being that the lower limit is now 900mV.

 
Aretak said:
This video is just plain wrong. Optimum Tech usually puts out good content, but he was mistaken on this one (perhaps rushing to get content out at launch). Ada undervolts the exact same way as previous architectures and produces better results than simply setting a power limit, with the only difference being that the lower limit is now 900mV.

Click to expand...

Fair enough, need to research more into this to get the best results. Still playing about with mine and only just managed to get the voltage slider unlocked :cry:.
 

The video above from Der8auer (should start at 15mins) shows that the 4090 works a lot more efficient with a lower power target, while losing minimal performance.
At around 18mins he goes for an undervolt, but that hurts performance more than just lowering the power limit.
 
good news for me....my test game (ratchet and clank) is crashing at stock ..so its not an undervolting issue
bad news for me....my test game (ratchet and clank) is crashing at stock....ive got a problem.....

was fine on 24hr burn ins ..maybe its the game..will test another game..

edit...the default bios is the performance bios not quiet bios... not necessarily relevant but was hardly 'pulling' in the same direction.

edit...interesting last of us @ 4k native 120hz vsync = ~375W....4k/DLSS quality ~300W.
At 10+ feet away from the screen with 50yr old eyes i struggle to tell difference....theres a "power saving" right there without an undervolt
 
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FlyingFish said:
I did exactly this.

From what I've watched/read on the internet's, undervolting doesn't work like it did on the 30 series cards (which worked great on my old 3090). In fact it seems to have a negative effect on the 40 series performance, when you create your own power/clock curve. It would seem that it's much more beneficial to leave the curve at stock, and just tell the card to use less power by limiting it in afterburner.
Apparently.
Click to expand...

This would explain why my 3080 undervolt worked so well, but doing the same on 4080 resulted in a drop of performance.
 
ginjaninja said:
its probably wishful thinking cos i dont want to rma my card...but since i turned off rivatuner statistics ive had no crash on any game.
Click to expand...

I can't remember which title it was, but I do recall a certain game I was playing, did like to crash when afterburner and RT was running.
I'm sure I added a rule within RT to not overlay when said game was running.
 
10 hours gaming without crashing... im increasing in confidence its rivatuner causing crash
75% power limit is also stable (so far)

any suggestions for an alternative software tool which will show gpu power utilisation?
 
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ginjaninja said:
10 hours gaming without crashing... im increasing in confidence its rivatuner causing crash
75% power limit is also stable (so far)

any suggestions for an alternative software tool which will show gpu power utilisation?
Click to expand...

GPU Tweak 3 is ASUS own OC tool which has an OSD.

Nvidia GFE has an overlay.
 
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If the power read out of the software monitoring tools is anything to go by, undervolting seems to give much lower power draw (~75w less) compared to a 75% power target...eg ive just played a couple of hours at 2500mhz@925mv at 240W. Whether the frame/watt is better or not..i am not sure but id suspect it is...or at the very least im hitting 120fps (max refresh rate) on my projector at lower watts

edit
2550 @ 900mv @ +1300Mhz on memory.
 
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It sort of makes sense to me that undervolting is more optimised than reduced power target.
Reduce power target means means just stay at you default power curve but limit how far along the curve you can go (how much power you can draw)
Undervolting means alter the power curve and find out the point at which reducing power for a given top speed is stable, and dont let the power or speed increase above that (where it might not be stable)
 
I think like most here, we do a combination of both. I've found great results by Power limiting and reducing the voltage. Voltage at 950mv with a PL of 70% using the voltage curve gives me about 2800mhz + 1200 on the memory. It's slightly better than stock in this configuration and most of the time draws around 220-250w.
 
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