Undervolting GTX 1080

[Ticonderoga]

I recently bought a Asus GTX 1080 Turbo and opened another thread about an aftermarketcooler for it.
But rather than buying an expensive cooler and risk damaging the card, an owner of a FE Card suggested I tried undervolting first.

However I am total new to Nvidia cards and find the whole GPU boost and pascal architecture quite difficult to work with.

Stock settings for the card has it boosting to around 1880 MHz, but this will rapidly drop as the card gets hot.
For this the card uses around 1,06 mv and the fan sounds like a jet engine as the cards reaches around 83 degrees.

I looked at some guides and set up a voltage curve like this :

https://ibb.co/nd8VoH

I only adjusted the voltage curve, all other settings are left untouched.
With these settings the card will boost to 1950 MHz and then drop to around 1923 MHz as it gets hotter.
It now runs at 0.95 mw with a TDP of max 55 %. As a result it is a lot quieter and doesn't throttle.

But I still don't get how the whole thing works?

Do I need to set the points on the left of the curve as well?
Why does the clock drop? If the card is not longer held back by heat and only operating at 55 % tdp, why doesn't it boost higher?
Is there any point in memory oc on pascal Cards?

 

[Ticonderoga]

Anyone?

 

[Bluntwrapped]

What are your temps with .95v? The reason for the 1950MHz-1923MHz drop will be temperature related.

I'm assuming you have read this https://linustechtips.com/main/topi...something-every-pascal-owner-should-look-at/?

I believe throttling kicks in, in small increments when the temp goes beyond 40c then larger increments as the temp increases all the way up to the temp target. While it seems quite bizarre for throttling to kick in at 40c, this is normal.

If you would like your 1950MHz to stay as close to static as possible, you can either increase airflow to the card, try the 'force constant voltage option in afterburner' or up the curve slightly to compensate for the drop.

Either way, the 27MHz drop isn't going to make a difference.

You'll find core clock and memory clock makes little to no difference real world use, any benefit will be observed only with synthetic testing/benching.

As with boost 2.0, boost 3.0 makes manual tweaking much more difficult than it needs to be.

 

[Ticonderoga]

What are your temps with .95v? The reason for the 1950MHz-1923MHz drop will be temperature related.

I'm assuming you have read this https://linustechtips.com/main/topi...something-every-pascal-owner-should-look-at/?

I believe throttling kicks in, in small increments when the temp goes beyond 40c then larger increments as the temp increases all the way up to the temp target. While it seems quite bizarre for throttling to kick in at 40c, this is normal.

If you would like your 1950MHz to stay as close to static as possible, you can either increase airflow to the card, try the 'force constant voltage option in afterburner' or up the curve slightly to compensate for the drop.

Either way, the 27MHz drop isn't going to make a difference.

You'll find core clock and memory clock makes little to no difference real world use, any benefit will be observed only with synthetic testing/benching.

As with boost 2.0, boost 3.0 makes manual tweaking much more difficult than it needs to be.

Thank you for the input.
In gaming it is around 73-74c, but during benchmarks it can reach 81c.
My temp will quickly go beyond 40c with the blower cooler, it just means I will have to give up reaching 2000 mhz
as I am not prepared to increase the fan speed any more.

 

[z10m]

Yeah in my case the clock usually starts to drop when the card is nearing 70C so I’m keeping it below that using custom fan curve.
It seems like you are getting decent results there with your undervolt.
More performance and less noise, less heat and less power consumption and all that absolutely free. It’s a win win in my book.
I think my 1080 runs at 0.9v so you can try going slightly lower.
Also try upping memory clock because why not.? It doesn’t increase temperature so...

 

[Bluntwrapped]

Thank you for the input.
In gaming it is around 73-74c, but during benchmarks it can reach 81c.
My temp will quickly go beyond 40c with the blower cooler, it just means I will have to give up reaching 2000 mhz
as I am not prepared to increase the fan speed any more.

Those temps still seem quite high if that’s after undervolting.

Did you buy the card new or used?

If used, I’d be tempted to remove the cooler, give it a good clean out and do a fresh application of paste. A tiny tube of Thermal Grizzly will be plenty and will see you well.

I bought a used FTW 1080 not long ago. Even with 100% fan speed the temp was hitting 80c+. I removed the cooler, reapplied the paste and bam, 20-30c drop. The card now boosts higher than it did (2025MHz) and doesn’t drop below 2000MHz.

 

[Ticonderoga]

Yeah in my case the clock usually starts to drop when the card is nearing 70C so I’m keeping it below that using custom fan curve.
It seems like you are getting decent results there with your undervolt.
More performance and less noise, less heat and less power consumption and all that absolutely free. It’s a win win in my book.
I think my 1080 runs at 0.9v so you can try going slightly lower.
Also try upping memory clock because why not.? It doesn’t increase temperature so...

Yes it is great. Yesterday I lowered the voltage to 0,92 mv and upped the clock. It is now stable around 1970 MHz.
I also upped the memory by 300 MHz and everything is fully stable in Benchmarks.
I am really glad I bought this Card now. I only got it for 290 £ because nobody likes the turbo cooler.

Those temps still seem quite high if that’s after undervolting.

Did you buy the card new or used?

If used, I’d be tempted to remove the cooler, give it a good clean out and do a fresh application of paste. A tiny tube of Thermal Grizzly will be plenty and will see you well.

I bought a used FTW 1080 not long ago. Even with 100% fan speed the temp was hitting 80c+. I removed the cooler, reapplied the paste and bam, 20-30c drop. The card now boosts higher than it did (2025MHz) and doesn’t drop below 2000MHz.

I bought it used. Are the temps really that bad? They seem to be in line with the reviews I have seen.
I don't really find it alarming, 72-73c during normal gaming is about the same as my old MSI GTX 980 TI Golden edition

 

[Bluntwrapped]

Yes it is great. Yesterday I lowered the voltage to 0,92 mv and upped the clock. It is now stable around 1970 MHz.
I also upped the memory by 300 MHz and everything is fully stable in Benchmarks.
I am really glad I bought this Card now. I only got it for 290 £ because nobody likes the turbo cooler.

I bought it used. Are the temps really that bad? They seem to be in line with the reviews I have seen.
I don't really find it alarming, 72-73c during normal gaming is about the same as my old MSI GTX 980 TI Golden edition

They don't seem bad maybe just a little higher than I expected for an undervolted card. I would be tempted to clean and reapply the paste either way. You don't have anything to lose

I was going to suggest keeping an eye on eBay for another cooler, but going by EK's cooling configuration the Asus Turbo doesn't use a reference PCB. Occasionally you'll find someone selling a ACX/ICX cooler separately which can make a nice cooling upgrade if you have a reference blower type card.