Optimizing Nvidia RTX Performance and/or Temperatures and/or Power Draw with Afterburner

[Hiob]

To whom it may concern:

 

I'm aware, that this is not new, nor very special knowledge. There is plenty of Youtube content about Undervolting/Overclocking Nvidia cards.

But I figured it may be new and interesting to some people here in the DCS world, that are not so deeply involved with tuning their hardware. Some people perhaps don't know, how easy it actually is to optimize their Nvidia cards performance.

 

Why would you bother with this? Well there are three things that can be achieved:

1) Gaining free performance while keeping the same or even a little better power draw and temps. or

2) Keeping the stock performance with less power draw and better temps. or

3) Loosing a bit of performance and saving a lot of energy and temps (up to 100W with <5% performance decrease).

 

E.g. in my case with a custom watercooling the range goes from 250W with ~95% performance to 330W with ~103% performance (Stock is 350+W with 100% performance). Note that you get a lot more efficiency when you reduce the power.
 

With stock air cooling, those numbers and ranges will be lower. But especially the 2) and 3) option apply to air cooled cards as well. Even if you don't notice strong performance effects, you will certainly notice the lower fan noise!

Edited May 20, 2022 by Hiob

[Bossco82]

What he said, I always undervolt my Nvidia cards and have a separate profile for flight sims. Flight sims tend to benefit from the highest maintainable clock speed, not simply the highest clock speed achieved by a brief spike. Undervolting especially on Nvidia cards, my experiences have been since the 900 series, helps to achieve this.

If you have something beefy like a 2080ti, 3080, 3080ti and a 3090. It can reduce power draw and temps quite a lot. In DCS at least you dont really lose any performance at all because your after the highest maintainable/stable clock speed.

[Hiob]

1 hour ago, Bossco82 said:

 

If you have something beefy like a 2080ti, 3080, 3080ti and a 3090. It can reduce power draw and temps quite a lot. 

True. 100W with a negligible effect on fps for my 3080. Or a even a negligible positive effect with a power saving of 50-65W.

And you can easily set different settings to easily apply for different moods and or games. E.g. I usually go with 2100 Mhz for maximum fps below an ambient temp of 25C, but when it‘s getting hot in my room (like now), I prefer to go with 1950 Mhz and 100W less exhaust heat….

Edited May 20, 2022 by Hiob

[MStewart40]

On 5/20/2022 at 3:36 AM, Hiob said:

To whom it may concern:

 

I'm aware, that this is not new, nor very special knowledge. There is plenty of Youtube content about Undervolting/Overclocking Nvidia cards.

But I figured it may be new and interesting to some people here in the DCS world, that are not so deeply involved with tuning their hardware. Some people perhaps don't know, how easy it actually is to optimize their Nvidia cards performance.

 

Why would you bother with this? Well there are three things that can be achieved:

1) Gaining free performance while keeping the same or even a little better power draw and temps. or

2) Keeping the stock performance with less power draw and better temps. or

3) Loosing a bit of performance and saving a lot of energy and temps (up to 100W with <5% performance decrease).

 

E.g. in my case with a custom watercooling the range goes from 250W with ~95% performance to 330W with ~103% performance (Stock is 350+W with 100% performance). Note that you get a lot more efficiency when you reduce the power.
 

With stock air cooling, those numbers and ranges will be lower. But especially the 2) and 3) option apply to air cooled cards as well. Even if you don't notice strong performance effects, you will certainly notice the lower fan noise!

 

Could you possibly recommend a really good step by step YouTube tutorial on how to do this. I know there hundreds of them on YouTube but for us neophytes really don't know a good one from a bad one. Thanks very much

[Hiob]

6 hours ago, MStewart40 said:

Could you possibly recommend a really good step by step YouTube tutorial on how to do this. I know there hundreds of them on YouTube but for us neophytes really don't know a good one from a bad one. Thanks very much

This one is quite good:

 

or this shorter one:

 

Don‘t hesitate to play around…. you can always go back. 

[MStewart40]

Thank you very much Hiob, I appreciate that.

[Hiob]

6 hours ago, MStewart40 said:

Thank you very much Hiob, I appreciate that.

No problem. If you have a question  - just ask here or pm me.

 

Edited May 28, 2022 by Hiob

[Burt]

I undervolted my 3090 yesterday and degreased my temps by 6-7 degrees with no lose in performance what so ever.

-200 Core Clock  900mv to 1920mhz and temps under 70c  the frequency stay put a lot better now. And I used Will’s tutorial.

Stock was over well over 1 volt at 1905mhz and temps was around 75-76c which is still not bad on the temps but it really didn’t need all that. 

Edited May 29, 2022 by Burt

[Hiob]

1 hour ago, Burt said:

I undervolted my 3090 yesterday and degreased my temps by 6-7 degrees with no lose in performance what so ever.

-200 Core Clock  900mv to 1920mhz and temps under 70c  the frequency stay put a lot better now. And I used Will’s tutorial.

Stock was over well over 1 volt at 1905mhz and temps was around 75-76c which is still not bad on the temps but it really didn’t need all that. 

 

You probably saved a couple of watts of power consumption as well.

[Burt]

1 hour ago, Hiob said:

You probably saved a couple of watts of power consumption as well.

Yes ! I was alittle scared to attempt this as I’m not a techy kinda guy but it was pretty easy and well worth it. I hardly see my gpu go over 70c now and love how the frequency stays put and not jumping around. 

[Hiob]

5 hours ago, Burt said:

Yes ! I was alittle scared to attempt this as I’m not a techy kinda guy but it was pretty easy and well worth it. I hardly see my gpu go over 70c now and love how the frequency stays put and not jumping around. 

Yeah. The (mostly) locked clock is one of the main benefits for me too. It may still go up or down a bin depending on temps and different loads (different scenes or games) - but not so erratically.