# Undervolting 2080 Max Q - Am I doing this right?



## HappyRedux (May 7, 2020)

I don't know if I'm undervolting my card correctly... I have a Razer Blade Pro 17 with a 2080 Max Q. I believe it's the 90W card, but through Razer's BIOS setup they have it running as a 100W variant. 

Basically, this card _always _wants to run at 100W. It will always push as high a frequency as it can until it reaches 100W and power limits itself. 

I started the traditional undervolting path of seeing how low a voltage I can go and achieve the same higher boost frequencies. Before, it wanted to boost to ~1,800MHz at 950mV and hit 115W and throttled back. I was able to push that point to 800mV stable, so a 150mV reduction. I was also able to push the low end MHz up from 1,400MHz to 1,575MHz at the lowest 700mV section. So, essentially, the card can push higher frequencies at lower voltages.

However, none of this has improved thermals. The card still wants to run at 100W all the time during benchmarking. What it _has_ done it allow more frequency headroom. Basically, the card still goes to the voltages that it power limit throttles at (typically around 750-800mV it'll hit that 100W mark). So thermals haven't changed, power draw hasn't changed, it still pulls the same juice but now hits those high frequencies at lower voltages. So instead of quickly boosting to 115W and immediately throttling, it boots to 102W and then throttles. 

I feel like all I did was actually overclock my card frequencies and not actually improve thermals, lol...


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## Vayra86 (May 7, 2020)

HappyRedux said:


> I don't know if I'm undervolting my card correctly... I have a Razer Blade Pro 17 with a 2080 Max Q. I believe it's the 90W card, but through Razer's BIOS setup they have it running as a 100W variant.
> 
> Basically, this card _always _wants to run at 100W. It will always push as high a frequency as it can until it reaches 100W and power limits itself.
> 
> ...



Not too familiar with Max Q specifically, but GPU Boost might be the problem. The card still boosts dynamically and just a % reduction of power target I think won't be enough to truly undervolt it. If it measures TDP over X time for example, it could still have high boosts.

You could disable boost and just push a high, guaranteed base clock perhaps?


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## Taraquin (May 7, 2020)

Set a flatline at highest stable speed at 700mv, that will improve thermals and consumption, but you will lose a bit of performance.


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## HappyRedux (May 7, 2020)

Taraquin said:


> Set a flatline at highest stable speed at 700mv, that will improve thermals and consumption, but you will lose a bit of performance.



This is what I ended up trying; effectively eliminating the boost. I found I could push a max stable 700mV frequency of 1575MHz and flat-lined it from there. I actually saw a pretty decent jump in my Heaven benchmark scores, but no real reduction in temperatures (maybe 1-2C at times, maybe). Below are a few snapshots of before and after.













Vayra86 said:


> Not too familiar with Max Q specifically, but GPU Boost might be the problem. The card still boosts dynamically and just a % reduction of power target I think won't be enough to truly undervolt it. If it measures TDP over X time for example, it could still have high boosts.
> 
> You could disable boost and just push a high, guaranteed base clock perhaps?


Yeah, the card just always wants to boost to the higher frequency section is the issue. The only thing I found that works is running a completely flat curve to prevent the GPU from boosting. I found my highest stable 700mV frequency is 1575MHz. It then uses under 100W the entire time. I imagine the only thing I could do to reduce temps would just drop that MHz number down.

I found better overall benchmark performance running the 1575MHz flat line than I did from the stock curve. No real change in thermals. However, I ran it at 1540MHz and saw equal benchmark results from stock, and 1500MHz saw about ~30 point reduction and ~2fps reduction in Heaven benchmark. So maybe it's worth running it flat at 1500-1540MHz to achieve equal performance.


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## oinkypig (May 7, 2020)

I was playing MW and monitoring the Laptop's RTX 2070 max P using throttlestop, hwinfo, and msi afterburner on the spare monitor. Whenever i used the power curve, the card would settle at 115watts and 1500-1550Mhz & 0.800-.850v. Instead of using the curve, i used an additional 200Mhz on clocks speeds, and now it still utiilizes 115watts but sits at 1650-1770Mhz &  0.781-0.850v. The curve is only useful for undervolting in your scenario as it couldn't achieve over 1540 @ 0.700v.


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## Cheeseball (May 7, 2020)

oinkypig said:


> I was playing MW and monitoring the Laptop's RTX 2070 max P using throttlestop, hwinfo, and msi afterburner on the spare monitor. Whenever i used the power curve, the card would settle at 115watts and 1500-1550Mhz & 0.800-.850v. Instead of using the curve, i used an additional 200Mhz on clocks speeds, and now it still utiilizes 115watts but sits at 1650-1770Mhz &  0.781-0.850v. The curve is only useful for undervolting in this scenario as it couldn't achieve close to 1700Mhz. Even with the same voltage using the curve, it drops to 1500Mhz.



I get the same thing on my MAX-15 with the same Mobile 115W (Max-P). Basically all I do is undervolt the GPU as much as I can before the GPU boost clocks start getting reduced.


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## Taraquin (May 7, 2020)

How was fan rpm when runnimg 1575@700mv? Same thermals is probably due to lower fan rpm.


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## HappyRedux (May 7, 2020)

I ran a bunch of different curves and got the best results with a flat line at 1575MHz at 700mV. I tried upping frequencies at higher voltage numbers like 719mV, 725mV, and 750mV, but all of these resulted in very slight power limit throttling. The GPU could easily hit 1635MHz at 725mV, or even 1800+MHz at 800mV, but it would push over 100W and power throttle. A flat line at 1575MHz kept the voltage right at 700mV the whole time wattage used never went over 97W, and I had quite a bit better benchmark numbers over the stock curve (~3370 stock and ~3440 flat line).

Also, with the stock curve, it constantly tried to push high MHz at 950mV and would throttle back. It tried to be stable at 1515MHz at 750mV but couldn't quite hold it there due to power limit throttling. So now I'm hitting a consistent 1575MHz at 700mV and no power limit throttling.

My method may not be for every card, but it seems to work really well for the 2080 Max Q 100W version.



Taraquin said:


> How was fan rpm when runnimg 1575@700mv? Same thermals is probably due to lower fan rpm.



Fans did seem slightly quieter. You might be right, maybe temps are the same because fans aren't having to work as hard.

With the stock curve, the card was constantly right at 100W and at max it boosted to 950mV and 115W even. With the flat line 1575MHz at 700mV it never goes over 97W and I did drop ~1-2C on average. 

I've now undervolted my CPU considerably and GPU considerably. My CPU temps did drop quite a bit, but the whole system got a little quieter as well. I wonder if I adjust fans back up a little bit if I would achieve significantly better temps.

How do I adjust fans?


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## oinkypig (May 7, 2020)

Cheeseball said:


> I get the same thing on my MAX-15 with the same Mobile 115W (Max-P). Basically all I do is undervolt the GPU as much as I can before the GPU boost clocks start getting reduced.


BUT I wasn't getting good results with the msi GPU curve that I wanted to see, I just repasted with thermal grizzly cunductonaut and used PK-3 on the VRM and GPU memory from Prolimatech. The 1.5mm alpha cool 11W/mW thermal pads wouldn't work with liquid metal. I hit power limits now before it comes close to getting thermally limited. The RTX 2070 Max P maxed out 125watts @ 1900Mhz but is power limited and throttles to 115w.
9750h+RTX 2070 max P
Before It was running 95 CPU+ 95 GPU @ 4.0Ghz & 1515Mhz RTX 2070 max P.
After Liquid Metal applied running  85CPU+80GPU @ 1725Mhz
Any way I cant imagine how to send more power to the GPU than 0.850v-115w. 1900Mhz needed 125w @ 1.10volts, it comes close to being a properly OC-ed RTX 2070 Desktop in terms of performance


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## HappyRedux (May 7, 2020)

So, weirdly, I found that MSI Afterburner kept adjusting my line up by 15MHz after a while... I would be running a benchmark and set the line at 1575MHz, apply, save, etc. However, after a little time passed I launched Destiny 2 to test things out, and my game crashed after ~10 minutes. I thought it was odd and went to check my MSI profile. Sure enough, Afterburner upped my line to 1590MHz... it's done this to me before and I don't know why.

I dropped my line down to 1560MHz to be safe. I figure if it's trying to "overclock" my profile by 15MHz randomly, then I'll be safe if it decides to bump up to 1575MHz. 

Overall, I'm happy with the results. GPU performance is better than stock and in real world gameplay my GPU temp was 63C whereas it maxed out at 68C before. My CPU maxes at 79C. The whole chassis feels significantly cooler as well.

The only thing I'm hoping for now is if I can repaste my CPU it'll drop temps a few degrees so I can re-up the turbo ratios by 1 or 2 notches. Outside of that, I think I've maximized the temperature and performance on this machine. I'm very happy!


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## Vayra86 (May 7, 2020)

HappyRedux said:


> This is what I ended up trying; effectively eliminating the boost. I found I could push a max stable 700mV frequency of 1575MHz and flat-lined it from there. I actually saw a pretty decent jump in my Heaven benchmark scores, but no real reduction in temperatures (maybe 1-2C at times, maybe). Below are a few snapshots of before and after.
> View attachment 154128View attachment 154127View attachment 154130View attachment 154129
> 
> 
> ...



In general it is a great idea to give recent Nvidia cards thermal headroom. It even goes in my rig... and i do have good airflow and all, plus a full size GPU with good cooling.

When I ran my 1080 at 110% power target, my stabilized boost clock would end up from 2100 mhz down all the way to 1911-1936 or so. There it would find temp equilibrium.

I now run my 1080 at 90% power target, with the exact same +120 on the core. Temps are now always below 80C instead of hovering just on it. Its a negligible temp difference, but clocks ALSO stabilize at 1911mhz. The throttle point matters, so if you can fool GPU boost into it, maybe you can run with an even lower power target and see where it ends up, to save more on temps. The flatline does counter the GPUs ability to use adaptive voltage; and adaptive voltage is not just for performance, but also to limit temps.

GPU boost 3.0 is a real work of art, if you ask me. Its damn smart.



HappyRedux said:


> So, weirdly, I found that MSI Afterburner kept adjusting my line up by 15MHz after a while... I would be running a benchmark and set the line at 1575MHz, apply, save, etc. However, after a little time passed I launched Destiny 2 to test things out, and my game crashed after ~10 minutes. I thought it was odd and went to check my MSI profile. Sure enough, Afterburner upped my line to 1590MHz... it's done this to me before and I don't know why.
> 
> I dropped my line down to 1560MHz to be safe. I figure if it's trying to "overclock" my profile by 15MHz randomly, then I'll be safe if it decides to bump up to 1575MHz.
> 
> ...



15mhz sounds like it gives out a 'boost bin'. What this means is that despite your flatline GPU boost is still active and has the headroom, thermally but also in voltage, to give you that extra bin.


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## HappyRedux (May 7, 2020)

Vayra86 said:


> In general it is a great idea to give recent Nvidia cards thermal headroom. It even goes in my rig... and i do have good airflow and all, plus a full size GPU with good cooling.
> 
> When I ran my 1080 at 110% power target, my stabilized boost clock would end up from 2100 mhz down all the way to 1911-1936 or so. There it would find temp equilibrium.
> 
> ...



My GPU still has flexibility to use under 700mV when it’s not at max load or boost. 1560MHz is well above the stated normal clock. Before it would try to boost to 800-950mV and immediately power throttle. You could see it in the graph. Somewhat stable frequency then it looks like a heart rate monitor; up and down up and down. At that point, it went as high as it could go which was 1480-1510MHz at 740-760mV, but it would continually power throttle there too. So now I set it to be able to use 1560MHz at only 700mV and the GPU no longer tries to boost for more. It uses less when it needs to, but not more. The only higher frequency I could achieve before power throttling was allowing the GPU to use 719mV (next step up) and get like 1590MHz, or 725mV and get 1605-1620MHz. At that point, my 2C thermal difference was lost though, and I would rather have my GPU always running at 700mV than 725mV if I can help it. Performance difference was only a couple FPS on average during benchmarking. So I don’t really have any power headroom, however I have noticed the wattage fluctuating lower when operating at 700mV too. Max it gets to us ~97W, but it also uses sub 90W a lot too, whereas before it was always 99-101 with occasional spikes up to 115W.


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## Taraquin (May 8, 2020)

Sounds like 700mv@1575 is what you should use. You could consider repasting with Kryonaut, that will probably bring down temps and noise a bit.

If you undervolt your CPU then thermals on GPU will improve since they share heat pipes. 

On my Clevo i7 1070 laptop I undervolted CPU and GPU and also repasted with Kryonaut. Kryonaut alone improved thermals on CPU by 5C and GPU by 3C. Undervolting of CPU reduced temps by 13C and 2C on GPU. Witcher 3 went from 87C CPU and 78C GPU to 69C CPU and 73C GPU during long sessions


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## nguyen (May 8, 2020)

HappyRedux said:


> My GPU still has flexibility to use under 700mV when it’s not at max load or boost. 1560MHz is well above the stated normal clock. Before it would try to boost to 800-950mV and immediately power throttle. You could see it in the graph. Somewhat stable frequency then it looks like a heart rate monitor; up and down up and down. At that point, it went as high as it could go which was 1480-1510MHz at 740-760mV, but it would continually power throttle there too. So now I set it to be able to use 1560MHz at only 700mV and the GPU no longer tries to boost for more. It uses less when it needs to, but not more. The only higher frequency I could achieve before power throttling was allowing the GPU to use 719mV (next step up) and get like 1590MHz, or 725mV and get 1605-1620MHz. At that point, my 2C thermal difference was lost though, and I would rather have my GPU always running at 700mV than 725mV if I can help it. Performance difference was only a couple FPS on average during benchmarking. So I don’t really have any power headroom, however I have noticed the wattage fluctuating lower when operating at 700mV too. Max it gets to us ~97W, but it also uses sub 90W a lot too, whereas before it was always 99-101 with occasional spikes up to 115W.



Can you adjust the power limit slider in MSI afterburner ? for quick undervolting + overclocking just reduce the power limit slider to your desired limit and find a stable overclock, gpu boost 3.0 will adjust clock/voltage accordingly depending on game demands.
The problem with fixed freq/voltage is that different game will have different load on GPU, for example CS:GO would run like 60W with your fixed curve while demanding games like The Witcher 3 will still use 100W, therefore you are losing a bit of performance with CS:GO.

I don't have a laptop but the desktop 2080 Ti is basically use the same boost algorithm, and BTW the curve in afterburner will shift by 15mhz for when your GPU heat up for each 10C starting at 40C, for example you start at 1700mhz at 40C, once the GPU reaches 80 it would lose 60mhz. To know exactly what frequency/voltage you will get once GPU is under load, use Heaven to stress test and press F5 in the F/V curve window to refresh.   

Another way to lower your operating temp/ fan volume is set a maximum fps in Nvidia driver, basically the clock would still be high but the power consumption is reduced, thus lowering temp...


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## oinkypig (May 8, 2020)

I just switched from msi afterburner to Asus gpu tweak II. While monitoring everything during MW matches. The GPU Boost seems to work much better than it did with afterburner. instead of jumping 1700-1725Mhz in afterburner, Asus gpu tweak is aiming for even higher frequencies lowest-steady @ 1770Mhz and 1850Mhz. GPU Boost works more efficiently with this program and it also has a volage/freq curve that may provide better results than MSI afterburner for the RTX 20080max q as well. Adjusting the power limit resulted in artifacts on my RTX 2070 max p.
Ok so I'm thinking if the 2070 and 2080 share the same boost algorithm that at 0.700v, RTX 2080 max Q should garner a 1560-1600Mhz stable underclocking. Although that would require some good thermal conductivity. This is much easier&safer to work with than Liquid metal, if you ever consider pushing for those extra Mhz. 
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CXNSU8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 and invest in 0.5mm thermal pads.


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## Max(IT) (May 10, 2020)

How you managed to undervolt a notebook GPU ? 
I’m using MSI Afterburner to slightly overclock my RTX 2070 Max Q (GPU + 115 MHz, VRAM + 250 MHz rock stable) but even if I selected to modify voltage in the options, the slider are grayed out ...


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## HappyRedux (May 10, 2020)

Max(IT) said:


> How you managed to undervolt a notebook GPU ?
> I’m using MSI Afterburner to slightly overclock my RTX 2070 Max Q (GPU + 115 MHz, VRAM + 250 MHz rock stable) but even if I selected to modify voltage in the options, the slider are grayed out ...


You have to do it via the Ctrl+F voltage/frequency curve. You essentially move the curve and tell the GPU to run the same frequencies at lower voltages. Check out some YouTube videos on it. They’ll explain everything.


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## Max(IT) (May 10, 2020)

HappyRedux said:


> You have to do it via the Ctrl+F voltage/frequency curve. You essentially move the curve and tell the GPU to run the same frequencies at lower voltages. Check out some YouTube videos on it. They’ll explain everything.


Thank you !
I found it... but I'm not sure I'm going to move anything. My 2070 is still quite cool even if slightly overclocked (never exceed 70° C under load). I don't know if undervolting would bring any improvement.


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## HappyRedux (May 10, 2020)

Max(IT) said:


> Thank you !
> I found it... but I'm not sure I'm going to move anything. My 2070 is still quite cool even if slightly overclocked (never exceed 70° C under load). I don't know if undervolting would bring any improvement.


Maybe, maybe not. My 2080MQ was 68C under load. After undervolting it averaged 66C but higher frequencies as well. Then I reposted with IC diamond and now it maxes at 63C.

I’m not sure that undervolting the GPU makes as large of a difference as CPU as they already run fairly cool anyway. But also my GPU just wanted to constantly push max power output to achieve the highest frequencies. So undervolting just gave it more frequency headroom. So I dropped a few degrees, but nothing crazy. I ended up setting a flat line at 1575MHz at 700mV. Now my GPU never goes over 700mV and never power limit throttles.

I was never thermal throttling before, but the drop in temps is a benefit. However, I would always power limit throttle. So, unfortunately, there’s not much further I can push the GPU in frequency because it’ll just throttle back anyway. I’m guessing your 2070 is the same way.


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## radhakugo (Jun 29, 2020)

HappyRedux said:


> I don't know if I'm undervolting my card correctly... I have a Razer Blade Pro 17 with a 2080 Max Q. I believe it's the 90W card, but through Razer's BIOS setup they have it running as a 100W variant.
> 
> Basically, this card _always _wants to run at 100W. It will always push as high a frequency as it can until it reaches 100W and power limits itself.
> 
> ...


Hi, thanks for starting this thread. I own the 2020 RB 17 pro 4K 120hz
There are a few things I will like to ask you.

1) Have you managed or tried to get to 3200Mhz through XMP.
2) Have you undervolted the CPU with XTU, if so what is the most stable undervolt you recommend? (Some suggest only -100mv
3) How about updating you NVIDIA game ready drivers past 4/15?
4) Have you succeeded in undervolting the 2080 Super Max Q GPU?
5) How or were may I check the 100 wattage to the GPU in the BIOS? I have always wondered since in FireStrike it shows 735 MHz as the base clock and I thought that was for the 80w variant.

Thanks!


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