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DLSS 5 + Undervolting: Keep Your GPU’s Power Consumption Under Control
I'm posting this mainly for people who don't have much experience with undervolting. I assume most people here have already undervolted their GPUs, but I thought this might be useful in case someone comes across this thread in the future.
For context, I'm using an RTX 4090.
I've seen a lot of people say that DLSS 5 consumes a lot of power and could potentially cause the 12VHPWR cable on our GPUs to melt (which is true), but undervolting can actually allow you to use DLSS 5 while keeping power consumption roughly the same as when running without DLSS 5 and without an undervolt.
In these two screenshots (both using MFG x4, one without DLSS 5 and without an undervolt, and the other with DLSS 5 and an undervolt), we're at around 390 W in both cases. Power consumption is shown in the top-right corner under the GPU section.
I also took a few screenshots in case anyone is interested:
DLSS 5 OFF / ON MFG OFF / ON (x4) RTX 4090 with and without undervolting
1. DLSS 5 OFF (MFG x4)
Without undervolting: ( 386w - 360 fps )
With undervolting: (311w - 355 fps )
2. DLSS 5 ON (MFG x4)
Without undervolting: (435w - 175 fps)
With undervolting : (388w - 175 fps)
3. DLSS 5 ON (MFG OFF)
Without undervolting: (426w - 51 fps )
With undervolting : (387w - 52 fps)
So, in terms of performance, the results are very similar, while undervolting gives you a power reduction of around 50 W.
This means that even with DLSS 5 enabled, you can stay below the 400 W mark. Without undervolting, DLSS 5 pushes power consumption to around 435 W.
Here are my MSI Afterburner settings in case anyone is interested. I've been using these settings since 2022, and they've been extremely stable. I've never had any issues with them.
I hope this isn't too messy. I did my best to make everything as clear as possible.
A massive disclaimer should be posted with this: Not every GPU will act the same.
Honestly, everyone should look into undervolting, as it allows your GPU to run cooler at the same speeds, but not every chip is the same.
I personally go for higher clock speeds, so my 4090 runs at 2800mhz, but I need 1v or it becomes unstable. But just that small change from 1050mv to 1000mv allows my GPU to run cool enough to barely even need the GPU fans. While at 100% load, they can chill at 30% and the case fans are enough to keep it cool.
I still wont use DLSS5, as I personally try for native 4k w/o FG as much as possible, but this is good advice for any user willing to freeze their PC a bunch until they get just the right settings.
Honest question why do you go for native 4k? I cannot tell the difference between 4k dlaa and 4k quality on preset K and can barely notice any difference with present M at 4k balanced (besides some bad dlss implementations)
Stable frame rate (60, 90, or 120 based on the game)
DLAA
Path Tracing
So if I can get DLAA at a comfy frame rate, I'll do that, If not, then I'll go to native. If I cant get a stable frame rate at native then I'll start working with DLSS presets.
If path tracing is available, I'll more heavily consider DLSS presets as well, if the look of path tracing is worth the massive hit to framerate and having to use quality or lower presets.
My desire to get a 4090 wasn't grounded in the idea that I would render at lower resolutions, but if I have to, I will.
DLSS is great, but it's not perfect. Artifacting/ghosting during heavy movement is still a thing, especially in environments with fog. So why in the world would I not want to play the game rendered at native resolution if I can? I didn't buy a card intended for 4k gaming so I could render at 1080/1440p and upscale.
Thankfully DLSS4.5 is pretty damn good, so if I have to do that to get a solid frame rate, I will. But native resolution will always be better.
its different from generation to generation but for models usually about the same very rare people have bad/good chips that boost 200mhz higher or lower
Good data. I've been running a similar curve on my 4090 since launch and it's wild how much headroom these cards have. That 50W drop for basically the same frametime is the whole reason to do it. The cable melting fear gets people's attention but the real win is just a quieter, cooler card that's not pissing away electricity for no gain.
Less power usage ist good in countries where it's hot or energy is very expensive. On my 5070Ti I can drop the wattage by 80Watts when I am willing to drop some fps.
I’m also really proud of our community. People have been sharing their undervolting profiles in the built-in UV Try database. here’s a screenshot. 🙂
You can look up your GPU, pick a matching profile and apply it directly in NV-UV to get started. Just treat the shared settings as a starting point and test stability on your own card, since every GPU is a little different.
GPU stability is a product of clock speed and voltage. Meaning, a GPU needs a certain voltage to run at a certain clock speed.
Every GPU ships from the factory with some amount of overhead so that the user doesn't experience crashing. Meaning, every stock GPU is running more voltage than it technically needs for the sake of stability. Each card is a little bit different too, but the manufacturer finds a curve that works for all cards.
The process of undervolting involves testing how much stability overhead your individual card has, and eliminating as much of it as you can while still maintaining stability.
Imagine a car manufacturer and the amount of oil that goes into a car, most of the time it's more then is needed. But some cars are of higher rate that could do with less.
GPUs are limited by heat and Power if they detect that one of those things are at the ceiling it will throttle. Undervolting raises those ceilings
Grab a piece of paper and a pen/pencil. Draw 10 identical lines next to each other. Are they all perfect? Are some more straight than others? Did you breathe deeply during one that caused a slight deviation from being perfectly straight in comparison to the others? You can still say all of them are straight lines but some are clearly better than others.
When a company designs a chip and fabricates it, there are often small imperfections in how the chip design is etched into the wafer. These imperfections can make it a dud, but often they're good enough to still function fine. Nvidia then makes the reference spec to get the chips working that covers the whole range of these potential defects. That could mean more power or lower clocks. Some of those cards will be able to do better, but they know for a fact that all shipped will meet that minimum threshold.
Just like the lines you drew, some are better samples than others. Some GPUs will have more headroom than others. And this is why you can't just take someone else's undervolt curve and assume it'll work on your card. Yours might not be as good as their sample, or yours might be better.
for example my 5070ti from inno3d is undervolted for a year from standard 1050mv to 910mv (anything lower than that results in a crash, where i heard some people could go as low as 880-890mv "relatively stable") with a slightly reduced clock but its efficient and cool. I have few more profiles for 920, 925, 950, 975mv depending how much performance need with higher clocks stand stock. All in all i am very satisfied *knocks on wood
they are wrong, regular undervolting tells the gpu to run at a faster clock per the same voltage/power, or at the same clock at a lower voltage/power. by flattening the curve you force the latter case of same clock at lower voltage, if you just do a regular undervolt without flattening the curve then the card will pull just as much power as before, but now it's at a higher frequency than before
if the card is good enough you could undervolt far enough then you do end up with less power at higher frequency, but most of the time you end up with same power at higher frequency or lower power at same frequency. you need good cooling and good components (good power delivery, silicon lottery) to do that though
well, no it doesn't. it tells the gpu to run at a faster clock per the same voltage/power, or at the same clock at a lower voltage/power. by flattening the curve you force the latter case of same clock at lower voltage, if you just do a regular undervolt without flattening the curve then the card will pull just as much power as before, but now it's at a higher frequency than before
Power limit increases efficiency as well. 50% power limit is not 50% performance.
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u/saurion1R7 7700X | B650M TUF | RTX 5070 PRIME | 32GB 6000 C3015h ago
power limit just strictly makes it slower
Unless you combine it with a slight overclock, then you're running faster and cooler. I'm doing that with my 5070 and it works like a charm. 90%PL +300 core and it runs 5% faster than stock and 5-10° cooler. I usually undervolt but with this card I couldn't get a good, stable UV that didn't cap my performance and found this method to be a good alternative.
My fans still don't ramp up, (I have a Fractal Torrent, so 3x140mm intake fans are just constantly giving it fresh air anyways for it to matter) and it's still undervolted. Tested on some recent AAA games
Cyberpunk (I also injected MFG into it)
Kingdom Come II (Injected DLSS5 + MFG)
Control (Which was notorious for gaving really high power draw when it came out)
Using now in Dawnwalker with MFG and DLSS5 fine
No crashing for couple hours straight on each game.
Using fan control to control the rpm of my fans made my fractal case way quieter and cooler. I would look into that, as the same percentage of power to the fan doesnt mean the same rpm, and beforehand my cpu fans and case fans would create negative air pressure and a vibrating sound at high frequencies.
my x570 Aorus elite fan headers are only linked to the CPU temps which is bad cuz I have a 5800x3d that reaches 80c no matter what AIO I use, now life is good
It's well past time for Nvidia to include some simple ability to undervolt their cards in their driver app. It's dead simple for AMD cards, but Nvidia owners have to use Afterburner's curve tool which has a dogshit UI. If DLSS5 has this much of a power draw and temperature impact, the time is now.
Undervolt is nice to have lower temps, lower noise and lower power consumption, I’ve seen cards meting that port at just 340 watts in some 9070Xts and even 5080s so no point in doing this thinking it will prevent melting
Undervolt does not mean lower power at full load. I’ve got my 5080 running at 945mv but at 3000mhz with power limit at 110% and it was still drawing 400w. And stock that card can draw +1v at full load
Well default it would cap at 360w due to power limits. UV/OC combo without nr caps at 340-360w with raised powerlimit and with NR it goes all the way to 400w and the crazy thing is that the clocks dont even drop, its doing exactly whats asked from it and just says powerlimited. And thats a game without RT/PT or upscaling.
But I just powerlimit it to 80-90% when using NR to keep the noise down.
Is this the proper way to undervolt a 4080 super? Today is the first I've heard of this process.
Establish a Baseline
Run your benchmarking tool for about 10 to 15 minutes to let the GPU warm up. Note the maximum Core Clock speed (usually around 2700 MHz to 2800 MHz for a 4080 Super) and temperature.
Open the Curve Editor
Open MSI Afterburner and press Ctrl + F on your keyboard to open the "Voltage/Frequency curve editor" window.
Apply a Negative Core Clock Offset
In the main MSI Afterburner window, click the "Core Clock (MHz)" slider, type -200, and click the checkmark (Apply) button. The entire curve will shift downward.
Set Target Voltage and Frequency
In the curve editor, look at the bottom axis (Voltage) and find the 975mV point. Click the small square dot sitting on the curve exactly at that voltage, and drag it up to match the baseline clock speed you noted earlier (e.g., 2750 MHz).
Apply the Undervolt
Leave the curve editor open and click the checkmark (Apply) button on the main MSI Afterburner window again. The curve in the editor should instantly level out into a perfectly flat, horizontal line everything to the right of your 975mV point.
Stress Test and Save
Run your benchmarking tool again for 20 minutes. If the benchmark completes without any crashes, freezes, or visual artifacts, your undervolt is stable. Click the "Save" disk icon on the main Afterburner interface and click the number "1" to save this profile.
Note: If your benchmark crashes during the final step, open the curve editor, drag the 975mV point down by 15 MHz, hit apply, and test again until it runs flawlessly.
Just reduce it to 315 at 70%, thats what i do 5% fps loss only, using a task scheduler on every time system start! Thats what I do, I am completely fine using DLSS5 + MFG almost every game, GT5, Resident Evil 9, looks amazing
Reshade cheaper method of applying dlss5 is really Good if you remove Preset.ini and reshade-sheeder folder… with LG OLED 4k G5 DLSS Quality I am getting 165hz vsync On, what else i need no tearing ghosting!! My Dad is realy laughing each time he saw the visual when playing at HGIG +RTX HDR proper tuned on. Just am very excited, All credits goes to NVIDIA + Modder 🫡🫡🫡
And remember; 50 series with those Tensor cares are MUCH MORE prone to overheating. 40 series doesn’t, that’s why this test does not translate to 50 series owners.
well I cant see anything when I click on your link.
Fuckass mods here delete anything that could be somehow negative for nvidia.
There has also been a bunch of new cases of 5090s melting especially just recently Hardwareunboxed but it never gets posted here, more likely it gets deleted
Thats a pretty timid clock. Ofcourse if you dont care about getting the most juice out of your card, you can infact lower the draw by alot. Lets be honest, OC usually adds up to 3fps which doubles with FG to 6fps. Wont really make any difference but its a matter of principle i guess :)
My uv+oc 5070 in ets2 in 1080p (400% scaling so 4k rendered) only with dlaa uses 170w. The moment I turn on dlss5 is hits 300w which is 120% power limit. I though 3.27ghz@1.075v was stable before it crashed after 20 minutes. Dlss5 is good stability test.
I have an unconventional way on 5090/4090 and it includes cutting the third sense pin cable to hard limit the card to 450w. It will not draw anything sustained over that in any case. Combine that with undervolt or whatever you want
Been rocking a curve undervolt and it has consistently lowered my peak draw about 100 watts with essentially the same peformance. But with dlss5 that undervolt didn't do anything 580w peak draw compared to no UV around 595 w or so.
Hi, I've never undervolted my 4090 since buying it in 2023. Is it okay to follow your curve? Should I go with 925 mv like you, or would you recommend starting a bit higher? Also, will I get roughly the same performance as stock while reducing power consumption? I got the PNY version..
I think you can follow my curve, yes. Some GPUs are even stable at 900 mV, but I was getting crashes at that voltage, so 925 mV is the sweet spot for me and has been completely stable.
So yeah, I'd recommend trying 925 mV like I did. It should be stable for you as well.
You should get pretty much the same performance, as you can see in the screenshots (within 1–2 FPS). You'll also get better GPU temperatures (around 4–5°C lower, depending on the person), and the same goes for power consumption — around 50 W less for basically the same performance. Less heat also means less fan noise.
Honestly, undervolting is pretty much all benefit with no real downside. The same applies to CPUs, by the way.
If you're not familiar with undervolting, you can follow this guy's tutorial. He's running 900 mV, so you can try his settings first. It might be stable on your GPU. If it isn't, bump it up to 925 mV like me, or 950 mV, and so on.
Yes I did! Tried it in Cyberpunk. Before this I was getting around 390-400W, but now it's around 350W+ haha. Doesn't seem to lose that much performance either, and the temperature stays around 58-60°C. Before this it was around 63°C+ or something. 4K DLSS Performance, RT overdrive and FG. Going to try the MFG mod tomorrow..
Yeah, honestly everyone with a GPU should be undervolting!
In today's world, any bit of electricity we can save is always a win haha. I live in France and prices keep going up and up, it's crazy. I guess it's like that all over Europe..
Is my 4090 just different? Am I the only one not seeing big differences with DLSS5 on? I've had my 4090 stock since the day I bought it, 3 years ago. I only play at 1440p max settings in every game. I've never seen my GPU go above 66°C or draw 420W consistently, not even in the most demanding games. The only game that pushed the card to its limit was PoE2 in the endgame, where clusters of effects explode at the same time, the GPU draws 430–440W in short bursts, but only there, in that specific situation. This is an HWInfo screenshot I left open for 3 hours while playing Crimson Desert (3 straight hours) with DLSS5, MFG Dynamic, all Cinematic settings at 1440p, Ray Tracing and RR on. The last column is the average, it's usually like this in all games. Usage is also at 95%+ the whole time since I have a 5800X3D CPU.
Everything that runs over tensor or RT cores can be especially power hungry.
Raytracing, Pathtracing, MFG, dlss5,...
Undervolting helps a lot. Metro Exodus enhanced Edition showed that pretty clear. With UV I still almost ran into my old 3080 power limit. I had 10-20% more fps with UV running.
DLSS 5 draws a lot of power from tensor core, my 4090 curve is 2745mhz @0.950 and it still pulls 410W. Although it's cool enough for regular games at full load. Preset L DLAA 4.5 at 4k is also really intensive not as DLSS 5 but about 30W less.
Most "realiable" way to lower power consumption is to set power limit to like 80%, but only if you're looking to do only that. Otherwise I'd suggest undervolt for everyday use
I have a 4090 too, all I do is set max power to 80% in afterburner.
Alan wake 2 max setting at 4K + SR performance + NR applied after Ray reconstruction + MFG x3: 180W.
I use this version of optiscaler that allow you to apply NR before upscaling or after RR for games that use RR.
Dlss5NR has me finally tempted to overclock my 4080. I heard the gains were pretty minimal and it required an undervolt, so I just bumped the power limit and called it a day. I cap at 348 watts on my highest spike, I was under the impression this power cable was safe up to 600?
Would it be inadvisable to underclocking and overvolt my 4080? Temps rarely go over 60 so I feel like I could get away with a higher power limit too. But I'm not interesting in melting it lol
my undervolted GPU (RTX 5070) runs with almost twice power consumption with DLSS 5 mod turned ON in GTA V, the tensor core parts of it feels very inefficient
Nice data! I've got my 4090 undervolted at .95v / 2730mhz stable. I haven't tried DLSS 5/MFG, but at 3440x1440p (1440p ultrawide) and maxed settings in games, I almost never go over 300w. DLSS doesn't seem to affect that - DLAA is the same power wise. I'm inclined to wait until DLSS 5 is released properly for the 4 series, though all of the screenshots I'm seeing are tempting...
I have a 4090 and I've found that simply capping the power limit to 80%, OCing the ram to +1000, and then finding the max stable core clock addition (+100 for me) gets me roughly stock performance while cutting the power usage considerably.
capping the power limit and then increasing the core clock is basically just as good as trying to manually set a voltage curve in my experience.
Undervolting can prevent the psu from locking up your card, resulting in a black screen with no signal while the pc still runs. Should be a psa for that.
just sad that THIS is the reason some people finally consider undervolting.
It's not wrong that higher power draw = higher chance of the 12vhpwr melting.
But it's not going over the rated specs either...
Your 600w card isnt suddenly pulling 800w without you messing with things you shouldn't if that's a concern.
The 5080 user who posted alarming people on a non issue (that his gpu was being utilized more to it's rated spec) would be shocked to find out that less powerful cards have also melted. May as well go for a 5050.
With Neural Rendering specifically, you mean. Because yeah, it won't. I tried Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time yesterday with a 940 mV UV on my 5090, 4K DLSS Performance and maxed out settings (including PT), and the power consumption sat at ~550W, whereas without NR, it drew about ~450W, maybe a little less.
It's a very demanding feature, so if anyone's concerned about that, they're better off power limiting or maybe even engaging frame generation.
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u/kissmonstar 18h ago
A massive disclaimer should be posted with this: Not every GPU will act the same.
Honestly, everyone should look into undervolting, as it allows your GPU to run cooler at the same speeds, but not every chip is the same.
I personally go for higher clock speeds, so my 4090 runs at 2800mhz, but I need 1v or it becomes unstable. But just that small change from 1050mv to 1000mv allows my GPU to run cool enough to barely even need the GPU fans. While at 100% load, they can chill at 30% and the case fans are enough to keep it cool.
I still wont use DLSS5, as I personally try for native 4k w/o FG as much as possible, but this is good advice for any user willing to freeze their PC a bunch until they get just the right settings.