Test system
The test system for this article consists of my current system, which I introduced in my blog article the other day. The memory is so semi-optimized and the CPU undervolted with the CTR. The changeover to Windows 11 will take place in the near future, but Windows 10 was still used for this test.
Readout tools NVSMI and Afterburner
Various free tools are available for reading out the power consumption. For this test, I will limit myself to Nvidia’s in-house NVSMI tool, which has already been introduced in this article, and the MSI Afterburner, which I will also use to undervolt the graphics card during the test.
With the NVSMI tool, all power limits of the installed graphics card can be read directly from the firmware. It’s dead easy to use and is explained in the article linked above.
Input measurement
The NVSMI tool just mentioned provides convenient information about the preconfigured power limits. On the card used in the test, this is set at 310W. Via the MSI Afterburner the power limit of this card can be increased by 6%, which should allow the card to consume 330W.
A quick glance in Furmark reveals: The card takes every single allowed watt under maximum load.
When gaming in QHD, I usually hit a boost clock of around 1890-1920MHz.
Once the final settings are in place, I’ll use my inexpensive measuring device to take concrete measurements at the socket to see how many watts are actually saved in reality.
Lowering the power limit
The first and easiest solution to reduce the power consumption of the graphics card is to lower the power limit. If we set this to 75%, for example, the card is only allowed to consume 232 of the original 310 watts.
However, this solution has a serious disadvantage: we lose tact! Why is that? Each graphics card of the current generation has a predefined curve on which all gradations of the power supply are assigned a corresponding clock. A simple example: at 850mV there are 1000MHz, at 875mV 1100Mhz, at 900mV 1200MHz and so on. If the graphics card now clocks up while playing, it only does so until it reaches its set power limit. If this is now lower than standard, the graphics card no longer reaches the high voltage values and thus also no longer comes to the high clock rates. Now this is where the ominous undervolting comes into play.
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