re: Finch's Guide to Obtaining a GPU/CPU and Trading Thread

Keep an eye on it. If you track your core clock during gaming (or during intense benchmarking), you’ll experience something called clock sag. Basically, your clock starts at X, and then as your gpu heats up, it starts to drop. Not uncommon for a 3080FE to start out around 1875mhz and then eventually get down to around 1800mhz once fully heat soaked.

By undervolting, you’re basically asking your card to clock higher at a lower voltage than default, which keeps it cooler. I can run a stress test or game for hours on end, and my core clock will sit at 1890mhz, which it draws at 900mv instead of the roughly (I’m not at home to check) 1050mv that clock is would normally draw. So I get moderately better than stock performance at moderately lower power draw and temperatures.

At its core, undervolting is a give and take between performance and power draw. You can get much better performance for the same power, much better temperatures for slightly reduced performance, or anything in between. Just depends on what your goals are. Ultimately, overclocking is good for benchmarking, but undervolting is better for gaming.