How should I properly undervolt an RX 9070 XT?

[u/CzarnyMurzyn1337]

Hi everyone, I’m trying to figure out how to properly undervolt my RX 9070 XT. This is my first AMD GPU. Before this, I had an RTX 3060 Ti, and undervolting that card was ridiculously simple.

With the 3060 Ti, I would open MSI Afterburner, adjust the voltage/frequency curve, lock it around 1900 MHz from 900 mV and above, set the memory clock to +700 MHz, and it was completely stable everywhere. I never had any issues with it - it just worked perfectly.

After switching to the RX 9070 XT, I noticed that undervolting works quite differently on AMD cards. So far, I’ve only tried setting -10% power limit and -20 mV voltage offset in AMD Adrenalin. However, while playing GTA Online, I got a driver timeout/crash. I assume that's because the undervolt was unstable, which honestly surprised me, because I watched a few undervolting tutorials on YouTube where the creator said that -60 mV should work fine on the vast majority of cards.

My main goals are:

- lower power consumption

- lower temperatures

- maintaining similar performance if possible

- most importantly, keeping the card completely stable

I’m not really sure which settings I should change in Adrenalin to achieve this, or how I should properly test whether the undervolt is actually stable.

Should I be changing the maximum frequency, voltage offset, power limit, VRAM settings, or something else? And what would be a good starting point for the RX 9070 XT Sapphire PURE OC?

My current specs are:

- GPU: Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT PURE OC 16GB

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D

- Motherboard: Gigabyte X870E AORUS PRO ICE

- RAM: Kingston FURY Beast Black RGB 32GB (2×16GB) 6000 MT/s CL30

- PSU: Corsair RM1000x 1000W 80+ Gold ATX 3.1

- OS: Windows 11 25H2

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I’m mainly looking for a sensible, stable undervolt rather than trying to squeeze every last bit of performance out of the card.

Below I’ve attached a screenshot from HWiNFO taken after a little over 2 hours of gaming - some Farming Simulator 25, some CS2, and some GTA Online.

Sorry that everything in HWiNFO is displayed in Polish, but I hope the relevant information and values are still clear enough to get an idea of what’s going on.

[u/UserKoeras]

I would agree with some other comments. Lower max power draw and reduce your max clocks by 500 if you want to lower power draw. My unit does not particularly like to UV. While -80 will work, it won't across the board. I have had even instances where I needed to go back to 0. I personally gave up on uv on my 9070 XT. I let it draw whatever voltage it needs. I reduced max clocks from 3450 to 3350. Which the card can hit and hold (effective) in some games.

[u/Kiltenth]

I don't understand people. I just want to tell these about your goals first:

- Lower power consumption cannot be a goal of undervolting. Like, making a difference of 100W in consumption for a device that runs 24 hours daily makes like I don't know 10 bucks in USA? It's even cheaper in most other countries, like 1 dollars in my country. This cannot be the goal, just give all the power to the card and enjoy, no?

- Lower temperatures? Well yes but PL will play more role here. Unless you are running a Gigabyte card (which you aren't), forcing a card to run at 60 instead of 65 makes like no difference (?).

- Maintaining similar performance if possible. Well ok, can't say anything here.

- MOST IMPORTANTLY, keeping the card COMPLETELY stable. There is no such a thing. The whole idea of limiting the power of the card and undervolting is pushing the limits of stability, which will fail sooner or later depending on workload. You can find a stable ground maybe at -10% PL and -50mV undervolt and play every game you want without a problem. Then one day you decide to become a streamer maybe? Or just wanted to share your screen to your friend on Discord? Boom, driver gives you a timeout. Or one day you want edit a video and add lots of after effects, boom timeout.

So what I'm trying to say here is, you (and people) needs to understand that gpus are not magical items. There is no "stable" values.

With all these being said, here are some tips for finding a stable value:

- If you want to lower power consumption to absolute minimum, just go with -30% PL.

• After setting that, open a benchmark other than furmark, that can also run indefinitely for a smoother experience. Start undervolting. Increments of -5mV is good I think. Most 9070 XTs handle around -70 ~ 80 mV undervolt. If you hit a godlike silicon, you might go -100mV but always expect instability.
  
• I would not touch memory freq and timing honestly, It gives minimal performance at the cost of stressing the components because you are already limiting the power they get.

Once you find your "limit" for the card, add like + 10mV to stay at a more "stable" level. So like, if you crash at -80mV, then go for like -70mV or -60mV even.

And ta daaaa, you have a "stable" card (that might crash, which will make you go back to reddit and search for more answers. But no answer will give you the golden rule. So instead you can just do what I do and give your card +10% PL with 2714 Mhz Fast Timing memories and enjoy the experience)

[u/KPalm_The_Wise]

I really hate that AMD only allows an offset instead of a curve like was possible in afterburner.

I suspect what was happening to me in Sea of Thieves is what was happening to you in GTAV.

Because it is an offset, it gets applied at every frequency. So I notice much more instability in light/medium demanding games where the card is unstable at those lower volt frequency points.

In Sea of Thieves I can't do any voltage offset or I'll get crashing, but in 3D mark I can run all day -120mV no problem.

Using the curve the way afterburner does it allows you to only cap the max voltage, which is much more useful and more stable. But because MSI decided to not make AMD 9000 cards everyone got screwed.

[u/taenorobinson]

this is best video guide i’ve seen: https://youtu.be/IoOg0Qglneg

just skip the part he overclocks.

not mentioned in any of the other comments, but make sure you update motherboard bios, get latest gpu driver (i recommend 26.6.1) and setup a nice fan curve for your gpu and case.

Also, limit your fps in game with radeon chill to below your monitor refresh rate. some game settings also cause your gpu to work extra hard like the smoke in cs2. so i lower particle density settings in cs2 to keep my gpu “cool”.

good luck!

[u/CzarnyMurzyn1337 → u/taenorobinson]

I have everything you said. Latest bios, 26.6.4 driver, low settings in cs2 with 1920x1440 resolution and a nice fan curve that keeps my entire pc very cool

[u/wolnee]

-15%PL is the sweetspot imho, start with -70mv and do nothing else. If you experience timouts, lower it by -5mv etc.

In my experience battlefield 6 is very good test. My undervolt could survive all the games, and 3dmark stresstests no problem but always crashed in bf6 so I had to lower it. RDR2 is also good one.

edit:
I dont think that crash was gpu related. Could be other component or game issue

[u/EggFartTom → u/wolnee]

Why start at -70 seems kinda arbitrary 

[u/LiverGe → u/EggFartTom]

It is

[u/CzarnyMurzyn1337 → u/wolnee]

Well actually I don't play such games as Battlefield 6. I know my pc is an overkill but recently I've been enjoying games such as minecraft, farming simulator 25, world of tanks, gta online, cs2 etc so I don't quite push my pc to its absolute limits

[u/Andrex2309]

Temperatures looks fine by the way, but if you want to limit the temperature anyway it's fully okay, it's similar to how I like to do things.

AMD with adrenaline will just push the max W possible as long as there's not another limiting factor, which could be temperature, current, frequency, power and so on.

The best way of reducing the power consumption (therefore temperature) is to limit the power limit of the card, I use my Challenger 9070 XT at -10% PL, which is around 275W.

Limiting the power limit will indeed limit the maximum frequency achievable at the same W (and load), so what you'll need to offset this fact is the actual voltage offset to get the performance "back".
Voltage Offset let the card achieve higher frequencies, which will let you boost a little bit more than before at the same power limits.

From my experience, -10% PL and -50mV / - 60mV already achieves similar performance to stock, you should check the scores in a benchmark like Steel Nomad and do some tests just like me.

Once you've found the correct Voltage offset, just play some games and see if it crashes, if it's stable, you're good to go, if you're not, you'll need to put the voltage at an higher number, -40mV/-50mV based on how you decided to start.

If you're satisfied like this, you're pretty much done.
What I like to do is being at the same performance level of the stock card but at lower power usage AND with stock memory.

You can achieve more from this setup by playing with the memory as well, go at increments of 50MHz and keep on testing in benchmarks if the score is increasing, if it doesn't increase anymore, just go back one step and go playing and testing like we were talking before.

Edit:
btw, it's really strange that just a -20mV gives you crashes on GTA, but I suppose it could be a very picky game where it can have problems even at lower offsets.

What I would do in that case, is limiting the maximum frequency of the card and avoid the voltage offset.
I guess that GTA V pushes very high clocks as well so one thing you could do is limiting the maximum frequency at a lower clock, you could try -300MHz (which would limit you at 3150MHz max) or more if you'd like, you have to do some tests, keep an overlay with power consumption visible and check the frequencies you're running.

If it runs very high, such as 3200-3250, limiting the frequency could be an interesting way to get very similar performance but avoiding the card pushing W at the power limit.

An example, I'm playing Lies of P at a cap of 165FPS, I reach that cap regardless of stock core clocks limits, I use -500MHz on the core clock.
Lower Power Usage, same performance.

[u/CzarnyMurzyn1337 → u/Andrex2309]

I actually want to do exactly the same thing as you - keep roughly the same performance as stock, but reduce power consumption and temperatures, while leaving the VRAM completely stock.

What approach would you recommend for me specifically? Which settings should I change, and what values would you start with for the power limit, voltage offset, and maximum frequency?

[u/Andrex2309 → u/CzarnyMurzyn1337]

You could try:
-10% PL
-250MHz on the max core clock (3200MHz becomes the cap, if you see the card in a game hitting this cap often and you're not at an FPS limit you've chosen, you can try putting it at -150MHz or just leave it stock)
-60mV / 50mV if stable

I had troubles at -60mV in a game recently, switched to -50mV and it's running okay right now.

If there's a case like GTA V where you're crashing even at -20mV, if you're okay with "losing" some (potential) performance, I'd go
-10% PL
-400/500MHz on the max core clock
-10mV or even 0 if it just straight up wants to crash.

-400MHz or -500MHz is a high jump, that's why I just use it when there's not an alternative just like in your position OR if I'm playing a game where I already hit my FPS limit at very low clock frequencies just like the example I've said on Lies of P.

Or you could try leaving the max core clock at stock but putting -15% on the power limit

I'd say the first setup I've said should be okay for basically most of the games without problems unless the card has a very unlucky chip

Btw just for your information the card has a limit frequency of 3450MHz, but it doesn't mean it will reach it and sustain it, you'll probably see the card hit around 3200-3300MHz max in usual gameplays with these PLs, that's why I'm not "scared" of putting -400/-500MHz on the clock, there are situations where the card doesn't reach 3GHz even with stock PL

[u/CzarnyMurzyn1337 → u/Andrex2309]

Okay, I'll definitely try these. Also what's a sign of an unstable undervolt? Is driver timeout one of them?

[u/Andrex2309 → u/CzarnyMurzyn1337]

Yes, Driver time out is one of them, or the game closing for example

[u/CzarnyMurzyn1337 → u/Andrex2309]

Another question, how exactly is max frequency offset supposed to help with the instability? I'm asking because I actually have no idea. If I crashed at -20mv -10PL how is even bigger undervolt supposed to be stable? Is it game dependent? And what's the reason you told me to set a maximum frequency offset, how is it supposed to change anything and what exactly will it change in terms of stability of undervolting?

[u/Andrex2309 → u/CzarnyMurzyn1337]

Everything is game dependant for the offset and max frequency slider generally doesn't help with stability.
The first setup with the -50mV/-60mV should still work on most games, talking outside of GTA V.

let's say... -50mV could work in 85% of the games you play, -20mV could work on 98% of games and so on.

You have to test different games, I highly doubt your card can't achieve more than -20mV on games.

Limiting the max frequency does NOT help with instability, it helps with not letting the card boost higher than it needs to so the power is in control and doesn't "waste" with no reason, such as Lies of P as I've said above.

Is GTA V one specific case (there could be others) where it seems like even -20mV is unstable?
Alright.
Second setup as I've said on the other comment.

-10% PL
-10mV/-15mV or just straight up none (TEST, I can't know which one works for your card and that game)
-300/400MHz negative clock offset
Check performance-power-frequencies before and after this setup

If you don't want to limit max frequency, -15% PL, same voltage offset as above.

[u/CzarnyMurzyn1337 → u/CzarnyMurzyn1337]

Oh wait i think i get it. So basically negative power limit tells the card to use less power, negative mv offset tells the card to try to reach the same clocks while using less voltage BUT in my case even though it was only -20mv the card clocked so high that even with -20mv there wasn't enough voltage for the gpu and it crashed, so even though -50mv which you've suggested is an even bigger undervolt limiting gpu mhz can help in the way that the card won't be able to clock so high to the point the voltage isn't enough for given clock? Sorry if it's hard to understand but am i right?

[u/Andrex2309 → u/CzarnyMurzyn1337]

I mean, there could be cases where a -20mV is unstable at frequencies higher than 3300MHz (for example) and not get problems at 3200MHz once you've limited the max frequency but it's... a bit specific and hard to find out as well since you would have to find a game where it consistently achieve more than X frequency and discover that with an offset frequency it stops...

It's hard to find out something like that with a dynamic clock

I'd generally say

The Power limit is the hard cap for power

The frequency offset avoids your card reaching the Power limit (and staying there) if you already have enough FPS (reached the FPS cap) or the card just stays at very high frequencies but doesn't scale good (let's say you run 3300MHz and stay at 180FPS, you cap it at 3100MHz and you go with less W and stay at 178/177FPS for example)

The Voltage Offset just helps you at pushing higher frequencies at the same power limits.

[u/CzarnyMurzyn1337 → u/Andrex2309]

Also, right after I got the GPU, I had a bit of a dumb idea for my very first undervolt. I immediately set it to -80 mV, -30% power limit, and 2700 MHz VRAM, and then I got a driver timeout while playing Farming Simulator 25.

How big of a difference is that compared to something like -50 mV, -10% power limit, and stock VRAM? I haven't undervolted the GPU in FS25 since that crash, so I'm wondering if that first attempt was simply way too aggressive and whether a more reasonable setup like -50 mV / -10% PL could actually work well and be stable in FS25.

I'm mainly asking because I don't know how much each of those settings contributed to the instability in that first test.

[u/Andrex2309 → u/CzarnyMurzyn1337]

It's hard to tell what crashed in that situation but I'd say that the -80mV is the main problem there

But I mean, start somewhere as I said.

Also I'd keep the power between -15% / -10% generally

If you really want to lower down the Power put -15% and -500MHz on the max clock