How does undervolting help gaming?

Now , I know that undervolting you cpu means supplying it with less volts,thus reducing heat and leaving a better margin for GPU OCing. But does it really pay off in gaming real life?
Also,does that come with a lower CPU frequency or I am mistaking it for underclocking?

 

The only thing that it does for gaming is keeping your cpu cooler, and thus not have it downclock when it gets too hot, so your games will always run good. Undervolting will not increase gaming performance, as it has nothing to do with it.

 

So 1 trick down. I was catching up on my reading about ways to improve gaming performance, so this seems a dead end. My CPU stays pretty cool at all times, so no need for this.

 

Undervolt simply lets the cpu run cooler. You can easily go down 8-10-12c degrees in temps.
It doesn't affect performance!

 

since the CPU and the GPU both share the same heatsink by keeping the cpus temperature lower you can either OC the GPU for better performance. Its also known that the GPU will under clock itself when it gets too hot which means a decreased fps in your games.

 

From my experience with undervolting, it HAS afected performance, and everyone I've talked to said it does impact it slightly. I went from the default 1.25v down to 1.025v, and on Crysis I went from 29fps to 21fps. I have my cpu slightly overvolted just because I saw what undervolting does first hand. I'm sure though that in any other game, you won't see any performance drop because Crysis is just a resource beast, so you can see even the slightest performance drop.

 

I don't think that's true. You're not underCLOCKING, so how can it affect performance?

 

Ok,let's put it this way...except for vashts121, did anyone else undervolt and notice anything?

 

I just did some super pi and here's the results

Super Pi to 2M, values rounded to the nearest second, system in sig
.950V:
1:21/1:21/1:21

1.250V:
1:21/1:21/1:21

So vashts121 had something else cause his dropped frame rate.

 

"Its also known that the GPU will under clock itself when it gets too hot "
This is the first time I've ever heard about this phenomenon. Is there any literature on this? It sounds really far fetched.

Pentium desktop processors used to, and I presume still do, clock lower to avoid thermal meltdowns like the old Thunderbird era, however I don't believe this technology was ever extended to GPUs. We'd be seeing less complaints about people running outrageous GPU temperatures and wanting to downclock manually to avoid spontaneous laptop combustion. Has nVidia or ATi released information about this feature?

Undervolting your CPU could also make you more prone to crashes and system instability if you lower the voltage too much and tax the CPU, without dropping the multiplier as well.
However, speaking from experience, overclocking a laptop GPU does not really give you that extra "edge" to make unacceptably choppy gameplay magically turn into a smooth-as-butter experience. You'll most likely hit a wall on component design sooner than you'll hit a wall in available power current.

 

I think what that means is when the GPU gets much too hot, it underclocks itself really far (for some reason 1mhz pops in my head) to save itself from frying.

Im not sure that is true, but when I would overclock too high and my graphics would basically crash, that was how it was explained to me.

 

As nearly all laptops have a shared heatsink for the processor and graphics chip undervolting the processor allows you a higher and more stable overclock of the graphics card - this could and does give you easily another 5-10% in gaming.

 

Poor 15" suckers...thats why you go 17"! Plenty of cooling space, and two heatsinks/fans.

Jk Jk, but it is true they are much better to overclock IMO.

 

17" laptops should be called portable desktops.
Tim

 

So bottom line is, undervolting help OCing the GPu, thus improving performance in gaming without excess heating.
Feel free to sum it up as you see it, cause from what I`ve read, this is what I`ve understood...

 

I think it helps with fan noise as well, my fan does not come on as much.

 

The main purpose is to reduce fan noise IMO

 

Undervolting the CPU reduces the amount of heat produced by the CPU. This can reduce fan noise. It is better for your laptop to run cooler. Undervolting doesn't directly affect the CPU unless they are both on the same heatsink.
Tim

 

To summarize:

1. Undervolting makes CPU cooler under 100% load - in games for example (up to 15 degrees in my experience). It is almost useless on lowest/idle multipliers/temps.
2. Helps a lot if you have a heatsink that covers both GPU and CPU, since it helps GPU cooling better.
3. DOES NOT SLOW DOWN CPU
4. It is 99,99% safe
5. Fan is slower/less noisy
5. Battery lasts a bit longer due to fact the fan is working less, and a bit because of the undervolting of CPU

Cheers,

Ivan

 

Thanks. I`m guessing this was what I was looking for to increase battery life and reduse noise, so that I could take my laptop with me at school. Schweet.

 

Explained Perfectly!

I just want to emphasis the fact that undervolting at its worse will only cause your computer to freeze/crash. Overvolting might cause you some problems though, so to whomever said they overvolted their CPU, beware.

 

I have two number 5! But thanks anyway! Glad to help!

Ivan

 

Just thought I'd post my undervolting settings, in case people want to know how low they can go. But beware, every CPU's undervolting capabilities are different.
Note that I've lowered my max FID's V from 1.250V to 1.025.
1.250 - 1.025 = 0.225 => 22% <-- That's a lot!. I succesfully managed to lower my max temp from mid 80s to mid 60s 70s (we're talking celsius, not fahrenheit ), depending on the application running.
Also note that FID 6.0x is running on SLFM voltage:O

Click to enlarge:


My cpu is T7500 2.2GHz

 

It is actually 18% since 1.025 is 82% of 1.25. but anyway it is still a lot. Good going! I managed to get stable 0,962V on max multiplier down from 1,212V on T5600. Not trying to hijack this thread, but more info on the subject and more can be found here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=124420 (some pics too).

Ivan

 

I was able to go down from 1.250 to 1.000.



Yeah that thread Ivan linked is great. It really helped.
Tim