Disabling Nvidia Boost 2.0 Gives me a better thermal

[Ja.KooLit]

So just sharing what I recently find out.

By disabling Nvidia boost 2.0 on my Max Q 3080 laptop, I got same hash rate but with Lower Temps. Because it is not boosting or pumping max wattage. Less wattage less heat.

My 3080 Max Q laptop is 80w model boosting to 100w. After disabling nvidia boost, it only stays at max 80w. Same OC setttings same hashrate results.

Try it. You can always enable. To disable, go to your device manager and look for Nvidia Platform Controllers and Framework. Right Click and disable.

Keep it mind though that by disabling this, whisper mode and advance optimus will also be disabled. But then again, you can always enable back

To verify if disabled or enabled, you can see that in your nvidia control panel system information

I dont know if also applicable to Max P variant laptop since I only have the max q variant

 

[hat]

Most likely this is because Ethereum mining is not core intensive, but memory intensive.

 

[bug]

If you can get the same hash rate without boosting, that means boosting was causing your card to throttle before. Since not all laptops are created equal, there's no guarantee other laptops will behave the same. But I guess it's something to try.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

If you can get the same hash rate without boosting, that means boosting was causing your card to throttle before. Since not all laptops are created equal, there's no guarantee other laptops will behave the same. But I guess it's something to try.

But I believe @hat is right. It does not change much if I change the core. But it could be worth trying. who knows. It may or may not help.

 

[nguyen]

You are supposed to undervolt the core heavily, let the VRAM get all extra the power headroom from dynamic boost 2.0 and you will get more hashrate.
Also overclock VRAM too

 

[Mescalamba]

In general most late nVidia/AMD cards profit from slight or heavy undervolt to keep nice and steady frequency. Doesnt really matter if gaming or mining. IMHO a lot of third party producers push those poor GPUs way too far with way too much volts.

I still have my Vega 64 Red Dragon that has stock 1.2v or something like that, while its perfectly stable at 1.0v at 1620 MHz core (and gives better benchmarks/fps on that). 1.2v was actually super counterproductive.

Similar stuff for my Titan Xp. Way better on locked freq/volts than when you leave it to regular curve.

 

[Vya Domus]

That's simply because these hashing algorithms are memory bound, therefore there is a point when TFLOPS (clocks or number of shaders) no longer affect hash rates.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

You are supposed to undervolt the core heavily, let the VRAM get all extra the power headroom from dynamic boost 2.0 and you will get more hashrate.
Also overclock VRAM too

But is it possible to undervolt the core on laptop? I have used afterburner and only sliders I could use are vram and core frequency.

If you read by original post, hashrate is same with or without dynamic boost. Same settings on afterburner slider. But without dynamic boost, GPU power does not boosting to 100w. Without boost, stays at 80w.

 

[nguyen]

But is it possible to undervolt the core on laptop? I have used afterburner and only sliders I could use are vram and core frequency.

If you read by original post, hashrate is same with or without dynamic boost. Same settings on afterburner slider. But without dynamic boost, GPU power does not boosting to 100w. Without boost, stays at 80w.

Yes you can undervolt a laptop with the Freq/Voltage curve in Afterburner
You are getting the same hashrate because the core freq doesn't matter much, VRAM freq matter more, by undervolting the core you divert power to the VRAM which can churn out better hashrate.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

Yes you can undervolt a laptop with the Freq/Voltage curve in Afterburner
You are getting the same hashrate because the core freq doesn't matter much, VRAM freq matter more, by undervolting the core you divert power to the VRAM which can churn out better hashrate.

Thanks for this. I was not aware the freq/voltage curve editor until today ha ha.

Anyway, i undervolted heavily, same hashrate but it looks like I can push more vram freq. Although difference was a mere 1 mh/s. But it is more cooler. Of course I tested with boost enabled and disabled. But I will keep it disabled because it is 3 deg C cooler with nvidia boost disabled

 

[Macadamia]

Out of curiosity, what hashrate do you manage to reach with this 80W RTX 3080 ?

 

[Ja.KooLit]

Out of curiosity, what hashrate do you manage to reach with this 80W RTX 3080 ?

50 mhs

 

[Macadamia]

That is definitely very good for 80W, 625KH/W is a really high efficiency !

 

[Mescalamba]

Really good, cause a lot of cards that can do 50 need like 200W for it.

 

[Ja.KooLit]

 

[Macadamia]

Definitely the best efficiency I have seen so far !

 

[Mescalamba]

And now you know why you cant get 3080 anywhere.

 

[Macadamia]

Ok I did some testing on both my Lenovo Legion 5 Pro and one of my Asus TUF Gaming A17, both with RTX 3070 but the Lenovo being Max-P (max 140W) and the Asus Max-Q (80W+15W).

Disabling nVidia Boost 2.0 (that also includes Resizable Bar and Whisper Mode 2.0) had absolutely no impact on my Lenovo. But I believe the reason is I was already running it below the base TDP, at 115W. So gave up after a couple of hours and enabled it again.
On the Asus, after having to force the core to clock at a decent speed as it seemed to be clocked down to 495MHz - a tiny bit too low -, I manage to fix the core clock at 705MHz and while keeping the VRAM clock at +699 (6699MHz total), I ended up gaining a ridiculous 0.02MH/s, but this time not at 95W TDP, but 83W !!!

In other words, this seems to confirm that if you have a Max-Q RTX 3000 series laptop, you will be really better off disabling Dynamic Boost 2.0, and if you make sure your core doesn't clock too low, you will seriously gain in efficiency.
My Asus with it's Max-Q 3070 is currently mining at 51.44MH/s @ 83W. Oh side note, I also gained about 1-2°C on core and junction temps, so I see no reason not to go for it. That is nearly as good as OP's efficiency.

Now my Lenovo is less efficient than my Asus, except that it mines at 66.57MH/s at 115W at about 3°C more than the Asus. Still good and gives me an extra 15MH/s so I won't change these settings.


I will receive a Lenovo Legion 5 (non pro model) at the end of next week, with a RTX 3060 Max-P (130W) and the week after an ACER Nitro 5 with a RTX 3060 Max-Q (85W).
They will allow me more testing, but I suspect everything will depend on the VRAM quality, and I bet these 3060s will perform identically as the 3070s at similar frequencies. Will keep you all updated.

I would like to thank OP again for finding this out as I have just had a free efficiency jump on the Asus


Update :
After running a bit longer, the Asus finally stabilized at 84W, so slightly less efficient.
But then I tried to apply the same changes to my second identical Asus TUF Gaming A17, and for some reason, it uses 89W instead of 84.
After some digging, it seems like for some reason, one of the laptops's GPU voltage is at 0.62V (the 84W one) while the other one is at 0.7V. The problem is I HAVE NO IDEA how they came up to have a different voltage !!! There definitely must be a way to control this, but I have no idea how as none of the tools I used could affect this Voltage.... I will need to keep investigating.

 

[elghinnarisa]

close enough? It's like you don't even have to try on these cards. Drag the curve to the bottom, lock it at 718mv, crank memory to max and diggy diggy away.

Update :
After running a bit longer, the Asus finally stabilized at 84W, so slightly less efficient.
But then I tried to apply the same changes to my second identical Asus TUF Gaming A17, and for some reason, it uses 89W instead of 84.
After some digging, it seems like for some reason, one of the laptops's GPU voltage is at 0.62V (the 84W one) while the other one is at 0.7V. The problem is I HAVE NO IDEA how they came up to have a different voltage !!! There definitely must be a way to control this, but I have no idea how as none of the tools I used could affect this Voltage.... I will need to keep investigating.

You can lock voltages in MSI afterburner in the curve editor. Select one of the little blips and when its highlighted press L on your keyboard and it will lock the voltage there.
That being said, most cards will have a slight variation in voltage, no two chips are the same.
Other than that, BIOS editing? Havn't looked at that in ages though so no idea how they go about such things these days.

 

[Macadamia]

Wow your efficiency is shocking !

What frequency did you use for the core ?

I gave up using MSI Afterburner in my Lenovo because of the +1500 limit on memory speed (My memory currently runs stable and decent junction temp at +1680MHz). I use Gminer 2.5 options to OC the GPU directly.
But I realize I can easily use MSI Afterburner to optimize my 2 Asus laptops as they can only get +699Mhz on memory before becoming unstable.
This said, as they both already are at 620mV and 700mV, I am not sure I can gain any efficiency. I just wonder what I have done to get both identical laptops with such a big difference in core voltage. This goes beyond silicon lottery.

There must be a way to reduce and fix the voltages as MSI Afterburner does that to some extent, but it seems no one has released a tool yet that can go beyong the limits...
Of course Gminer as core and memory voltage controls for GPUs, but they only work on AMD cards...

 

[elghinnarisa]

Wow your efficiency is shocking !

What frequency did you use for the core ?

I gave up using MSI Afterburner in my Lenovo because of the +1500 limit on memory speed (My memory currently runs stable and decent junction temp at +1680MHz). I use Gminer 2.5 options to OC the GPU directly.
But I realize I can easily use MSI Afterburner to optimize my 2 Asus laptops as they can only get +699Mhz on memory before becoming unstable.
This said, as they both already are at 620mV and 700mV, I am not sure I can gain any efficiency. I just wonder what I have done to get both identical laptops with such a big difference in core voltage. This goes beyond silicon lottery.

There must be a way to reduce and fix the voltages as MSI Afterburner does that to some extent, but it seems no one has released a tool yet that can go beyong the limits...
Of course Gminer as core and memory voltage controls for GPUs, but they only work on AMD cards...

powerlimit at 50%, locked to 718mv gave me a ~600-700Mhz on core simply dragging the cruve to tbe bottom while mem was maxed. Going down to 700mv forced mem down to 5Ghz.

As for the limits, from what I read over the years the way to do that is to create a custom BIOS for it.

You don't have to do anything to have varying voltages for two chips of the same series, thats how it's always been. Binning is always a bit different from card to card so you will generally have smaller differences between them no matter what two you look at. They might be identical in overall specifications, but in the end no two chips are ever made the same, so variances are to be expected.

 

[Macadamia]

I am guessing you have a MSI laptop, as my power limit slider is greyed out.
As for different voltages, thanks for the info, I was not aware, and explains a lot.
Real pity laptop GPUs do not offer the same control as desktop versions, but it also makes sense considering each manufacturer use a different cooling / power management system.

 

[elghinnarisa]

I am guessing you have a MSI laptop, as my power limit slider is greyed out.
As for different voltages, thanks for the info, I was not aware, and explains a lot.
Real pity laptop GPUs do not offer the same control as desktop versions, but it also makes sense considering each manufacturer use a different cooling / power management system.

Did you go through the settings in MSI afterburner? To unlock voltage control, perhaps try with extended instead?

I was not clear enough, this is a desktop GPU that I run at ~80w, not a laptop one. I was originally just joining in the conversation because it seems like the 3000 series cards just undervolt easily in general.

Have you looked at other tools which might provide more control? I have no idea how it varies between choice of program, I simply use MSI afterburner since I make use of it's on screen display quite frequently. But I heard others using their manufactures flavour of software instead (if applicable that is)

That being said, for the most precise control a unlocked vBIOS would be one way to do it, if there is one out there. Also depends on if it is locked or not. A bit disappointing that you cannot change the power limit though, out of all places, on a laptop would be the one place I would really want that.

 

[Macadamia]

Thanks for these precisions.
Yes one would think the TDP would be the most obvious setting to be able to change on a laptop, alas many manufacturers tends to control the TDP of the CPU and the GPU via their own proprietary bloatwares (like Asus Armoury Crate or Lenovo Vantage) and leave few options left for power users.
I can also confirm no setting in afterburner allowed me to unlock voltage control on any of my laptops.
The only settings available are core/ mem freq, core freq / voltage curve. and that's about it.
I know MSI laptops also have the fan control (makes sense ^^).

As for the vBIOS mod, the only semi successful attempt I have heard of on recent laptops was on an Asus Scar 17's RTX 3080 (115+15W) flashed with a MSI's laptop's 150W TDP RTX 3080, vBIOS and the results were not very stable anyways