Does undervolting cause performance loss?

[erengore]

Hello to everyone.

Does undervolting cause performance loss?

 

[birdie]

It might or might not depending on the CPU and the amount of undervolting.

Run your favourite benchmarks before and after unvervolting and check for yourself.

People undervolt not because they are concerned with performance, they normally do it to improve thermals. As for the last gen mobile Intel and AMD CPUs they no longer allow to alter CPU voltages for various reasons starting with plundervolt and ending with system stability issues (e.g. on Ryzen APUs CPU and GPU share the same voltages and playing with the former can make the latter unstable).

 

[erengore]

It might or might not depending on the CPU and the amount of undervolting.

Run your favourite benchmarks before and after unvervolting and check for yourself.

People undervolt not because they are concerned with performance, they normally do it to improve thermals. As for the last gen mobile Intel and AMD CPUs no longer allow to alter CPU voltages for various reasons starting with plundervolt and ending with system stability issues (e.g. on Ryzen APUs CPU and GPU share the same voltages and playing with the former can make the latter unstable).

Honestly, I haven't seen a huge performance loss. And as you can see in the picture, I have an i7-7700HQ Mobile processor that is suitable for heating. I've never changed thermal paste and it's 5 years old. Here are my temperatures. Actually, I do it to reduce the temperatures and run the system more spaciously, but still, such a question stuck in my mind. My settings are as follows:

If you have any advice about my settings, I'd love to get it. My system is running at 36 degrees at idle and at 85 degrees at maximum load. I don't see much of 85 either. Usually 80 is the highest. I am using HP Pavilion Power Laptop 15-cb0xx.

 

[Colddecked]

Just lowering voltage on its own isn't going to create any performance loss. If you have to lower your clocks to regain stability, that's when you would lose performance. But even then, when you tune it right, you'll be getting almost all of the performance with better temps and battery life.

 

[erengore]

Thanks for your answers guys.

 

[GerKNG]

AMD CPUs with Auto Clockspeeds do actually trigger clock stretching where instead of just crashing or rebooting the effective clock speed where the CPU actually does something decreases.

Intel does nothing like this. it just gets unstable or not. stock or fixed clock speeds.

 

[AOne]

It's actually increasing performance in most cases. Lower power consumption = lower heat = no thermal throttling = increased performance.

 

[erengore]

It's actually increasing performance in most cases. Lower power consumption = lower heat = no thermal throttling = increased performance.

I agree with you.

 

[oobymach]

What AOne says is mostly true, but in the case of your cpu and ram undervolting does reduce performance. Not by much, but in general more voltage = better performance.

With my ram, if I overvolt by 0.5v (from 1.45 to 1.5) I gain a small decrease in refresh (maybe 2 points) like from 65.5ns to 65.3ns. The opposite is true if I undervolt like to 1.35v the refresh goes up a couple points.

With my cpu if I overvolt a bit my multi-thread score in cpu-z bench goes up a bit, not a lot but a bit. If you starve your parts of voltage they won't perform as well, and if you're setting a manual clock then you will probably see performance gains up to a point when giving more voltage.

For ryzen 3000 if you go above 1.3v manual there is a performance decrease you can see if you test aida64 memory read bench, but if you go from say 1.25 to 1.3v with a manual cpu clock speed you should see a performance increase vs the lesser voltage in cpu-z bench. I do but ymmv.

 

[nerdson199]

If you mean GPU, No, not even during high-intensity activities like gaming. Undervolting your GPU has no significant effect on performance. The only way your GPU performance can decrease is if you start to notice instability. If that is the case, revert back to normal factory settings, and then everything will turn out to be okay.

 

[mstenholm]

If you mean GPU, No, not even during high-intensity activities like gaming. Undervolting your GPU has no significant effect on performance. The only way your GPU performance can decrease is if you start to notice instability. If that is the case, revert back to normal factory settings, and then everything will turn out to be okay.

And it was so close to be a year old…..