How to Undervolt a GPU in MSI Afterburner

You undervolt in MSI Afterburner's curve editor by lifting one voltage point to your clock. On our RTX 3080 that kept 190 FPS in Heaven and cut power from 316 W to 288 W. Everything above that point runs flat, and only hours in your own games prove it holds.

RTX 3080 avg power in Heaven, W

316 → 288

FPS after, 190.6 at stock

190.2

Daily voltage at 1860 MHz

900 mV

Every undervolt number comes from one PC: RTX 3080 Founders Edition (NVIDIA's own model), Ryzen 7 5800X3D, NVIDIA driver 621.01. The test is Unigine Heaven, a free GPU benchmark, at 1080p windowed, DirectX 11, Ultra, Extreme tessellation, 8x AA.

We measured on Nov 14, 2026. Your chip will land somewhere else, so treat our values as a starting point.

What does undervolting a GPU do?

It feeds the GPU less voltage for the same clock. Less voltage means less power and heat at about the same speed.

Your card picks its clock from a voltage/frequency curve: a list of points where each voltage gets a clock. Voltage is counted in mV (millivolts): 900 mV is 0.9 V.

At stock, our card climbed that curve until it hit the power limit, the wattage cap the card won't cross. It sat on that cap 99% of the stock run.

Same benchmark, run back to back on our RTX 3080:

That's 28 W less, about 9%, for 0.4 FPS. The 0.4 is noise: repeat runs on the same settings moved by more than that.

At stock the clock bounced between 1770 and 1890 MHz as the card hit its power cap. Undervolted, it held 1830 to 1845 MHz and never touched the cap.

We ran both settings again later that day, in the session for our overclocking guide. That session read higher FPS on both: 199.3 at stock and 198.8 undervolted. The undervolt ran warmer there and saved 18 W (317 W to 299 W).

So compare numbers inside one session, not across our two guides.

Want more frames instead? That's overclocking, and our GPU overclocking guide shows what it gets on the same RTX 3080.

How do you undervolt a GPU in MSI Afterburner?

You lower the whole curve, raise one point to your target clock, and apply. Afterburner then flattens every point above that voltage.

Up is clock in MHz, across is voltage in mV. The thin line is the stock curve.

Pick a clock your card already holds at stock, then find the lowest voltage for it. These steps use Afterburner 4.6.6 on Windows:

Ours held 1770 to 1890 MHz at stock, so we took 1860 MHz. Don't panic if the flat line later reads 1845. The driver shifts the curve with temperature, and your shift stays the same.

How do you know your undervolt is stable?

Your undervolt is stable when hours of your heaviest games bring no driver reset. A benchmark pass isn't enough: our card passed Heaven at 862.5 mV and still crashed in Call of Duty.

Watch for these three signs of a crash:

• Screen flickers or goes black for a moment: Windows restarted the driver after a 2-second hang. The game may close.
• "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered": the same reset, with the message Windows shows after it.
• A game closes with no message: open Event Viewer from the Start search, then Windows Logs > System. Look for nvlddmkm errors (that's NVIDIA's display driver).

Any of these means the voltage is too low for that clock. Step up 12.5 mV and test again:

No new nvlddmkm errors? Keep that voltage.

Here's how we got to 900 mV at 1860 MHz. Each step up followed a crash:

Games needed at least 37.5 mV more than Heaven on this card. So use the benchmark to find the floor, then add margin and test in your heaviest games for hours.

Start at 1860 MHz and 900 mV, then let your games set the voltage.

FAQ

What undervolt should you try on an RTX 3080?

Our Founders Edition runs 1860 MHz at 900 mV with the power limit at 100%. Start there, test for hours in your games, and add 12.5 mV if you see driver resets.

Is undervolting a GPU safe?

The voltage only goes down, and Afterburner keeps its voltage slider locked by default for safety. Too low a setting shows up as a crash. Windows restarts the driver, and the game may close with unsaved progress.

Does undervolting void the warranty?

NVIDIA's graphics card warranty doesn't mention undervolting or overclocking. It excludes problems caused by "abuse, misuse, negligence."

NVIDIA covers Founders Edition cards itself. Cards from MSI, ASUS or Gigabyte go through that maker, so check their terms.

Can you undervolt an AMD GPU?

Yes, in AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition. AMD offers it only on select GPUs. To find it:

No Undervolt GPU option means AMD doesn't offer it for your card.