Research Finds Undervolting the Nvidia 4090 Provides Surprisingly Decent Results!

Undervolting a graphics card is certainly not an unusual practice, but in this regard, it was something only typically done by the cryptocurrency mining community. The overall concept was that by reducing the power requirements of the GPU you could get a significantly better optimised performance-per-watt balance which, ultimately, resulted in a slightly reduced cryptocurrency hash-rate production for a notably lower electricity cost.

While something general consumers like you and me can also do, however, generally speaking, people often prefer to just keep their GPU running as intended. – Following a research report via QuasarZone, however, it has been found that the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 might offer incredibly better power consumption performance if the user is willing to trade off just a relatively small amount of graphical grunt!

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 – An Undervolting Champion?

We should start by noting that undervolt testing, from a benchmarking standpoint, is a bit of a difficult task as it can often vary quite significantly depending on the exact model you’re using. While the Nvidia 4090 comes with a TDP of 450W, for example, the Founders Edition doesn’t really come close to this figure at 100% load. While custom AIB models will use more power (generally due to overclocking), even these don’t typically approach the 450W limit. – So, in other words, results will vary quite significantly depending on exactly which 4090 you’re using.

Based on these figures taken from the Nvidia 4090 Founders Edition, however, the results are genuinely quite remarkable as it suggests that by limiting the TDP (undervolting) to just half the maximum amount, the trade-off in lost performance is only circa 7-9%. – So in more basic terms, by limiting its maximum power consumption by 50%, you only apparently lose (at most) 10% of the overall performance when at its peak standard configuration.

What Do We Think?

Unlike overclocking, undervolting isn’t actually anywhere near as complicated to do. In fact, most people could probably do it with very minimal research via programs such as MSI Afterburner. With that being said though, there are always risks when you decide to fiddle around with non-standard settings. Albeit, perhaps undervolting your 4090 is the lesser of two evils if it’ll stop your 12VHPWR adaptor melting.

Given the rise in energy costs, however, who knows, maybe upon checking this out some Nvidia 4090 owners might be tempted to see what their GPU can do in terms of performance-per-watt tweaking. Then again, if you can afford to spend upwards of £1,600 on a graphics card, maybe you’re the kind of person who doesn’t dread the electric bill coming in the post.

What do you think though? – Let us know in the comments!