Why You Should Undervolt Your AMD GPU (And How To Do It)

One of the simplest methods of getting the most out of your AMD graphics card is to undervolt it. On a technical level, undervolting reduces the voltage input to your PC’s GPU. On a practical level, undervolting gets you a more power-efficient card without sacrificing performance — when done right. Since the voltage is lower, the card is able to run cooler, which means less fan noise. Less heat also generally means an improved lifespan for your hardware.

It can even mean a small performance gain, especially for power- and thermal-challenged devices like mini PCs and gaming laptops; your computer won’t have to work as hard to cool itself and thus might run a little more optimally. While undervolting performance gains aren’t as great compared to overclocking, it’s still a relatively simple tweak that you only stand to gain from.

From my experience undervolting my Radeon RX 6600 XT, I immediately saw thermal and power-efficiency improvements. Playing “Asetto Corsa Rally” on the Ultra graphics setting, my GPU consistently stayed five to six degrees Celsius cooler while drawing around 20W less power, with no penalty to my frame rate. Every graphics card (even two of the exact same model) can vary in its tuning capabilities and the benefits seen from it, so achieving a perfectly balanced undervolting always requires a series of tests.

The simplest way to undervolt your card on Windows is to use AMD’s Adrenalin app. If you don’t have it installed already, it’s free, and it gives you granular control over your AMD card. Once you’ve installed it, open Adrenalin and navigate to the Performance tab. Adrenalin gives you a lot of GPU tweaks to choose from, but what you’re looking for is the Tuning sub-tab. Under Tuning Control, click Undervolt GPU. Read the EULA warning and, assuming you agree to it, Adrenalin will automatically configure your card for undervolting.

Play a game or run a benchmarking tool to test your system stability. If you don’t experience crashes or have other obvious issues like screen flickering, you can now start playing games with an undervolted card. However, you can push your undervolting a bit further by switching to the Custom tuning control option on the right-hand side of the screen. Enable the GPU Tuning option and then Advanced Control. Click and drag the Voltage (mV) meter a little bit toward the left, around 10 mV. Click “Apply Changes” and run another stress test.

How much you can undervolt depends on your individual card, so this will take some trial and error. If you notice system instability during the test, then you’ve gone too far. Move the slider 10 mV further to the right, save your settings, and try again. When you don’t have any stability issues, you can be confident you’re in the safe zone. For me, this was at 1060 mV, but for you it will likely be different.

All this talk about voltages may make you wonder if undervolting is safe. So long as you take precautions and only make incremental changes in the undervolting procedure, you don’t have much to worry about. In fact, AMD graphics cards are more reliably safe targets for undervolting than their Nvidia peers.

Still, undervolting does involve pushing your system into a potentially unstable state where it might suddenly crash or reboot. That means there’s always a chance something could go wrong and you could lose data stored on your computer, so frequent PC data backups are essential here. You should also be aware that, while undervolting can’t be detected by manufacturers like overclocking can be, you are technically violating AMD’s warranty. As the prompt you’ll see when you enable undervolting says, you should consider the risks you’re willing to take before you proceed.

From my own anecdotal experience, I had little trouble undervolting my card. While optimizing the configuration with advanced tuning controls, I did experience some screen flickering and my game crashing. Once I found the sweet spot for my card (as I’ll explain below), I had no issues and was happily enjoying a cooler, more power-efficient gaming rig.