nvidia 30 series VRAM overclocking

[Kanoe]

I know there might not be too many with experience of this at the moment but if the Hexus reviewers can provided any insight that would be welcome.

Overclocking the VRAM on a graphics card used to be a pretty straight forward affair, increase the clocks until you get crashing or corruption/artefacts on screen then reduce again to the point that you stop getting those issues and job done.

With the 30 series from reading around there is error correction for the VRAM so you don't see any corruption/artefacts but if you clock it too high your overall performance will go down as it will be having to correct so many errors that it degrades the performance.

Given this they recommend that you use something repeatable that results in a score (basically a benchmark) and keep increasing VRAM clocks until you start to see performance go down then back off until it doesn't result in performance loss again.

So I took my 3080fe, 3d Mark (Port Royale and Time Spy Extreme) got a baseline number without VRAM overclock and then set about upping the VRAM slider on MIS Afterburner in +100 chunks and re-benching after each increase and expected the benchmark scores to start dropping at some point. Only problem is they never did, they scores just keep going up each time until the point I am at +1500 on the VRAM and have run out of slider to go higher (VRAM is now at effective 11000 instead of the default 9500).

Surely this cannot be right? I verified in some other titles that have benchmark facilities and am also not seeing any performance degradation due to VRAM clocks being too high and I'm not getting on screen artefacts or game crashing. Anything else I should use to check I not pushed it too far?

[Terbinator]

I've seen plenty of posts saying you can get an extra 1000MHz on VRAM of both 3080s and 3070s combined with undervolting for longer sustained clocks.

Would be good to see some proper validated testing though.

[badass]

I've heard noises about VRAM getting very, very hot on RTX 3000 series GPU's. It might be worth a quick google around that.

[Kanoe]

I've seen plenty of posts saying you can get an extra 1000MHz on VRAM of both 3080s and 3070s combined with undervolting for longer sustained clocks.

Would be good to see some proper validated testing though.

Well after using the card for a few days to get an idea of its behaviour I went straight to under volting it to try and

1) Get more consistent clock speeds
2) Stop hitting the power limit (as this seemed to be the limiting factor for clock speeds)
3) Bring temps down (as to keep it from thermal throttling and it reduce the noise it makes as the card isn't quiet)

So I managed to settle on +15% power target, max vcore of 0.906V and clocks of 1965 for the core (was aiming for 2000 but it just wasn't stable at that voltage)

With the above in place the Time Spy Extreme (Graphics only) scores were as follows for some of the memory offsets in case anyone finds it interesting:

+0 9166
+200 9196
+400 9247
+600 9263
+800 9285
+1000 9336
+1200 9402
+1500 9485

[Terbinator]

Snip...

You got any results for Port Royale, out of interest? RT does need extra grunt on the bandwidth and VRAM stakes compared to no RT, so would be good to see what sort of jump you get.

[Kanoe]

You got any results for Port Royale, out of interest? RT does need extra grunt on the bandwidth and VRAM stakes compared to no RT, so would be good to see what sort of jump you get.

I don't to hand. I'll dig them out later and update in here.

[Kanoe]

OK, so Port Royal results were:

+0 11191
+200 11264
+400 11310
+600 11310
+800 11365
+1000 11419
+1200 11419
+1500 11461

A couple of points where it didn't seem to help but overall it went up as the VRAM speed went up.

[[GSV]Trig]

My 3060Ti takes +1100 on the RAM

[PsyPill]

Strange. I generally cannot go above 500MHz without issues.

[Kanoe]

Strange. I generally cannot go above 500MHz without issues.

That's the thing, all the reviews I was looking at went to +200 and that its so going to +1500 I thought I must be doing something wrong.

Maybe the reviewers don't have time to find max possible, I know it can vary from card to card but that's a big difference.

[JahRule]

VRAM heat is still an issue or has firmware updates resolved this? thnx

[tazzrats]

VRAM heat is still an issue or has firmware updates resolved this? thnx

It is for me:

RTX 3080FE, as of today when I disable by undervolt my VRAM reaches 104oC, with an undervolting I sit happy at 94oC, still toasty, but below that (for me anyway) scary 100!

[Kanoe]

It is for me:

RTX 3080FE, as of today when I disable by undervolt my VRAM reaches 104oC, with an undervolting I sit happy at 94oC, still toasty, but below that (for me anyway) scary 100!

What voltage are you running your 3080FE at out of interest?

[tazzrats]

What voltage are you running your 3080FE at out of interest?

Running at 775mv - This is my undervolt curve at the moment:


It's REALY stable, has survived a whole day of port royal, with a crazy temp and power draw decrease:

Pre-undervolt: GPU temp 78.3oC, VRAM temp 104oC, board power 327.0W, Port royal score 10 884,

Post-undervolt: GPU temp 70.9oC, VRAM temp 94oC, board power 256.6W, Port royal score 10 712,

For the negligible difference in performance I'm really happy with these results, these cards undervolt pretty healthily!

[badass]

It's REALY stable, has survived a whole day of port royal, with a crazy temp and power draw decrease:

Pre-undervolt: GPU temp 78.3oC, VRAM temp 104oC, board power 327.0W, Port royal score 10 884,

Post-undervolt: GPU temp 70.9oC, VRAM temp 94oC, board power 256.6W, Port royal score 10 712,

For the negligible difference in performance I'm really happy with these results, these cards undervolt pretty healthily!

Wow! In my view, your undervolt is a no brainer. Well worth the effort!

[tazzrats]

I totally agree, I was really impressed! I would advise anyone who picks one of these up do the same - this was all done with literally 5 minutes of effort and just leaving it benching for a day!

Since I wrote this I've done some reddit digging and it does look my card is a particularly good one in the silicon lottery, BUT people have been getting very close results with around 800mv, definitely worth it!