clueless1 wrote on Yesterday, 12:07:

What frequency is your monitor? Are you vsyncing or not? I used to have a 144Hz monitor but it started dying (wigging out at 1 […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-01-16, 08:16:

[ I haven't gone too crazy with the tuning but I have settled on an undervolt curve that peaks at 2715Mhz at 935mV, with a +1500Mhz memory overclock (tested stable using Memtest Vulkan). The power consumption is down about 50-60 watts from stock and between the undervolt and memory overclock performance is actually up around 5%! In the 3dmark Speedway test I scored 6820 at these settings, topped out between 227-236 watts and only hit 58C while the GPU fans don't even have to spin up much past idle due to the huge cooler. It idles at 18 watts too... which just seems crazy.

What frequency is your monitor? Are you vsyncing or not? I used to have a 144Hz monitor but it started dying (wigging out at 144Hz, but acting normal when I drop to 60Hz). So currently I've got a 60Hz monitor and I just tried vsyncing everything in Nvidia Settings. Two things:
1) power draw is even lower. I'm seeing 40-150 watts depending on the complexity of the scene with the majority of the time being <100 watts. All the while, frames are locked at 60 fps.
2) gameplay feels even smoother when locked at 60 than when unlocked and running up above 100.

I was able to get even more aggressive with my overclock/undervolt, knowing that the vsync will still keep the power in check. I feel like increased power on the bottom end (in the most framerate-taxing scenarios) will be of more help to the glass smooth feeling. My current settings are: overclock core by 150Mhz and mem by 1200Mhz. Then flatten the curve at 995mv to 2880Mhz. Doing the overclock first raises the entire curve between 0 and 995mv by 150Mhz. Honestly, 995mv was already at 2700 at stock, so I only raised the 995mv spot from 2850 to 2880 after the 150Mhz o/c.

edit: just plugged my old 144Hz monitor in and I could run it at 120Hz or 100Hz. Tried both, but there were too many instances of game framerates dipping below those two numbers and it ended up feeling less smooth when locking vsync to 120Hz or 100Hz. I actually like locking it at 60Hz best. I can easily run any game at a setting that will *never* dip below 60fps, and it seems to me that when the monitor is locked at a single refresh rate that never deviates from the game's framerate, the experience of fluidity is at its peak.

I have two 240Hz monitors, and I looooove high refresh rates and high frame rates. Sadly, my eyes were spoiled many years ago by running games at 1600x1200 @ 109Hz on my old CRT. I got a 60Hz LCD in ~2010 and the consistent geometry and clarity were nice, but the motion clarity and lower refresh rate just never felt good. I got a 120Hz BenQ gaming LCD in 2015 and it was a huge improvement. Going to 240Hz a couple years ago was also very noticeable for me, so I try to keep my frame rates as high as possible. I really don't play the latest AAA games though because they're just not my thing. And I guess that works out, because most of them would absolutely not run anywhere near 240Hz... or possibly even 120Hz. 🤣

I try to cap frame rates or use Vsync where possible. I have found that in some games vsync or in-game caps destroy performance. And it isn't the usual half-vsync frame rate thing... it's something engine related. However, if I set a universal 240Hz maximum frame rate in the nvidia control panel it seems to not have these issues and I still don't experience enough screen tearing to be an issue. For example, in the game Teardown I am now able to run the game at a solid 240fps during "normal" gameplay with basically no fluctuations at all. When I start bringing down buildings and tens of thousands of voxels are flying in all directions, it comes down of course, but that is to be expected. With the in-game vsync enabled it would either lock it at 120fps or it would fluctuate a lot between 100 and 160 or so, which was weird.

Power consumption definitely comes down with lower frame rates though. That was the main reason I enabled the cap. I can't remember what the GPU's power consumption was when I was playing Teardown at 240fps... I feel like it was in the 150-170 watt range but I will have to check again. I am very glad to be able to cap all games universally though... Some don't have a cap in the menus and loading screens and my counter will show 3500fps+, which feels unnecessary somehow. 😅

Late last night I made a silly decision and ordered a 12GB RTX4070 for ~$600 Canadian on ebay. It's a used card pulled from an Acer computer.

Hopefully it arrives during the week so I can test it out next weekend.