I know third party cards provide overclocking tools, but I don't know if you can undervolt. Also I was talking specifically about NVIDIA for something that works with all cards.
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The Vega RX Thread (Rumors and Info)
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And I'm asking specifically whether such tools are needed with Nvidia cards.
If Nvidia cards don't need such tweaks, a lack of tools is irrelevant.
To use an ever popular automotive analogy - why ask if a car has a spare tire and jack if it comes with run-flat tires?
Vega has horribly high power consumption, so ATI provides tools to let the user control the power. Pascal has more reasonable power consumption, so only the third parties with overclocked GPUs provide tools.
I think that it's a plus for Nvidia that such tools aren't needed for the stock cards.
Of course it needs to be possible with NVIDIA, to make your specific system more efficient. Climate change.
Maybe the efficiency of Vega is not that bad, but AMD is very conservative.
![AMD-Vega-logo-e1494199459719[1].jpg](https://forums.macrumors.com/data/attachments/628/628408-83b7fef2ca3712fa6d7d4bc23f2a92c7.jpg "AMD-Vega-logo-e1494199459719[1].jpg")
I think there's a lot of negative hype by only looking at default and ridiculous Turbo settings.
1. The vast majority of graphics card owners never change these settings.
2. It is not possible to change these settings in macos
3. Nvidia cards are achieving their efficiency out of the box. They could have even better performance if they also had "custom settings" applied.
1. These are enthusiast cards. People are supposed to tweak.
2. Apple optimizes GPUs for each Mac design
3. Maybe you need to use a modified VBIOS to undervolt NVIDIA, which would make it out of the question. And maybe you have less margin.
Nvidia has a much better "out of the box" experience. When I had a GTX 1080 based system I would just let the Nvidia control panel pick the best settings for each game, which was always the highest since it had no trouble running every game at 1440p. I never had to touch any overclocking tools.
Only when I got my 580 Pro based iMac did I have to go into the AMD control panel and start fiddling with overclocking settings because the performance was so poor. I did get better performance once I did that, but its not a process thats enjoyable.
1. But why start tweaking from an inferior position?
2. Which AMD graphics line is going to be used in what macs though? The history of "optimized" GPUs in the Mac Pro is a bad one.
Because it is a conservative setting chosen so that there is very little chance that a user encounters a problem.
Shouldn't need to tweak anything anyway. These companies should create components that tweak themselves optimally based on the work load. We have been getting there but still not optimal if people are still manually changing clocks.
Apple, like all computer component manufacturers, must also abide by these conservative settings because they already have enough systems with melting GPUs.
Right. For modern graphics cards, overclocking is no longer just setting core and memory frequencies, its now setting fan speeds, frequency maximums and temperature/power thresholds. The GPU will clock its self up and down depending on those settings and its workload.
I found the 2017 iMac with the default settings in bootcamp that the 580 Pro couldn't maintain its maximum clock speed of 1200 Mhz. This was mostly due to very conservative default settings by Apple. Only with some combination of choosing more aggressive fan speeds, upping the power threshold and maximum clock frequency was I able to consistently maintain the advertised 5.5 TFLOPs of GPU performance.
Apple has almost no variety in configurations, so they can better optimize even if they don't take into account the specific characteristics of each chip installed.
Every time you overclock/undervolt a chip more aggressively than the manufacturer you run the risk of hardware failure. Apple already tends to have reduced cooling capacities compared to other OEMs so they have and always will go conservative on these things so that their systems don't fail at a higher rate than they already do.
You personally may be willing to accept that risk and overclock your graphics cards. Apple's goal is to make sure the millions of macs they sell don't fail in large numbers and keep those profit margins high.
They aren't optimizing for best performance though. They are shoving hot cards, with at best equal performance to competitors, into tight spaces and nerfing them to make it work. Why not just start with equal-ish performing card that is also cooler for your thin designs? Going on and on about some nebulous optimization just doesn't make a lick of sense here.
The standard settings are taking into account shortfalls in the rest of the system.
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How would the hardware fail if you undervolt it at stock clocks?
No they're not.
IC are made to work in a limited bracket of power. Exceding those limits either way can cause instability or damage.
Undervolting can cause instability. You can't just dial down the voltage and expect the same quality of signal.
Overvolting can (and will) cause damage reducing the lifespan of the device.
As I said, either way can lead to problem.
There is a bit of tolerance either way but there is no garantee that a specific videocard can or will operate adequately when under/over volt.