{"id":17348,"date":"2026-11-14T13:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T20:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=17348"},"modified":"2026-09-27T13:35:37","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T20:35:37","slug":"undervolting-for-higher-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=17348","title":{"rendered":"Undervolting for higher performance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Modern processors are meant to push the wall. By default, they’re usually set to very high performance on their stock voltage\/frequency curves. But what often happens is that if you don’t (and many times even if you do) have a monstrous cooler, the CPU hits it’s thermal limits before it hits its performance limits. This means the processor starts thermal throttling, or dropping out of high-end boost modes much quicker. The throttling modes often drop a tremendous amount of performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Counter-intuitively, it’s often in your best interest to keep a processor running slightly cooler (or even slower!) for longer than it is to hit your thermal maxes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the best ways to do this are to use the power\/frequency curves in most modern processors to slightly undervolt your processor. AMD has Curve Optimizer that lets you slightly tweak down voltages for a particular frequency. If stable, this usually results in higher performance with lower power consumption. Intel also has this available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I also try to keep my processors cool. Throttling from hitting the thermal max almost always results in worse performance that running slightly slower and staying at consistent high clocks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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