How to Undervolt Your GPU: The Complete Guide (2026)

By LK Wood IV · Published 2026-07-24 · ~8 min read · St. Louis County, MO

Undervolting asks your graphics card to hold its stock clock at a lower voltage. The tool depends on the card. A GeForce takes MSI Afterburner’s curve editor or ASUS GPU Tweak III’s VF Tuner, and a Radeon takes the voltage offset in AMD Adrenalin. The table below gives each route with the version I read on its maker’s page on September 26, 2026; its card links then send you to the guide that has the numbers for your hardware, because the voltage that works is a property of your card and not of the tool. The RTX 5080 guide carries my own ROG Astral’s stock measurements to compare against.

Pick your route

Each link goes to the maker’s steps below or to the guide with numbers for that card; the versions are the ones I read on each maker’s page on September 26, 2026.

Before you start

Save any unsaved work. Save a stock profile before you change anything. In Afterburner that is the floppy icon and a profile number, in GPU Tweak III the Save button, in Adrenalin Export Profile. Leave startup application off while you test. A saved tune that loads at boot can crash you again after the reboot that was meant to rescue you.

Then load the card with the game you will test in. Write down five numbers. Clock, voltage, board power and temperature come from the monitoring tool, and frame rate from the game. Afterburner shows voltage only after you enable Unlock Voltage Control and Unlock Voltage Monitoring in its Settings.

Which temperature depends on the card. RTX 50 cards launched with the hotspot sensor hidden from GPU-Z and HWMonitor, and CPUID lists the reading as fixed in HWMonitor 1.65.1 (TechPowerUp, July 14, 2026; CPUID, July 16, 2026). On those cards I read GPU temperature and memory junction temperature. On a Radeon, Adrenalin shows GPU Hotspot Temperature on Radeon RX 5000 and newer (AMD).

If you want to overclock with MSI Afterburner instead

Overclocking raises clock targets; undervolting below reduces voltage. Choose one experiment first. Get Afterburner from MSI’s official site, save open work, record a stock benchmark and note clocks, temperature and power. Leave startup application off during testing so an unstable profile is not automatically reapplied.

This conservative manual route adapts MSI’s overclocking walkthrough. Keep voltage, power and temperature limits at their defaults here; do not copy another card’s final offset.

1. Increase Core Clock by a small step; MSI illustrates 20–30 MHz. Click Apply, repeat the same benchmark, and watch for artifacts, flicker, crashes or worse performance.
2. Reduce or undo the offset if the test fails. Save a successful setting to a profile, then test actual games too. One short benchmark is not proof of lasting stability.
3. Only after testing the core, try Memory Clock separately. MSI illustrates 50–100 MHz steps; apply, compare and back off on errors or regression.
4. To return to defaults, use the circular Reset arrow or Ctrl+D. Keep a working baseline and stop if the card is already overheating or unstable at stock.

MSI also documents OC Scanner for supported configurations. Its scan and manual offsets are alternatives, not guarantees of a particular gain. Higher settings can increase heat and power demand. Check the exact card and PSU instructions before tuning.

NVIDIA: MSI Afterburner

MSI’s download page lists 4.6.6 as the final release, with 4.6.7 in beta, and the steps below come from MSI’s own undervolting guide, dated September 27, 2023, which was written before the RTX 50 series existed. The RTX 5080 guide follows the same steps on a current card.

1. In Settings, enable Unlock Voltage Control and Unlock Voltage Monitoring, and restart Afterburner if it prompts for one.
2. Open the curve editor with its button or Ctrl+F.
3. MSI’s guide offers OC Scanner, Alt-drag and Ctrl-drag as ways to move the curve; for an undervolt, pick a point below your stock load voltage and pull it up to the stock clock your baseline recorded. MSI’s example point is usually around 950 millivolts. My RTX 5080 guide starts that card at 900 mV.
4. Hold Shift and drag from just left of the point, in empty space above or below the curve, all the way to the right, then press Shift+Enter twice to flatten the selected range. Click Apply and save it to a profile.
5. Test with a 10-minute benchmark, then gaming, in that order. If it crashes, restore your stock profile and repeat steps 3–4 at a higher voltage, keeping the same stock clock; MSI’s guide suggests 30 or 50 mV steps.
6. MSI’s guide turns on Apply at Windows Startup at this point, before its 10-minute benchmark, but I turn it on only once the tune holds in your games. The button sits in the main window’s upper right, and the profile lock must be open or it stays grayed out.

Flattening is not a lock. MSI’s lock is the L key: select a point, press L and Apply, and MSI says the card then won’t dynamically adjust higher or lower or save power. MSI calls it useful for testing. Press L again and Apply when you finish.

MSI also offers a second method, the Power Limit slider: try 70% through 90% values, in 5% increments. It cuts power by cutting clocks, the trade the RTX 5080 undervolt guide explains. MSI’s own verdict is that the Curve method seems to deliver slightly better results. On an RTX 5090, ComputerBase measured what that trade costs at 450 W and 400 W, and the RTX 5090 undervolt guide sets those numbers beside two owners’ curve results.

NVIDIA: ASUS GPU Tweak III

ASUS lists v2.1.9.5 as the stable build, released September 18, 2026. ROG’s guide says the tool works with graphics cards from any manufacturer. The steps come from ROG’s guide of April 18, 2024. It reaches the same flat line from the other direction: lift the whole curve, then level it at your target.

1. Run a GPU-bound game or benchmark and note the clock it peaks at. That is the target.
2. In GPU Tweak III, raise GPU Boost Clock by about 20 MHz and click Apply.
3. Open the VF Tuner, click the dot at your target frequency, drag to select every point to its right and choose Align Points Down. Apply, then Save.
4. Benchmark it. Click Default and repeat 20 MHz higher; each pass levels the curve at a lower voltage. At the first crash or artifact, go back to the last stable curve and Save.

ASUS then recommends a looping benchmark for a few hours. It also warns that a curve stable in GPU-bound scenes can be unstable when the GPU is not maxed out. For the power-only route, ASUS moves the Power Target slider down 5 or 10% at a time and says outright that this isn’t technically undervolting.

AMD: Adrenalin

AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.9.1 is an optional driver and the newest release notes I found on September 26, 2026 (last updated September 3, 2026). The route below is AMD’s own tuning article (last updated March 3, 2025; written on Adrenalin 23.9.1 with an RX 7900 XTX). Tuning requires the Full Install, and AMD says some options may not be available on your system.

1. Open AMD Software from Start, type “Tuning” into its search box and click Performance Tuning.
2. For one click, choose Undervolt GPU under Automatic Tuning. AMD describes it as “Reduces voltage and maintains clock speeds to improve performance/watt”, on select GPUs. For this route, skip to step 5.
3. For manual control instead, choose Custom (it asks you to accept an EULA), enable GPU Tuning and turn on Advanced Control to work in mV. Lower the Voltage slider. On RX 6000 and newer the Voltage slider is an offset: AMD’s example takes a 1150 mV default to 1125 mV, which applies -25 mV to the whole curve.
4. Power Tuning’s Power Limit (%) slider is its own control.
5. Click Apply Changes, then Export Profile, name the profile and click Save to keep a copy.
6. Run the built-in Stress Test. It lasts 60 seconds by default, and if the test crashes or reboots the PC, AMD Software resets tuning to default.

Sixty seconds is AMD’s default. Play for an evening before you keep it.

RTX 5060 underclocking: use a measured power-limit comparison

An RTX 5060 underclock does not have a universal Afterburner preset, so if your aim is lower heat or power and you accept a performance tradeoff, begin with a Power Limit (%) comparison instead of importing the RTX 5080 curve above. Keep the original settings. A lower limit may reduce boost clocks under load; it does not set a fixed clock speed.

MSI’s power-limit walkthrough demonstrates the controls on an RTX 5060 Ti, which is a different card. The control method below is conditional on your exact RTX 5060 exposing that slider. Its tested Ti percentage and voltage are not recommendations for your card.

1. Click Reset, record the stock result in the game you use, and leave Apply at Windows Startup off. Keep memory and voltage settings at their defaults.
2. If Power Limit (%) is available, move it slightly below its default, click Apply, and repeat the same scene. Compare power and clocks alongside FPS and frame times.
3. Keep a change only if the tradeoff meets your goal without instability. Otherwise click Reset. If the slider is locked, stop; do not use a firmware modification to bypass it.

Measure the tradeoff. No fixed offset or voltage is established here. Save a profile only after testing the games you intend to use, including the less demanding ones that may run at a different point on the card’s voltage-frequency curve.

Test it where it fails

A curve that survives a benchmark can still crash a game. ASUS gives the reason. Most stress tests lean on the upper frequency range, and in rare cases a lighter load runs lower on the curve, where the benchmark barely tested it. Test the games you actually play — the light ones included. A crash, a driver timeout or artifacts can mean too little voltage for that clock. Rebuild the Afterburner curve at a higher voltage for the same clock, go back one GPU Tweak III step, or shrink the Adrenalin offset.

If driver timeouts keep coming after you return to stock, the driver crash guide works through other possible causes in order.

What it gets you

MSI lists the payoff as lower power consumption, reduced heat generation, decreased fan noise, and perhaps a few extra FPS. On safety, MSI’s guide is one line long: “Undervolting is safe, but you do so at your own risk.” The margin is there because a maker sets stable settings for a whole tier of chips, and even identically made GPUs can have slightly different voltage tolerances, in MSI’s words. MSI’s reasoning is that a GPU drawing less power may gain a little extra headroom for performance. It also warns that an undervolt can reduce FPS and worsen 1% lows.

The power cost calculator turns the watts you saved into a yearly figure. Size the power supply for the card’s stock peak with the PSU wattage calculator. If the profile does not load, the card runs at stock, and the supply has to carry that.

Sources

• MSI, MSI Afterburner overclocking and undervolting guide (Rick Novlesky, September 27, 2023), read 2026-09-26.
• MSI, Afterburner download page: 4.6.6 (Final) and 4.6.7 (Beta), read 2026-09-26.
• ROG, How to undervolt your graphics card with GPU Tweak III (April 18, 2024), read 2026-09-26.
• ASUS, GPU Tweak III: v2.1.9.5 (STABLE), released 2026-09-18, read 2026-09-26.
• AMD, Customize GPU Performance Tuning with AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition (DH3-020, last updated March 3, 2025), read 2026-09-26.
• AMD, AMD Software: Adrenalin Edition 26.9.1 release notes (last updated September 3, 2026), read 2026-09-26.
• TechPowerUp, HWMonitor brings back the RTX 50 hotspot reading (July 14, 2026), and CPUID, HWMonitor version history (HWMonitor 1.65.1, July 16, 2026), both read 2026-09-26.
• Card numbers: the RTX 5080, RX 9070 XT, settings-database and 9800X3D pages in the route table, each with its own sources.