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GTX 1080 Voltage Limit Explained

Post Date: 2016-06-03
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Meller View Drop Down
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    Posted: 03 Jun 2016 at 6:53pm
For the nerds who care for a good read


A small snippet thank to reddit
Originally posted by xDev on Reddit

Voltage scaling and “1.25V limit”
There were some rumors spreading wildly these days regarding “1.25V limitation” or whatever on modified GTX 1080 cards, which requires here few words to explain.
Hardware itself is well capable of getting to that and above voltage output for GPU core, but GP104 chip itself now more sensitive to voltage, than even previous Maxwell generation. Part of it due to thinner physical process, other part due to challenges removing heat from all those tightly packed 7.2B transistors quick enough from 21% less surface area. Those overclockers who did 2200+ MHz on GTX 980 Ti’s are well aware of all things required to achieve those high clocks. Same principle applies to Pascal generation. So if you can manage to keep GPU cooled well and have good voltage delivery to it, you indeed can push higher voltages. Cards cooled by liquid nitrogen during this guide testwork were able to run 1.35-1.4V, reaching speeds over 2500 MHz.
Fact that GTX 1080’s capable of reaching 2.1GHz on aircooling without any modifications confuse lot of people, making them to think that these chips can overclock well past 3GHz on liquid nitrogen cooling. But it’s still silicon, with similar architecture, so reality is bit sour. Yes, it allow to get good performance without extreme cooling, but hides the fact that LN2-cooled 980Ti is still much faster than overclocked GTX 1080 due to more shader cores and better CPC performance.
This also brings and answer to the question if overvolting can help OC on aircooling or watercooling. It does not help, due to thermal, which get only worse. Higher temperature render stability and performance decrease. GPU literally overheats and cannot run high frequency anymore, even though temperature is below specified maximum temperature. So just like in 980/980Ti/TitanX case, over-voltage is not recommended, as it gains no performance improvement.


Edited by Meller - 03 Jun 2016 at 6:53pm
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Posts: 1674 		  Quote  Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 03 Jun 2016 at 11:24pm
So basically, when you are not doing sub-zero cooling and go to put a water block on one of these GPUs, you want to put liquid electrical tape on the components surrounding the GPU silicon and then use a Gallium Indium Tin liquid metal thermal interface material to maximize thermal conduction from the silicon while not shorting anything out.
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Posts: 1627 		  Quote Meller Quote  Post ReplyReply bullet Posted: 04 Jun 2016 at 7:59am
Basically, I don't know what nvidia was thinking...
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