I've seen some videos demonstrating that undervolting can result in a slight FPS boost, around 2-3 FPS. I also noticed that when you were testing Cyberpunk 2077, the FPS on stock voltage hovered between 41-43, sometimes dipping below 40, and rarely reaching 44-45. However, with undervolting, the FPS seemed to consistently stay between 43-45, never dropping below 40, and occasionally hitting 46-47. If this is accurate, then the free 2-3 FPS boost from undervolting seems like a worthwhile advantage.
I undervolt to, not save battery life, but to reduce components overheating. Longevity. 83-88 degrees to 71-74. I think that is pretty good average drop.
@@MrGamelover23 heat is bad. If it is lower, that is good. My dad was an electrician and fixed all sorts of devices. He will tell you that heat on a micro scale is like heat affecting the expansion and contraction of a suspension bridge. Big changes are not good for electronics. Heat is a huge problem for any metallic, microscopic component.
As great as it is to see you testing this i do wonder if there's a bit of an issue with the methodology: On the Celeste test the amount of power required to run the game at 60fps is likely so small that the baseline power requirement needed just to power the screen, memory, SSD, ram etc. probably far outweights any efficency gain made from an undervolt on the CPU, thus the perceived efficency gain is so small. With Cyberpunk you could very well be observing an efficency gain, but due to running the game unlocked the deck is using that saved themal headroom to keep clocks higher and thus push a couple extra fps. This means the system is pulling max TDP in both stock and undervolted senarios, and the battery life seems the same. The way to prove/disprove this would be to use a highly demanding game like Cyberpunk, but instead to cap something it can consistantly achive (and you may actually play at), say 30 or 35fps, then repeat the stock vs undervolted test.
Please consider using some other sound for the battery rundown next time you do this, it's super harsh and unpleasant when listening at a volume at which I can actually hear what was being explained
Watching this while playing cyberpunk at1080p at 40fps FSR balanced 29 Watts and overclocked to 2000mhz with GPU. Sadly the CPU is still stuck at 3500mhz. All of this and the GPU only hits 90c. The oled is an overclock BEAST!!!!!! ..... I should add I am running PTM 7950 thermal pad and full blast fans, but they are surprisingly quiet.
My Oled is also overclocked. I haven’t replaced the thermal paste yet so I’m only at 22 watts but the gains are pretty good. My cpu can go to 4000 but not in every game for some reason. If I’m downloading a game it’ll always boost tho. On the LCD deck, there was a trick you could do by launching a game, locking the deck then turn it back on and you’d see the cpu boost. Also the latest powertools doesn’t let me set custom sliders for the cpu and gpu.
How did you guys unlock the power limit? I'd like to give some more power to the CPU in those limited scenarios but don't really have a clue and can't find much online
Honestly the degrees isn't impressive my rog ally gets 50-60degrees at 15 watts abd 74-78 degrees at 30 watt. The fans never really ramp way too loud luckily It might be due to the smaller node or something. 10 watts is like 45 watts and 7 is 36 degrees.
@@RMED24don't bother man , the steam deck batteey life is pretty good, running it at 30 watts isn't needed. Running it at even higher than 15 watts probably isn't too good for the device when it wasn't built for it.
Next video overclocking ? I appreciate the videos. I am undervolted 30/50/50 which makes me feel like I'm running elden ring better but havnt got brave enough for the overclock.
Your stock Celeste had flat frame time line while with UV the frametime was all over the place, cant say the same for certain with CP2077 but it does seem like you also got more big frame times spikes with the UV vs the stock. Also UV reduces power only if you cap your FPS, if you leave FPS uncapped the GPU and CPU will typically boost further due to more power headroom so it will eventually avg at the same power with a bit better performance, so you can't see any battery improvement. If you did 40 FPS cap in CP2077 for example you would see bigger differencess in battery life with UV vs stock.
8:16 Undervolted gave approximately 5% better framerate (rough guess 2fps gain), thus the battery life was the same. Cap the framerate to 40fps and you would see that 5% improvement apply to battery life,
It's more useful and fun to those who like to tinker with such things and run benchmarks than running an undervolt on an SD OLED. Personally I've set the max battery load capacity to 80% and almost always have it plugged in.
liquid metal is very risky on a handheld since it moves around a lot it could leak and damage circuitry, might be better to go with a high performance thermal pad or honestly just paste
don't forget after you found your stable levels you can try reducing power by game I tend to leave the gpu power alone but game like the og ff7 runs really stable at 4(that includes mods from 7th heaven) and cyberpunk for me is a 8
bro u need to lower TDP with undervolting, with undervolitng you can put that high power in lower TDP, cuz voltages lower Like, normally i playing with 15w tdp in cyberpunk, with undervolt i can play with same settings and frequency but in 10-12w tdp
Everyone in the tech (and including you) always recommend to stress test the device after undervolting it with heavy work loads. I just don't get, why?? I know the typical answer. However, there are ton of people who use their devices in lightweight scenarios and games. I don't think it's a good to skip the coldness and extra battery life you will gain just because it crashed on a AAA title that you'll never play. It's just a handheld guys, not a full computer 🤦🏻♂️ I recommend keeping your undervolting as long as it can run your apps/games that you're using on a daily basis 😉
Stability purposes. If your deck crashes or has issues while under load, then your undervolt settings are unsuitable for the Steam Deck. It WILL cause issues down the line if your hardware can't handle an undervolt while under load so you better do it even if you never play any AAA titles. Plus some indies are becoming more and more demanding.
@@HiTechLoLife Sorry for the late reply, but what signs other than crashing would signify an unsuitable level of undervolting? Like would it be lower fps than before or something else?
Just reset the cmos if you cant boot after undervaluing. Hold down the Volume Down button, the Three-dot button, and Power button at the same time
Excellent tip tbh I didn't even know you could do it this way
not so great to continuously do as trial and error. maybe just look up other performance guides.
6:30 That's a huge temperature drop.
But not on Cyberpunk, still a 70C,.
@@jonathaningram8157 70C is nothing worrying in the slightest... espeically in context of that being on a small handheld
I've seen some videos demonstrating that undervolting can result in a slight FPS boost, around 2-3 FPS. I also noticed that when you were testing Cyberpunk 2077, the FPS on stock voltage hovered between 41-43, sometimes dipping below 40, and rarely reaching 44-45. However, with undervolting, the FPS seemed to consistently stay between 43-45, never dropping below 40, and occasionally hitting 46-47. If this is accurate, then the free 2-3 FPS boost from undervolting seems like a worthwhile advantage.
RDNA2 in general seems to love to undervolt and can actually noticeably gain performance on the discrete cards from doing so
I undervolt to, not save battery life, but to reduce components overheating. Longevity. 83-88 degrees to 71-74. I think that is pretty good average drop.
@@StiffAftermath What guide were you using to undervolt?
@@konnerrrr54 I don't recall. You may search Steam Deck Undervolting. I'm sure it won't be a problem to find.
The thing is, that probably won't noticeably extend the lifetime of your device because the components are made to run that hot.
@@MrGamelover23 heat is bad. If it is lower, that is good. My dad was an electrician and fixed all sorts of devices. He will tell you that heat on a micro scale is like heat affecting the expansion and contraction of a suspension bridge. Big changes are not good for electronics. Heat is a huge problem for any metallic, microscopic component.
Yeah, but his Cyberpunk tmperature dropped by only one degree on the CPU and GPU....
As great as it is to see you testing this i do wonder if there's a bit of an issue with the methodology:
On the Celeste test the amount of power required to run the game at 60fps is likely so small that the baseline power requirement needed just to power the screen, memory, SSD, ram etc. probably far outweights any efficency gain made from an undervolt on the CPU, thus the perceived efficency gain is so small.
With Cyberpunk you could very well be observing an efficency gain, but due to running the game unlocked the deck is using that saved themal headroom to keep clocks higher and thus push a couple extra fps. This means the system is pulling max TDP in both stock and undervolted senarios, and the battery life seems the same.
The way to prove/disprove this would be to use a highly demanding game like Cyberpunk, but instead to cap something it can consistantly achive (and you may actually play at), say 30 or 35fps, then repeat the stock vs undervolted test.
That may be a good point. I'll look into it.
Please consider using some other sound for the battery rundown next time you do this, it's super harsh and unpleasant when listening at a volume at which I can actually hear what was being explained
I'll consider it if I can find a decent countdown sound. But I'll look into lowering the volume on the existing one otherwise.
Literally signed in to say the same thing. The video was great, but that sound hurt my ears lol
Guess I won the lottery, I undervolted my LCD SD, all three to -50mv without any problems.
Watching this while playing cyberpunk at1080p at 40fps FSR balanced 29 Watts and overclocked to 2000mhz with GPU. Sadly the CPU is still stuck at 3500mhz. All of this and the GPU only hits 90c. The oled is an overclock BEAST!!!!!! ..... I should add I am running PTM 7950 thermal pad and full blast fans, but they are surprisingly quiet.
My Oled is also overclocked. I haven’t replaced the thermal paste yet so I’m only at 22 watts but the gains are pretty good. My cpu can go to 4000 but not in every game for some reason. If I’m downloading a game it’ll always boost tho. On the LCD deck, there was a trick you could do by launching a game, locking the deck then turn it back on and you’d see the cpu boost. Also the latest powertools doesn’t let me set custom sliders for the cpu and gpu.
How did you guys unlock the power limit? I'd like to give some more power to the CPU in those limited scenarios but don't really have a clue and can't find much online
Honestly the degrees isn't impressive my rog ally gets 50-60degrees at 15 watts abd 74-78 degrees at 30 watt. The fans never really ramp way too loud luckily It might be due to the smaller node or something.
10 watts is like 45 watts and 7 is 36 degrees.
@@RMED24don't bother man , the steam deck batteey life is pretty good, running it at 30 watts isn't needed. Running it at even higher than 15 watts probably isn't too good for the device when it wasn't built for it.
@@dontsweatme4588 How did you change the tdp limit?
Did anyone else read cryo's comments in thier voice? LOLOL thanks for the testing HTLL!
do you know if we can get 60 fps for the crew motorfest with overclock please ?
Next video overclocking ? I appreciate the videos. I am undervolted 30/50/50 which makes me feel like I'm running elden ring better but havnt got brave enough for the overclock.
Definitely not NEXT video but maybe later
it would be interesting
Is there any possible performance Loss when undervolting at all?
Your stock Celeste had flat frame time line while with UV the frametime was all over the place, cant say the same for certain with CP2077 but it does seem like you also got more big frame times spikes with the UV vs the stock.
Also UV reduces power only if you cap your FPS, if you leave FPS uncapped the GPU and CPU will typically boost further due to more power headroom so it will eventually avg at the same power with a bit better performance, so you can't see any battery improvement.
If you did 40 FPS cap in CP2077 for example you would see bigger differencess in battery life with UV vs stock.
How did you get like 50h fps on Cyberpunk Benchmark? 😳
On default Steam Deck settings on the game, I only get like 35 stable 😮
is there any way to change the voltage / frequency curve of the GPU?
has anyone tried stalker 2 after undervolting your lcd one?
8:16 Undervolted gave approximately 5% better framerate (rough guess 2fps gain), thus the battery life was the same.
Cap the framerate to 40fps and you would see that 5% improvement apply to battery life,
45fps on OLED as that keeps the 90Hz of the screen active... otherwise the screen will tune down as well.
@@L4NC3_L0T Setting the screen to 40hz still runs in an 80hz container but yes 45hz is the sweet spot on SD OLED.
Would have liked a temperature/fan speed comparison.
It's more useful and fun to those who like to tinker with such things and run benchmarks than running an undervolt on an SD OLED. Personally I've set the max battery load capacity to 80% and almost always have it plugged in.
How do u do that? Is that for preservation
Hoping you do a repasting and applying liquid thermal on SD to see if there are benefits.
liquid metal is very risky on a handheld since it moves around a lot it could leak and damage circuitry, might be better to go with a high performance thermal pad or honestly just paste
My steam deck wont boot now
Hold down the Volume Down button, the Three-dot button, and Power button at the same time
❤❤❤love this console... Perfect!!
💀 I searched for days for a clip like this, and when I received the device, UA-cam suggested this Video to me
don't forget after you found your stable levels you can try reducing power by game I tend to leave the gpu power alone but game like the og ff7 runs really stable at 4(that includes mods from 7th heaven) and cyberpunk for me is a 8
I mentioned this towards the end
bro u need to lower TDP with undervolting, with undervolitng you can put that high power in lower TDP, cuz voltages lower
Like, normally i playing with 15w tdp in cyberpunk, with undervolt i can play with same settings and frequency but in 10-12w tdp
I mention this at the end of the video
Oled burn-in test...
Doing this much didn't burn my OLED. It certainly unless I did this for like 3000 or so hours straight
Everyone in the tech (and including you) always recommend to stress test the device after undervolting it with heavy work loads. I just don't get, why?? I know the typical answer. However, there are ton of people who use their devices in lightweight scenarios and games. I don't think it's a good to skip the coldness and extra battery life you will gain just because it crashed on a AAA title that you'll never play. It's just a handheld guys, not a full computer 🤦🏻♂️
I recommend keeping your undervolting as long as it can run your apps/games that you're using on a daily basis 😉
Stability purposes. If your deck crashes or has issues while under load, then your undervolt settings are unsuitable for the Steam Deck.
It WILL cause issues down the line if your hardware can't handle an undervolt while under load so you better do it even if you never play any AAA titles. Plus some indies are becoming more and more demanding.
@@HiTechLoLife Sorry for the late reply, but what signs other than crashing would signify an unsuitable level of undervolting? Like would it be lower fps than before or something else?