Recent Nvidia drivers have broken how undervolting works on my RTX 3080, and all the previous undervolting methods no longer work properly for me in msi afterburner
here is the issue –
on newer drivers, if you set an undervolt, save it to a profile, and then later apply that profile, your undervolt will not work. what was a flat curve will no longer be flat, and it will move upwards which will allow the gpu to run at higher voltages. example below
the following applies to both known undervolt methods. both the DRAG UP method where you pull your desired voltage point up and the flatten, and the DRAG DOWN where you pull the entire curve down and raise your voltage point, then apply
undervolt: 725mv, 1500 Mhz
Profile 3: applied on august 2025 driver (581.08) (i chose a very old one from when i know it definitely was working)
Profile 4: applied on latest drivers (596.21 through 596.49)
profile 3 works perfectly, exactly how you would expect. you can apply the undervolt and the flattened vf curve is correcly active. however, profile 4, the curve is shifted upwards
in profile 4, the preview of the curve looks correct, but when you actually press APPLY, its no longer flat (https://imgur.com/a/b8tpDeu)
so, the undervolt that i SET while the august 2025 driver is active, after i saved that to a profile, that profile STILL WORKS on the newer driver. so i assume that nobody else will notice this bug unless they are applying new undervolts on recent nvidia drivers. the regression is somewhere between 581.08 and 596.21
i have also tested 850mv / 1850 mhz (a classic stable undervolt for this card) and it has the same behavior. i can clearly go back and forth between these 2 drivers and watch the issue appear on one and not the other.
(my system – rtx 3080 10gb, ryzen 5 7600x, 32gb 6000mhz ram, asrock b650m pro rs motherboard)
i am testing this on a clean windows install (iot ltsc 2024) nothing installed aside from msi afterburner and a game to test with..
here is the raw data from cfg of the profiles
if you are on a recent driver on rtx 30 series, please try creating a fresh undervolt and see if you can reproduce it (even 40 or 50 series as well)
steps to reproduce-
- at system idle temps – apply an undervolt where the voltage is below stock, and the voltage point you are using is brought above where it would normally be on the stock curve
- save this undervolt to any msi afterburner profile
- play any game for a few minutes while this profile is active
- return to desktop and reapply the profile (reset, profile, apply)
couple things to add. i tested on bazzite with lact and the new v/f curve editor – this issue doesnt exist there. also, when i say the the undervolt breaks, i mean that instead of running at the selected voltage, it will spike into a much farther right voltage and draw more power. for example, on a 725mv undervolt, it can spike to 1125mv and it will stay at that v/f point, instead of the one that its supposed to stay at. because of the undervolt. aka, it breaks.