Do you get better performance for free? That would be nice. We are used to getting the most of the lesser CPUs or GPUs via overclocking, but it seems that with Vega you can use undervolting instead. We put this to the test.

How is it possible that undervolting, or lowering the voltage supplied to the component, improves performance in Vega? To understand this, we need to remember how dynamic the clocking speeds of the graphics cards are these days. None of the cards, either Nvidia nor AMD ones actually run at the advertised speeds. This is the result of the so-called GPU boost where the voltage supplied to the card and the temperature of the card is what regulates the clocking frequency.

In reality, most of the Nvidia cards run at higher MHz than the advertised boost speeds. With AMD the boost speeds are the actual absolute maximum and due to this AMD have started calling the clocking frequency ?peak frequency? instead.