Nvidia's latest driver update breaks mVolt+ overclocking functionality — Nifty, open-source app allowed users to increase the power limit to 700W on their RTX 50-series GPUs without hardware mods

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Using the app results in a driver crash.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia's current-gen Blackwell family includes some of the best graphics cards on the market with exceptional performance, but pushing silicon to its limit can always unlock more power. This is where enthusiast software, such as mVolt+, comes in, allowing users to overclock their GPUs beyond what's usually permissible. Unfortunately, it seems like a new driver update has shut down mVolt+ across all RTX 50-series cards.

Unlike mainstream GPU utilities like MSI Afterburner, mVolt+ bypasses standard driver restrictions and gives you more granular control over a few hardware blocks. The app can tweak separate power targets for the core and memory channels. It can also provide access to voltage and clock offsets for Core, XBAR, SYS, and VRAM. You can manually tune the power across the interconnect and video encoders, for instance, instead of relying on a global slider.

As such, users have been able to nudge their hardware into territory usually only charted by relying on a specialized VBIOS or physically modding the PCB. Last week, an Asus ROG Astra RTX 5080 reached 680W using mVolt+ despite even the official OC BIOS only permitting a 450W TDP. Someone with an RTX 5090 saw their GPU draw 650-700W of power while gaming, compared to 450W it used to suck up previously.

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mVolt is Black Magic to Blackwell
 from r/overclocking

Even though the performance gains were marginal in real-world usage, mVolt+ was still a useful tool for overclocking. It allowed enthusiasts to chart on 3DMark's worldwide rankings just through software, so the fact it has suddenly stopped working is quite disappointing. The latest driver, version 615.56, seems to be blocking the app from making changes, hard crashing anytime you try to adjust the core power limit.

It's unclear if this is an intentional move from Nvidia, or just a compatibility issue that's preventing mVolt+ from properly working on the latest drivers. Some users on the Overclock.net RTX 5090 thread say their GPUs are still able to accept power limit modifications through Hydra 2.3B Pro — another extreme overclocking utility. That suggests mVolt+ wasn't explicitly blocked, and that its creator b00nz can push an update to patch this driver conflict soon.

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Hassam Nasir
Hassam Nasir
Contributing Writer

Hassam Nasir is a die-hard hardware enthusiast with years of experience as a tech editor and writer, focusing on detailed CPU comparisons and general hardware news. When he’s not working, you’ll find him bending tubes for his ever-evolving custom water-loop gaming rig or benchmarking the latest CPUs and GPUs just for fun.

4 Comments Comment from the forums
  • SirStephenH
    Last week, an Asus ROG Astra RTX 5080 reached 680W using mVolt+ despite even the official OC BIOS only permitting a 450W TDP.
    Great way to start your PC on fire.
    L2v4XB0
    Reply
  • abufrejoval
    Now why isn't that a surprise?

    Actually I have an issue with an RTX 5070, that seems to be factory overclocked a little too much.

    It works with pretty near everything and will survive various stress tests, but when playing the only game I really enjoy playing, ARK Survival, here in the Ascend variant, the screen will eventually go blank and the system needs a reboot to recover the GPU.

    I've tried setting it to "90% performance" via the app, but that only seems to grant me a little extra time.

    I passed the GPU to my daughter and upgraded to a 5070ti, which doesn't give me that trouble, but it turns out, she likes the same game just as much and disliked having to restart perhaps even more than I did.

    So now I had to hand her my spare 5070ti, but I'd like to make sure that the 5070 can be activated if the need for a spare should arise.. Unfortunately it's perhaps not out of warranty, but I'm not ready to try that: I'd rather have it go down to Nvidia recommended clocks first to see if that makes it stable.

    I used to have the same issue years ago with a factory overclocked GTX 690, which kept crashing.. until I set it to run at Nvidia recommended clocks via such an "overclocking utilty".
    Reply
  • PEnns
    Strange how techie writers these days never mention Nvidia drivers as a "Con" like when they used to do in EVERY article they wrote comparing products that included AMD products.....
    Reply
  • pf100
    abufrejoval said:
    Now why isn't that a surprise?

    Actually I have an issue with an RTX 5070, that seems to be factory overclocked a little too much.

    It works with pretty near everything and will survive various stress tests, but when playing the only game I really enjoy playing, ARK Survival, here in the Ascend variant, the screen will eventually go blank and the system needs a reboot to recover the GPU.

    I've tried setting it to "90% performance" via the app, but that only seems to grant me a little extra time.

    I passed the GPU to my daughter and upgraded to a 5070ti, which doesn't give me that trouble, but it turns out, she likes the same game just as much and disliked having to restart perhaps even more than I did.

    So now I had to hand her my spare 5070ti, but I'd like to make sure that the 5070 can be activated if the need for a spare should arise.. Unfortunately it's perhaps not out of warranty, but I'm not ready to try that: I'd rather have it go down to Nvidia recommended clocks first to see if that makes it stable.

    I used to have the same issue years ago with a factory overclocked GTX 690, which kept crashing.. until I set it to run at Nvidia recommended clocks via such an "overclocking utilty".
    Try lowering the clock speeds on the core and vram until it stops black screening. I've "fixed" a few gpu's like that. It often works for artifacting too.
    Reply