How to know if your GPU is thermal throttling
When a GPU takes a heavy workload, it starts to heat up, and when your cooling solution can no longer dissipate heat fast enough to keep temperatures within a safe range, your GPU will reduce it’s performance in order to reduce the production of heat. This phenomenon is known as Thermal Throttling.
I will guide you on how to check if your GPU is thermal throttling through the following steps.
Step 1:
Download and set-up MSI Afterburner.
Read my guide on setting up MSI Afterburner before proceeding to step 2.
Step 2:
Every GPU has a processing speed, for example a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1660 card has a processing speed of 1530 MHz, which can be boosted up to 1785 MHz . Google your Graphics card and find out what’s its processor speed is.
Step 3:
Open MSI Afterburner and keep it running in the background. Now open a heavy graphic intensive application like a game. Now from the on-screen display, check whether the GPU clock speeds are reaching its range of maximum performance.
If your GPU is thermal throttling, your GPU clock speed will start to show lower values than its performance range. Your game will also start to stutter and you will see a significant drop in framerate.
Learn how to undervolt your GPU:
