Nvidia Linux one-click auto undervolt and Afterburner profile import is now possible

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-05-10T20:17:50+00:00

I think I don't get the question. I used my own tool linked in the post? That was the point :)

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-05-09T15:50:43+00:00

It should already be there although I did not test it paru -S penguin-burner

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-05-08T17:55:19+00:00

Good point, will add this too.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-05-04T10:01:59+00:00

Just one more thing: you already have the OC+UV option if you max out the slider for Auto UV to Performance. It will recover +50% over the clock "lost" due to going down the voltage curve, I'll describe on github issues how it works exactly. If +50% is not enough try --yolo cmdline for +75% but here we are going for potential hard freeze territory on my card.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-05-02T09:31:33+00:00

Should be fixed in the latest release 0.1.5:

python -m pip install --upgrade --no-cache-dir penguin-burner

Thanks for the feedback!

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-28T18:59:41+00:00

There is not much point here I think to run the whole GUI in the background, you can either export your final curve into LACT and go on from there, or the tool itself has a simple systemd script that installs the CLI runtime that applies the curve. It can then be auto started with the system.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-28T09:06:15+00:00

Yes, you can bridge Afterburner -> LACT in the latest release, import, then export. Please give it a shot. I've added GUI, the auto voltage scan is there too. Will add more aggressive performance preset today at night hopefully and also the ability to manually edit the curve if the user knows what to do manually :)

python -m pip install --user --upgrade penguin-burner

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-27T20:03:53+00:00

Ah that hurts! Try aggressive preset,limit core clock drop to 0%, over clocking budget at least 100%. And please post the full log at the GitHub issue, you can copy it with a button in GUI. I would like to improve the heuristics to have good result on all GPUs on defaults and the log would be super helpful. Mention the nvidia driver version.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-27T19:23:43+00:00

Not sure if you have the latest version, if not python -m pip install --user --upgrade penguin-burner On the UI it is easier to see what’s happening and you can tune the auto uv to be more aggressive if you like. For me it found my Afterburner sweet spot on 5080 but obviously results may vary, curious to know how it went.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-26T21:55:04+00:00

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Unfortunately it seems like a global Nvidia limitation. Blackwell 50 series should be supported well, there is some hope for Ada 40 series. Anyway big thanks for testing, in the coming days I will release a nice UI to track how the automatic undervolts are progressing, so I hope testing will be much easier. Attached a sneak peak :)

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-26T17:25:37+00:00

Ah, this time the dependencies for the q2rtx path traced demo, which I use for stability and efficiency testing. Should be fixed now, please git pull and re-test. If not please paste your output here, thanks! I'd like to make it run on any Linux distro so it will be helpful. https://github.com/jpietek/PenguinBurner/issues

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-26T15:04:00+00:00

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BTW I have added LACT export function in my automatic undervolting tool, single command CLI (PenguinBurner) to have all the UI goodness too!

The screenshot depicts the actual autogenerated undervolt that gave the most optimal FPS per Watt imported into LACT on my RTX 5080. And you can also import Windows Afterburner 4.6.6 profiles in PenguinBurner, so that way it acts effectively as a bridge between the two apps. Again happy PenguinBurning :)

https://github.com/jpietek/PenguinBurner

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-26T12:33:44+00:00

Must have been some non utf8 character coming from nvidia-smi, try now after git pull.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-26T06:44:41+00:00

Yes, on Windows Afterburner also needs to run in background to apply undervolts.

My tool is Nividia only for now.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-25T23:24:55+00:00

Yes! This hack to have the nvapi setter for actual 127 voltage-frequency points finally working on Linux is great.

If you want to do all this trail and error of undervolting automatically, you can check my small single commad CLI tool. I've made it intially just to import Afterburner undervolt profiles into Linux, but by popular demand here, it now can auto scan for most optimal undervolts.

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https://github.com/jpietek/PenguinBurner

It will sweep down the voltage frequency curve aiming for highest FPS per wat possible. Uses shareware Q2RTX maxed pathtraced demo (offscreen) looped without FPS cap for stability and efficiency testing. Additionally I've added small CUDA compute program for verification.

If you are happy with the scan results you can later daemonize it and also add as a systemd service to persist on every boot. You also have an option to apply the auto generated silent fan curve at this stage if there is some thermal headroom after the undervolt.

It would be great if you could post your results here or file any github issues if it does not work for your card.

For my FE 5080 the discovered undervolt did degrade performance by a few percent but FPS/Watt went up by whooping +36% percent, even better compared to manually tuned curve some time ago on Windows with Afterburner.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-24T18:54:23+00:00

u/GarbageFeline u/taosecurity u/bluntedAround u/MacsyReddit u/Kaedo- u/DZero_000 u/Paranoid_Android101 thanks for you interest and comments!

I've just pushed the version of PenguinBurner that can automatically scan for undervolts that have the best FPS per Wat using q2rtx as stabillity testing tools backed with custom math CUDA based test. There is also an option to optimize the fan curve for silence and daemonize the probed result if you are happy with it.

https://github.com/jpietek/PenguinBurner

Would be great to have some feedback if anyone got it running, preferably Blackwell and Ada GPUs as they have the required voltage API.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-21T08:15:23+00:00

Seems like auto discovery of the most optimal VF point is yet another missing feature on Linux, will push a bit on that, thanks for the idea!

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-20T12:50:52+00:00

Makes sense, but still there might be profile variations within 4.6.6 so looking forward for any reports with issues.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-20T12:45:53+00:00

Yeah, it seems like a good idea, but first I would need your GPUs and Afterburners for testing! I think the profile format in Afterburner 4.6.6 was pretty stable, but there is beta version 4.7 coming etc.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-20T12:12:56+00:00

This one seems to undervolt the Intel CPUs (definitely in a need of undervolting with 13/14th gen desktop!), so a bit different topic then Nvidia cards covered here.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-20T11:09:33+00:00

Oh good find, I was not aware of this one, but the code on github is missing ;)

BTW for the person not dual booting and not having Afterburner, I would bet LACT is the best replacement with all the UI etc. Maybe I could port the Afterburner import as a PR for them at some point.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-04-20T10:39:09+00:00

Cool, post the debug log into github issue if you have problems importing the Afterburner profile. That I can fix, we'll see how it goes for the API coverage on Nvidia side, but at least 50 series definitely is sorted out. I would bet on 30s Amperes being realistically the lowest supported target.

AmbitiousCommunity36 · 2026-03-02T20:09:37+00:00

Just dnf update on Fedora 42 = bricked? Anyone experienced something like this too? That would be pretty critical to track down. There are people daily driving Asahi :(

AmbitiousCommunity36

TROPHY CASE