Should I tweak the power wall on Gainward RTX 5080 Storm OC for Apex?
This 5080 is an absolute power hog at 4K Ultra. In the final circles, my FPS was bouncing between 120 and 180, which was honestly pathetic. The default power wall on the Gainward RTX 5080 Storm OC is way too conservative, causing the core to throttle slightly under heavy load, leading to 12-25ms frame time jitter. I tried lowering settings to High, but the game looked blurry and the drops were still there—a complete waste of time. I used a tool to bump the power limit to 115% and locked the core clock at 2650MHz. In RTSS, the frame time graph went from looking like an EKG to a flat line at 8-12ms. The card hit 84℃ after 20 minutes of this, so I had to switch the fan curve to a linear growth mode to keep it under control. Now it stays between 76-82℃ and pulls 320-360W. I exported all the frame data to verify, and the power parameters are finally dialed in.
