Quote Originally Posted by Carbon_Unit View Post
Same, I'd to see how the 480 and the 580 compare when the core and memory clocks match.

This is very interesting. AMD did a similar thing, but I can't remember if they did it in hardware, or in drivers? On the 58xx cards I mean. I find driver throttling a little spooky TBH, what happens if there is a driver bug, or suppose a game or application triggers the throttling? Down goes your performance. It might be a non issue I don't know, but interesting just the same.
I believe it was hardware coded, temperature monitored VRMs.

From Anandtech last year:
For Cypress, AMD has implemented a hardware solution to the VRM problem, by dedicating a very small portion of Cypress’s die to a monitoring chip. In this case the job of the monitor is to continually monitor the VRMs for dangerous conditions. Should the VRMs end up in a critical state, the monitor will immediately throttle back the card by one PowerPlay level. The card will continue operating at this level until the VRMs are back to safe levels, at which point the monitor will allow the card to go back to the requested performance level. In the case of a stressful program, this can continue to go back and forth as the VRMs permit.