NV⚡UVPlay

⚡What is NV⚡UV Play?

NV⚡UV Play is a lightweight undervolting tool for NVIDIA GeForce GPUs. The idea: pick a tier, hit Start, play. The tool watches for your games, applies your chosen voltage/frequency lock when a game launches, and resets to stock when you quit.

Pre-tuned community tiers cover the common cases. A custom profile slot per tier lets you dial things in further if you want to go beyond the defaults.

Play is the standalone sibling of NV-UV, the full-featured undervolting and stress-testing toolkit. Where NV-UV is the workbench, Play is the light switch. They share the same VF-curve math but Play has no scanner, no stress test, no MSI Afterburner dependency. It just talks directly to the NVIDIA driver through a native bridge.

📋Requirements

🔧Installation

1. Download NV-UV-Play-<version>.exe from the Releases page
2. Put it anywhere you like: Desktop, Programs folder, USB stick, whatever fits
3. Double-click to run

No installer, no admin rights needed for first start. Windows will prompt for elevation when Play needs it to talk to NVAPI.

▶First run

When Play starts the first time, here's what happens:

1. Hardware detection: Play reads your GPU, family, BIOS variant, and the stock VF curve. This takes a second or two.
2. Tier defaults: Play loads the community-tuned defaults for your card. You'll see them in the main window.
3. Game library: Play loads its bundled game database and checks GitHub for an update in the background.
4. Tray icon: an icon appears in the system tray. That's Play's home, single-click to toggle the main window.

To get going, set the Activate toggle in the main window. Play is now armed. When a known game launches, the lock applies automatically. When the game quits, Play resets the GPU to stock.

🎚The tiers

Play uses a tier system. Each tier is a preset: a target voltage, a target frequency, a power limit, and (optionally) a VRAM offset. On Blackwell there are five tiers; on Ada / Ampere / Turing four (no MFG tier).

Pick the tier per game in the Game Library, or set a global default that applies to everything not specifically assigned.

🎮Game library

Open the Game Library from the main window. Three things live here:

• Game list: every game Play knows about. Each row shows the bundled default tier and your override (if any).
• Tier defaults editor: globally re-tune what Eco / Balanced / Performance / Max mean on your card. Affects all games that use the default.
• Per-game overrides: per-game tier choice or custom profile.

Adding a game manually

Click + Add Game in the toolbar, then either:

• Browse for .exe: opens a file picker, Play extracts the process name and the display title automatically
• Type the process name: for games that are running or that you remember from earlier

Pick the initial tier from the RadioButtons. MFG is only shown on Blackwell GPUs — on Ada/Ampere/Turing you'll see Eco / Balanced / Performance / Max only.

Per-game tier override

Each row has a tier dropdown. Set it to Eco / Balanced / Performance / Max / Custom or "off". Default is unset (uses the bundled default if any, otherwise no lock).

🛠Custom profiles

Each tier has one custom-profile slot. Use this if the bundled tier defaults don't quite fit your card or your needs.

Creating one

1. In the Game Library, pick the row for the game
2. Change its tier dropdown to Custom
3. The Custom Tier Editor opens, pre-filled with your current tier's default values
4. Give it a name — e.g. "KCD-stable", "MyAggressive", "EvenMore". The name is what surfaces throughout the UI
5. Adjust voltage / target MHz / power limit / VRAM offset as you want
6. Save

Where the name shows up

Once saved, the profile name appears in three places so you always know which configuration is active:

• Tier dropdown · ✎ KCD-stable instead of the generic ✎ Custom...
• Override label · Override: Custom "KCD-stable" (default Performance)
• Stabilizer line (if there's crash history) · 🎮 KCD-stable · 3050 MHz @ 950 mV · Crash #1

Hovering the dropdown shows the same V/F/PL summary you get for built-in tiers: KCD-stable · 950 mV / 3100 MHz · PL 100%. If a VRAM offset is set, it appears too.

What you can adjust

Per-tier customs make sense if you want, say, Performance with 25 MHz less clock to stay stable, while still having the regular Balanced for browsing and lighter games.

Export and Import

The Game Library has Export and Import buttons in the toolbar. Use them to back up your custom profiles before a reinstall, or to share a working config with a friend.

• Export writes a JSON file with all your authored custom profiles (the per-game tuning). Tier overrides for built-in tiers are not included — they're reproducible from a clean install. Default filename includes today's date.
• Import reads a JSON file produced by Export. If any imported profiles would replace existing local ones, a dialog asks: overwrite, keep local (skip duplicates), or cancel. After import, the Game Library refreshes automatically.

⚙Advanced options

The Advanced Options dialog is reachable via the gear icon. It hosts four sections from top to bottom:

• Apply Style: Gradient Lock or Voltage Lock
• V-Droop Compensation: the +1 VF-step bump
• Expert Overrides: Power Limit and VRAM offset sliders
• Notifications: toast position picker (Bottom-right default, plus Bottom-left, Top-right, Top-left). Changing the position fires a preview toast so you can see where the corner lands.

Most settings change on the next game start; a running game is not re-applied mid-session. Exception: toast position is live (preview right when you change it).

📐Apply style

Two algorithms for writing the VF curve. Same end goal (the GPU runs at your target voltage / frequency), different shapes of the curve below the lock point.

Gradient Lock

Smooth ramp up to the target frequency below the lock voltage, then plateau above. The shape familiar from Afterburner curve editors. Default on Blackwell and Ada.

On Ampere / Turing, Gradient Lock has no certified path and Play falls back to Voltage Lock automatically.

Voltage Lock

Strict voltage lock: stock curve untouched below, target frequency above. Direct NVAPI write, flat-tail above the lock. Works on every family including Ampere / Turing.

Voltage Lock produces a different curve shape than what Afterburner users typically see, but it's mechanically the same idea, just without the ramp below.

📐V-droop compensation

Under load, the voltage rail sags 10-20 mV below what you asked for. The GPU then lands on a lower point of the VF curve, so the clock drops too. This is normal silicon behaviour, not a Play bug.

What the dropdown does

V-Step Compensation locks the GPU N VF-grid points above your requested voltage. When voltage droop kicks in under load, the rail sags down toward your actual target instead of below it. The dropdown lets you pick how many steps:

• Off · default. No compensation, lock exactly at your requested voltage.
• +1 VF step · gentle bump. Roughly 5-7 mV on Blackwell, 10-12 mV on Ada, coarser on Ampere/Turing.
• +2 VF steps · moderate bump. Use when +1 doesn't hold the clock under heavy load.
• +3 VF steps · aggressive bump. Last resort before authoring a custom profile with explicitly higher voltage.

When to use it

• If telemetry shows a voltage 10-20 mV below what you set
• If the requested clock is not held under heavy load
• If you've authored a custom profile right at a tier boundary and want the clock locked tight

Precision per family

Default off everywhere. Enable when you need it, and remember it trades efficiency for stability.

🛟Stabilizer

Crash recovery for the times when a tier is too aggressive for a specific game. Detects driver crashes (TDR) via Windows Event Log and adjusts the lock for the next launch.

How it works

1. Game crashes (driver reset, blue screen of the GPU kind)
2. Windows logs the TDR event from nvlddmkm
3. Play's Stabilizer reads that event and notes which game was running
4. On the next launch, Play applies the adjusted profile automatically
5. After a few clean runs, the adjustment resets back to your original tier

How you see it

Two visual signals confirm the Stabilizer is doing its job:

• Toast notifications. The Stabilizer fires twice on a crash: an immediate toast right after the crash event, and a "recovery confirmed" toast about 20 seconds later once the driver has finished re-initializing. The immediate toast may get swallowed by a hard crash; the recovery toast is the reliable confirmation that the adjustment landed.
• Game Library row. The affected game shows a third line in orange under the override label:
  🎮 3050 MHz @ 950 mV · Crash #1
  For Custom profiles, the profile's name is prefixed:
  🎮 KCD-Crash2 · 3050 MHz @ 950 mV · Crash #1
  These are the actual values that will apply on the next launch. The line updates in real time when new crashes happen.
  Per-tier semantics: the Stabilizer keeps separate crash history per (game, tier) pair. If you crashed on Custom "Aggressive" and switch the override to Performance, the orange line disappears (Performance has no crash history). Switching back to Custom makes it reappear.

Resetting an adjustment manually

If you want to retry the original profile (e.g. after a driver update fixed the instability), right-click the game row in the Game Library and choose Reset Stabilizer adjustment. The orange line disappears and the next launch uses the unmodified tier values for the currently displayed tier. Crash history for other tiers on the same game remains intact — if you crashed on Custom and switched to Performance, then reset Performance, your Custom history is still there if you switch back.

Strategies

Default since hf55: Both. The author found that pure frequency-down on Blackwell sometimes didn't recover from edge-case crashes — a small voltage bump alongside the clock reduction handles those cases reliably. v0.1.1 update: the voltage step is now +10 mV (was +5). On weakly binned Ada cards, a single +5 mV step often fell short of the voltage-droop gap and let the Stabilizer crash again before recovery; +10 mV per crash typically reaches a stable point in one step.

Safety limits

• Frequency never drops below 1500 MHz
• Voltage never rises above 1050 mV
• Per-game persistence: Cyberpunk's bumpy ride does not penalize Doom Eternal

Configure via right-click on the Stabilizer toggle in the main window: Strategy, step sizes, floors. Default behaviour works well for most users.

📊Monitoring

Play has no built-in voltage / frequency / temperature overlay. By design: the goal is a minimal apply-tool, not a Swiss-army monitoring suite.

For real-time readouts, use what you already know:

🔄Game library updates

The bundled list of games would go stale within weeks without updates. Play keeps the database fresh via this GitHub repo: github.com/christianp403-spec/nv-uv-play

On startup Play checks if the repo has a newer GameDatabase.json and pulls it down if so. New games and refined defaults arrive automatically, no Play update needed.

Controlling it

Open the Game Library → header strip on top:

• Auto-check at startup: on by default, toggle off if you prefer manual control
• Check now: forces an immediate check. Useful right after a Play update or when you've heard about a new release on Discord

Submitting a game

If a game you play is missing from the library, two ways to add it:

• Open an Issue on GitHub with the executable name and a Steam/store link
• Open a Pull Request against games/GameDatabase.json with the new entry inline

You can also add games locally inside Play via Add Game → Browse for .exe. Your local additions live in %LocalAppData%\NV-UV-Play\game_overrides.json and survive every database update.

🔧Troubleshooting

Play doesn't detect my GPU

Check that you're on the latest NVIDIA Game Ready driver. If you're on a 10-series (Pascal) or older card: those are not supported, NVAPI exposes a fundamentally different VF interface.

The voltage I set isn't what telemetry shows

Voltage droop under load is normal silicon behaviour. The rail sags 10-20 mV below the request. Enable V-Step Compensation in Advanced Options to compensate, or author a custom profile with more voltage if you need a guaranteed value (trades efficiency).

The MHz I set isn't held

Same root cause. When voltage droops, the GPU drops to a lower VF point with a lower clock. Same two remedies: V-Step Compensation or a custom profile with more voltage.

Telemetry shows ±10-30 MHz drift around my target

NVAPI quantization. The driver snaps frequencies to its internal grid. Affects every undervolt tool, not just Play. Within normal noise for boost-algorithm behaviour.

Game crashes when Play applies the lock

The tier is too aggressive for your silicon. Stabilizer will auto-adjust on the next launch and you'll see two confirmations: a toast notification 20 seconds after the crash, and an orange line under the game in the Game Library showing the new adjusted values. If you want to skip the auto-adjust dance, drop to a lower tier manually in the Game Library. To clear an existing adjustment (e.g. after a driver update fixed the stability), right-click the game row and pick "Reset Stabilizer adjustment".

Play doesn't apply when I launch a game

Three things to check:

• Is the Activate toggle on in the main window?
• Is the game in the Game Library and does it have a tier assigned? (Or is there a global default?)
• Is the game's process name the one Play expects? Some games launch via a launcher process first, then spawn a different process for the actual game. Use the Alias-Switch feature: Play follows multi-process games like UE5 titles automatically.

Tray-icon click doesn't bring Play to the foreground

Right after Windows logon, the foreground-lock can prevent Play from popping into focus on tray-icon click — you'll see the taskbar button flash but no window. Click the tray icon a second time and it should come up properly. The fix landed in hf55; if it still happens reliably, please file an Issue.

Play uses too much memory

Play sits at ~50 MB resident memory at idle, ~80 MB while a game is running. If you see more, that's likely the WPF renderer; restart Play and it should return to normal.

Logs

Active log: %LocalAppData%\NV-UV-Play\logs\current.log
Previous session: %LocalAppData%\NV-UV-Play\logs\previous.log

For bug reports, use the built-in Settings → Export Log button. It bundles both logs plus a system_info.txt (GPU model, BIOS, driver version, OS version) into a single ZIP ready to attach to a GitHub Issue.

💬FAQ

Does Play need MSI Afterburner?

No. Play talks to NVAPI directly through a native bridge. Afterburner can run alongside Play; the two don't interfere with each other.

Can I use Play and Afterburner together?

Yes. If you want a more detailed curve editor, use Afterburner. Many testers run Afterburner for RTSS / overlay duty and Play for the actual apply work.

What about Green Curve?

Green Curve is the curve-editing tool by aufkrawall that Play's native bridge is built on (MIT License, full credit in the About dialog). If you want per-point control of the VF curve, Green Curve is the tool. Play stays at the tier level intentionally, simple game undervolting, not curve sculpting.

Will my warranty be affected?

Modifying GPU voltage and frequency settings may affect your hardware warranty depending on your card maker. Check with your manufacturer. NV-UV Play takes no responsibility for warranty disputes, hardware damage, or system instability. Use at your own risk.

Does Play work on laptops?

Mostly no. Mobile GPUs expose different NVAPI behaviour and many laptop vendors lock parts of the VF interface in firmware. If detection works and a tier applies, great. If not, Play tells you.

Will Play be open-source?

Not at this time. The license is permissive for personal and non-commercial use (free to use, free for content creators, free for helping friends and community members). Commercial use, OEM bundling, and selling tuning services with Play require a separate commercial license, see the License section of the readme.

Can I bundle Play with my gaming PC?

OEM bundling requires a commercial license. Reach out via the PCGH NV-UV Subforum or the NV⚡UV Discord (invite via the forum).

How is Play different from NV-UV main?

NV-UV main has a full Voltage Step Scanner, OC Scanner integration, render stress tests, in-app curve editor preview, Mini View, German UI, three skins, and Afterburner integration. Play has none of that. It's tier picker + auto-apply + stabilizer + nothing else. Different tools for different needs.

Why is it called Play?

Because that's what it does. Pick a tier, hit Start, play.

🔖Third-Party Components

NV⚡UV Play uses NvApiNative.dll, a native NVAPI bridge derived from the open-source project Green Curve by aufkrawall. Green Curve demonstrated how to access the VF curve on Blackwell GPUs directly via NVAPI entry points. NV⚡UV Play applies this approach for the Voltage Lock apply path on all supported GPU families.

Project repository: github.com/aufkrawall/green-curve

The full text of the MIT license is reproduced below:

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2026 aufkrawall

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copies or substantial portions of the Software.

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