Five-minute preconditions that matter
Settle on a driver branch you plan to keep for a week. Note case intake condition and ambient room temperature. If the card already thermal-throttles in light loads, Scanner may propose something that only survives in winter air.
During the scan: watch limits, not vibes
Power cap time, voltage behavior, and fan ceiling matter more than a single peak MHz headline. If the scan finishes but games die on menu transitions, suspect memory offsets before rewriting the whole VF map.
Validation that catches bursty reality
Stack tests: short sustained load, then a title that compiles shaders aggressively, then your daily rotation. A curve that survives only the first layer is not ready for profile-on-boot.
When to skip automation entirely
Hybrid laptops with opaque EC rules, flaky driver upgrades, or unsupported GPUs often respond faster to tiny manual nudges than to fighting a curve that never matches firmware policy.
After you leave this page
Export a labeled profile, disable auto-load until stable, and read the undervolting article if you plan to combine Scanner output with aggressive negative voltage moves.