Default GPU Frequency
Before we look at performance, we need to find out the actual real-world gaming frequency the video card performs. With both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs today, the GPU frequency is very dynamic. What may be quoted as the “Boost Clock” is not necessarily the performance it will actually run at. Typically, GPUs today can exceed the “Boost Clock” dynamically. We need to find out what it actually runs at, in this way we can see how well things like cooling and power headroom are working.
To do this we will record the GPU clock frequency over time while playing a game. We use Cyberpunk 2077 for this with a very long manual run-through at “Ultra” settings. We also record GPUz sensor data to look at GPU temperature, Voltage, and Power.
In this graph, you can see we have highlighted the GPU Boost clock of 1777MHz in green. This is the quoted GPU Boost the video card should run at. As we talked about above, because of the way NVIDIA GPU Boost works, the GPU can exceed that frequency while gaming. This graph proves and shows that the EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC BLACK GAMING actually exceeds the GPU Boost by quite a lot. It starts off 1935MHz, and then slowly descends until it hits its average clock speed of 1897MHz. At 1897MHz the frequency is almost 7% higher just by default. That should certainly help performance while gaming.
GPUz Sensor Data
Here is the GPUz sensor data at default. You can see the GPU temperature hit 67.5c at 73% fan speed, which seems rather high, but the fans were not loud. GPU Voltage was at 1.0810V and Board Power Draw was at 170.1W and GPU Chip Power Draw was at 137.5W.
