Conclusion
In our launch review of the built by AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT video card, we found that it bounced around GeForce RTX 3060 Ti performance. Considering the video card has a suggested price of $479, this didn’t seem to quite fit by price. The price puts it in competition with the GeForce RTX 3070, but the performance showed a different result. This is why we wanted to make sure we overclocked this video card. By overclocking, performance can be brought up and made more comparable to the GeForce RTX 3070 according to our testing today.
Overclocking
Overclocking actually was not a difficult task. We were able to raise the Power Limit by 15% and raise the fan speed. Even by just doing that alone you will see a higher more consistent GPU frequency. We managed to actually push the frequency higher, putting it at a maximum “Up To” value of 2800MHz. This allowed the frequency to increase about 6% while gaming over the default frequency.
From an average of 2575MHz before the overclock we hit 2712MHz average after the overclock. The peak frequency hit 2751MHz, not quite 2800MHz, but close. We could not increase Voltage, but with Voltage tweaking, we think the GPU could hit over 2800MHz easily.
Unfortunately, we were limited in the Radeon software’s Power Tuning software by the degree with which we could overclock memory. It maxed out at 2150MHz (17.2GHz) from the default 2000MHz (16GHz.) This is unfortunate because we feel there is more headroom in the VRAM to overclock higher.
Overclocking the memory on the Radeon RX 6700 XT is very important for performance increases. The 192-bit bus is restrictive, and bandwidth is lower. The Infinity Cache is supposed to make up for this, but still improving raw memory bandwidth makes a big difference on this video card. We wish we could have overclocked it higher.
We found that the cooling on the Radeon RX 6700 XT is adequate for overclocking. It is not holding back the overclocking potential. There is still headroom to even increase GPU Voltage if we could.
The Final Points
Overall, we saw between 6-7% performance increases in games with the overclock. What this overclock did was shift the Radeon RX 6700 XT to be much closer to the GeForce RTX 3070 in performance. Before overclocking, it danced around the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. However, after the overclock there were many games where the Radeon RX 6700 XT matched GeForce RTX 3070 performance. Not all games though, there are still a few the RTX 3070 has an advantage in. It’s very game-dependent.
Of course, it has to be brought up that the GeForce RTX 3070 can also be overclocked, and it was not here. That means that while the Radeon RX 6700 XT needs to be “maxed out” to match the GeForce RTX 3070, the GeForce RTX 3070 can be overclocked leapfrogging over the Radeon RX 6700 XT again. It also goes without saying that Ray Tracing performance is an advantage on RTX at the moment.
The fact that the Radeon RX 6700 XT overclocked can match the GeForce RTX 3070 gives us hope for add-in-board partner custom video cards. Those video cards will have factory overclocks, and more robust cooling, power delivery, and designs. With custom software like MSI Afterburner, ASUS GPU Tweak, and others, perhaps those video cards will be able to overclock higher than our “reference” built by AMD card here today. If that is so, and we can even up the Voltage, we might see some very high Radeon RX 6700 XT overclocks. I wouldn’t be surprised to see 3GHz from some enthusiasts. If it can reach higher than 2800MHz clock speeds, it could be very competitive then.
That is the rub, it needs that overclock to be competitive at this price. Hopefully, AMD will lower prices in time, that’s always a possibility once the market stabilizes. At any rate, overclocking on the Radeon RX 6700 XT should be a very fun enthusiast thing to do.