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.
On the XFX SPEEDSTER MERC 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Black Edition video card the default game clock is 2428MHz and the boost clock is up to 2607MHz. According to the graph above the frequency is between 2588-2628MHz while gaming. The average of the clock speed is 2618MHz. At this frequency, it is performing above the game clock while gaming, and actually hitting the boost clock and even above at times. Therefore, the video card is performing extremely well in terms of GPU frequency performance out-of-the-box, and far exceeds the stock AMD reference game clock of 2359MHz and boost clock of 2589MHz. This is a high-performing Radeon RX 6600 XT variant.
According to GPUz it is achieving this frequency at 72c GPU temperature and 90c hot spot at only 36% fan speed. The RPM is at that 1200 mark where it remains quiet. GPU Voltage is 1.150V and GPU Chip Power Draw is 145W.
