Conclusion
In today’s review, we overclocked the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, the flagship top-tier GPU in AMD’s new Radeon RX 7900 series GPU lineup. With the new RDNA 3 architecture, AMD designed a chiplet design, with a big ole GCD and MCDs surrounding it. We fully reviewed the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX and showed performance in 4K, with Ray Tracing, and FSR. In addition, we looked specifically at AMD Smart Access Memory performance, which brings some decent uplifts to Radeon RX 7900 XTX performance. As a gamer, you should turn this ON. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX retails for $999, and today’s review focused on overclocking the reference made by AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX video card. We threw 4K at it, Ray Tracing at it, and FSR at it.
Performance
Starting in Call of Duty Modern Warfare II we found that overclocking the Radeon RX 7900 XTX increased performance by 7%. This brought us from 120FPS to 128FPS, but of course, 120FPS was already playable at 4K in this game. What the overclock did, however, is make the Radeon RX 7900 XTX match the performance of the GeForce RTX 4090 in this game. We also found it 35% faster than the GeForce RTX 4080. FSR also boosted framerates above the RTX 4090. In F1 2022 at 4K overclocking the Radeon RX 7900 XTX improved performance by just 5%, this didn’t help this game much because 175FPS was already playable at 4K, but it did bring performance closer to the RTX 4090. Compared to the RTX 4080 the overclocked Radeon RX 7900 XTX was 19% faster.
In Dying Light 2 overclocking the Radeon RX 7900 XTX improved performance by 10%, which was decent for this game. It brought performance up by almost 10FPS, which brought it over 100FPS at 4K. At this performance level, it allowed the Radeon RX 7900 XTX to perform 5% above the GeForce RTX 4080. In Far Cry 6 overclocking the Radeon RX 7900 XTX improved performance by 8%, and this actually pushed it 2% over the RTX 4090. The game was very playable at over 130FPS. In Cyberpunk 2077 overclocking the Radeon RX 7900 XTX improved performance by 6%. The game was already playable at 70FPS, but overclocking smoothed it out by a few more frames. It did bring the Radeon RX 7900 XTX closer to the RTX 4090, as it was 14% faster than the RTX 4080. In Watch Dogs Legion overclocking the Radeon RX 7900 XTX improved performance by 5%. Again the game was already playable, but it did bring it closer to the RTX 4090 and was 17% faster than the RTX 4080.
When it came to Ray Tracing at 4K, we overall did see a lower impact on performance from overclocking. There was one scenario though, where the percentage increase was big, but the actual framerate improvement wasn’t going to make the game playable. In F1 2022 at 4K with Ray Tracing overclocking improved performance by 6%, but it wasn’t enough to actually make the gameplay experience that great. It took FSR to do that. In Dying Light 2 at 4K with Ray Tracing, we saw a big percentage increase, but that was still only at 38FPS so the game was not playable with the overclock. However, what was unique was that FSR2 performance with the overclock was playable at 65FPS, whereas without it it was only 53FPS. Therefore the overclock did help make the game playable when FSR2 was used. In this scenario, you could play the game at 4K with Ray Tracing.
Far Cry 6 was super fast at 4K and DXR, overclocking increased performance by 7% and with FSR was the fastest video card. Cyberpunk 2077 was the other game where the overclock just did not help us with Ray Tracing. Here it only added a frame or two, and even with FSR2 was not playable at 4K and “Ultra” Ray Tracing. In Watch Dogs Legion we only got a 5% increase with overclocking with Ray Tracing, which did not help the game at all, it still wasn’t playable. Finally, in Metro Exodus Enhanced we got a 7% increase with the overclock, but it didn’t allow the game to be playable at 4K with Ray Tracing.
Just out of curiosity, we did also run Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p to see how the overclock might help performance at that resolution with and without Ray Tracing. At 1440p, without Ray Tracing, and without the overclock it averaged 138FPS. With the overclock applied that was 143FPS so a small 4% increase at this lower resolution where the GPU is not being taxed. At 1440p with “Ultra” Ray Tracing, but no overclock, we got 42.1FPS. With the overclock applied that was 43.6FPS, an increase of again just 4%. Even at 1440p, the overclock isn’t quite enough to allow “Ultra” Ray Tracing to be playable. It seems the lower resolution has less of an impact on performance uplift via overclocking.
Overclocking Commentary
Overclocking the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX was a bit more complex than we are used to with previous-generation AMD video cards. Now that AMD has introduced the two separate clock domains, you have to think about what the Front End Clock Frequency is, and what the Shader Clock Frequency is. Right now the overclocking software seems to affect both frequencies, they both seem to overclock lock-step when you increase the Maximum Frequency slider. On one hand, this is nice and easy and removes variables. On the other hand, we do wonder if we could overclock the Shaders more, or the Front End more if we had separate controls over the clock domains. Perhaps one or the other is more sensitive or less sensitive, to overclocking. Perhaps one or the other has more headroom than the other. You are only as strong as your weakest link in the chain, and right now both are tied together.
The other complication is going to be board power and hitting power limits. Even with a +15% to the Power Target, we hit a very hard wall, in terms of power, overclocking the GPU and memory on this video card. It seems that even just overclocking the GPU alone, and not the memory, boosts the video card’s board power up to 400W, hitting the limits, and this is even before overclocking the memory. We experienced a higher Front End and Shader Clock on the GPU when we left the memory alone and just didn’t overclock it at all.
The Front End Clock can peak at 3GHz on this reference made by AMD card but averages out somewhere in the 2900s on clock speed. The Shader Clock, however, is happy to be closer to 2700MHz, with GPU alone. If we start to add in the memory overclock, and we just brought ours to 21GHz from 20GHz, it does lower the GPU clocks a bit. Now the Front End Clock likes to be around the upper 2800s and the Shader Clock around the middle of the 2600s. We actually found the memory can clock as high as 22GHz happily, but that kills the GPU frequency overclock. On the plus side, both clocks are boosting beyond the official specification frequencies by default.
Speaking of power, we are seeing the Radeon RX 7900 XTX consume more power than the performance uplift it provides from overclocking. Power increases by 50W, but we only see a less than 10% performance uplift primarily. This is not a one-to-one power to performance increase, the video card does require more power to push a smaller amount of performance. Then there is the temperatures, the GPU package temp was fine overclocked, but that Hot Spot temperature, WOW. This Hot Spot temperature seems to get worse the higher the GPU clocks are, even if you don’t overclock the memory. The memory temps though seemed fine. Keep in mind this is with a 100% fan speed on this made by AMD card. While the sound is loud, you would almost have to run it this high to keep the Hot Spot temp in check while gaming.
Final Points
Overall, there has been a lot of chatter about how the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX lines up with the competition. We must remind folks again that AMD specifically stated the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a GeForce RTX 4080 competitor. If we compare by price, and we must, the two video cards are closer in price than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is to the RTX 4090. Therefore, the GeForce RTX 4080 is the price competitor to the Radeon RX 7900 XTX currently. In addition, we have found that AMD Smart Access Memory can also improve performance in select games to a decent degree, and should be considered when looking at performance. Gamers should enable this, it is a free performance uplift.
In our overclocking testing today, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX offers about a 10% or less uplift in performance when overclocked. This performance uplift generally helps the Radeon RX 7900 XTX compete better with the GeForce RTX 4080, and in many cases does exceed the performance of the GeForce RTX 4080 in raster performance. It pushes the Radeon RX 7900 XTX closer to the GeForce RTX 4090, and when you look at the massive price difference between them makes the Radeon RX 7900 XTX all that more impressive.
With the Radeon RX 7900 XTX overclocked it still uses less power than the GeForce RTX 4090, so this is something to consider if power is a consideration for you. If you are into Ray Tracing, however, the GeForce RTX 4080 is still going to be the preferred buy. Ultimately, the GeForce RTX 4090 will offer the most performance, bar none, but it will cost you a lot more money. In terms of pricing, the Radeon RX 7900 XTX is a decent, value.