Overclocking the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 GAMING X TRIO 12G
Prior to overclocking, we will determine the base GPU clock speed. Both NVIDIA and AMD have dynamic base speeds, both have a “Boost” speed. (GPU Boost or Boost Clock, depending on the brand.) Generally, either brand’s card will exceed the “Boost” dynamically. To determine the “baseline” we record the GPU frequency in our Cyberpunk 2077 manual run-through. This is a lengthy manual run at Ultra settings. Data is captured for frequency, temperature, voltage, and power using a GPU-Z sensor to log the data.
Our video card comes out of the box with a base clock of 1920MHz and a Boost clock of 2610MHz. This is in comparison to the Founders Edition clocks of 1920MHz and 2475MHz.
The chart above shows that in the benchmark run-through, we recorded a Boost of 2835MHz.(the green line represents the base clock frequency) This represents a 225MHz uplift or 8.6% right from the jump. When overclocked, the video card reached a flat 3000MHz and pretty much stayed glued to that line after an initial bump to 3030MHz. The remarkable thing about both these benchmark runs is how steady the clocks stayed, with absolutely no movement once established. Overclocking Boosted us 390MHz or 15% from the factory set Boost clock and 525MHz or 21% from the reference Boost clock!!!
To overclock we used MSI Afterburner. (Ver 4.6.5 Beta 4) The maneuvers were simple and straightforward. Of course, the power slider was pushed to the maximum as was the temperature limit. The voltage control is locked at this juncture but may be simply because the card had not been officially released when we were testing.
Our final stable overclock was 175MHz added to the GPU clocks and 900MHz added to the memory clocks. We did reach + 200/1000, but there were two games where the card was not stable. Of course, as always your results may vary by card or game.
Above we have the GPUZ screenshot of the values after applying the overclock to the GPU core and memory clocks.
The cooling system didn’t even break a sweat. The GPU saw 62C and the hot spot 75C with memory at a cool 60C all that with the fans running at 30%. Once again we did not need to run the fans beyond the automatic setting and they were essentially silent. That’s a pretty good cooler right there.