Overclocking the SAPPHIRE PULSE AMD Radeon RX 7600 GAMING OC
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.
Overclocking the SAPPHIRE PULSE AMD Radeon RX 7600 GAMING OC card was a bit lackluster. This was due to the fact that there are some hard software and possibly firmware/BIOS limits in place with the Radeon RX 7600 GPU. The software limits us to just a maximum frequency of 3000MHz, while the default frequency is already set to 2875MHz not giving us much headroom for overclocking. If you are familiar with the AMD Radeon Adrenalin Software and RDNA 3 video cards you understand that what you set in the slider in GPU clocking is the maximum possible and is rarely ever achieved, as it’s a sliding scale of frequency.
We used AMD Radeon software to test the overclocking. As stated we pushed the GPU slider to the maximum, as well as the power slider (a gain of 12% more power). The GPU voltage is at its maximum by default. We did increase the memory frequency from 2250MHz to 2300MHz. This increased memory throughput from 288GB/s to 294GB/s. The default out-of-box GPU frequency slider is set at 2875MHz and testing shows an average of 2672MHz GPU frequency while gaming.
When we overclock the card using the Radeon software, with the slider now pushed as far as it will go (capped at 3000MHz) we see an average frequency of 2785MHz during our run-through. All in all the out-of-box boost is 47MHz greater than the MBA game clock or about a 2.5% increase. Our overclock advances us 160MHz or about 6%. Screen captures are shown of the software with the settings we used. The first set is the Adrenalin default, and the second is our overclock.
The cooling solution worked as advertised on our SAPPHIRE PULSE RX 7600 OC. The fans were left on automatic, only spun up to 49%, and were not detectable at all. The GPU temperature was only 64C. Given this cooling ability, it seems that there is more left in this video card as far as overclocking is concerned. All our test suite games were perfectly stable using the setting described above.
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →Nice card for 1080p gaming all things considered.
Surprisingly so......it feels like it could really overclock well, if the maximum wasn't capped.
Maybe there could be a 7600 xt with extra 50w to 70w budget (& doubling vram to 16gb) for $330 to $350
But, not sure if increasing power budget massively will retain the profit margin for AMD
If AMD wants to compete with Nvidia they need to get into AI acceleration in a big way. That's really the big hurdle to their path as a Trillion Dollar company leaving Intel in their wake and bringing competition to the AI market space.
But It's clear Intel is on that game plan as well. Yet they are doing it via dedicated code paths on their CPU's. Unfortunately for Intel they are not at the forefront of this technology, and the big players have the resources to fab their own custom chips to do this if it REALLY comes down to it.
Depends on how you want to compete, moreso than who you want to compete with.
nVidia is definitely pivoting into commercial AI. AMD so far has not, and has went the path of consumer devices / custom SOCs
I don't know that you necessarily want to compete against a company against their strength unless you have no other choice -- AMD has a lot of other things they are doing well without necessarily needing to throw the Billions of dollars it will take to dump into AI-specific computer R&D.
Will they catch nVidia at AI? Probably not - but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Nice review!
vs 1080ti? Sidegrade or upgrade? I don't give a hoot about ray tracing. I mean not that I really need to, it's doing Diablo 4 on 4K high at 60+ and looks great. Ultra punishes it a bit and I don't really see much difference....
Remember we tested at 1080. If you can run your games at 4K with what you have, I'd stay put. This card is not a 4K performer.....maybe, some games would be OK at 1440 as demonstrated, but not 4K.