Overclocking the Radeon RX 5700 XT: 2.1 GHz on Liquid Cooling - benoittindiand

After testing the AMD's new Radeon 5700 GPUs and Nvidia's RTX Super answer, we are particularly happy some the apprais offered by the latest Radeons. While GeForce RTX boards still dominate at the high-goal, the $400 5700 XT is very attractive at the selected price point. Simply what if we pushed the new hardware to its limits?

Leveraging EK's new Transmitter water-block for Navi we are about to find, as they were kind enough to send one over forthwith for this quiz. In our Clarence Day-one RX 5700 series revaluation we noted that increasing the buff hurry of the 5700 XT to an ear bleeding 100%, we could boost the GPU from ~1800 MHz up to 2050 MHz.

Shortly after that, Igor's LAB published an stimulating piece detailing users' findings on how IT is possible to bypass AMD imposed overclocking limits at the BIOS level. Some simple so far genius Windows register modifications set aside us to circumvent AMD's limits and growth the GPU absolute frequency As high as 2300 MHz, while also profit-maximising the power limit.

Of course, the GPU Si has to be good enough to do 2.3 GHz and sadly neither of our retail cards were sure-footed to run at even 2.2 GHz. We saw the circumscribe at 2.1 GHz which is still a ~18% overclock, so we're expecting a nice performance elate.

Subsequently an time of day-long F1 2019 curl, the 5700 XT in its stock configuration with the reference blower-expressive style cooler runs at some 1780 Megacycle. The card reaches its to operating temperature of 84 degrees in a board with a 21 C ambient temperature.

Under the same conditions with EK Vector block installed and attached to a 240mm radiator with two quiet 120mm fans, the 5700 XT peaked at scarce 45 C. That's a massive 39 C drop in temperature. The GDDR6 memory as wel born by 20 degrees and the VRM temperature dropped by as much as 30 degrees.

With the "EvenMorePower5700XT" register modification installed, we found 2.1 GHz to beryllium the limit of both our Asus and PowerColor extension cards. We tried few early tweak profiles but the same 2.1 GHz strong terminus ad quem on our hardware was observed.

This remains a decent 18% overclock and given the 5700 XT was only 9% slower connected average than the RTX 2080 (non Comprehensive), this overclock should push the 5700 XT ahead. Course, you can also overclock the RTX 2080 but that's besides the item, we're trying to achieve 2080-like performance at a significant discount. Sol Army of the Righteou's attack functioning our i9-9900K GPU test cheat and realize how the liquid cooled 5700 XT performs.

Benchmarks

The first test in our bench was F1 2019 where we see a discreet 9% hump in performance for the average frame rate and a somewhat less impressive 6% supercharge for the 1% low event. This allowed the 5700 XT at 2.1 GHz to equal the GTX 1080 Ti, though IT was still 5% slower than the RTX 2080, not exactly a big margin, but we were hoping the overclock would yield fitter results.

Battlefield V shows a distant less impressive 5% boost in performance for the mean frame rate, though the 1% low performance was improved by a 7% margin. That 1% low is still a little weak relative to the RTX 2080, but hey close enough for nearly $150 in savings.

Rainbow Six Siege sees the most heroic clear up to now, a 10% boost in carrying into action for the median frame rate. While this pushes the 5700 XT ahead of the stock 1080 Ti, it's still slower than the RTX 2070 Super and much slower than the RTX 2080 A-one.

Next up we have Metro Exodus and here we see a mild 7% improvement in performance, active from 72 fps to 77 fps and that wasn't enough to catch justified the 2070 Large.

Another 7% gain can constitute seen when testing with Resident Evil 2, though this time that was enough to leastwise match the RTX 2070 Extremely.

Shadow of the Grave Spoiler disappointed with a 6% performance improvement from the overclock, but that was enough to at to the lowest degree match the GTX 1080 Ti and RTX 2070 Superior.

Another 6% gain can be seen when testing Fortnite, here we're taking on an extra 6 FPS, in our opinion it's not worth the worry.

The Division 2 shows a 7% performance uplift for the 2.1 GHz overclock and that was sufficiency to couple the RTX 2070 Super therein title.

DiRT Rally 2.0 sees a minor 5% rise, going from 102 Federal Protective Service to 107 FPS, so a disappointing leave for this game.

The Radeon RX 5700 XT already killed it in Forza Horizon 4 and Hera we see the sick 3% improvement from the overclock was still enough to assume out top spot, though we'd suggest we're probably becoming CPU small at this channelis.

Far Exclaim New Click provides a 7% functioning boost and this put the 5700 XT right the heels of the RTX 2080 Super.

Populace War Z sees a 6% melioration in performance from the overclock.

Our utmost essa shows a very dissatisfactory 4% performance advance in Assassinator's Gospel Odyssey with the overclocked applied.

Power Consumption

For what was about a 7% boost in performance on average you're look an almost 40% increase in power consumption as the GPU power lot increased from reasonable 186 Watts opportune adequate a Vega-like 258 watts (!).

Look total system consumption we see a 25% increase in power draw for the overclocked 5700 XT, making it slimly more exponent supperless than Vega 64 and around 30 watts more than the RTX 2080 Cordyline terminalis. In other words, the 2.1 GHz overclock destroys RDNA's efficiency.

What Rightful Happened?

To put over it bluntly, that was disappointing. By simply looking at the power expenditure of the other than very efficient 7nm Navi architecture, we've learned why AMD has put the restrictions on the frequency these cards can run at.

The Radeon RX 5700 Crosstalk is a great mathematical product and offers really good value, and we have high hopes for the upcoming AIB models that will rent out you run around the card game cooler out of the box. Then again, your chances of pushing this affair to RTX 2080 Tiptop or even vanilla 2080 levels of performance are slim -- even at 2.2 GHz IT's a stretch. Sure, in around games that are favorable to the crimson team the 5700 XT will pull off the upset, but overall it's not going to match the more overpriced RTX models.

Spending $140 connected the EK Transmitter Navi block takes the price of the 5700 XT to $540 and for that money you can buy the RTX 2070 Super which will deliver a mistakable level of performance. Increasing the cost of the 5700 XT by 35%, for at the best 10% more performance, is not a good investing for pure operation sake.

Would you rather own an RTX 2070 Super or a liquid cooled Radeon RX 5700 XT? That one is up to you and your interest in getting a custom liquid cooling apparatus.

A third option would Be to wait for board partners to put out finer cool 5700 XTs, and frankly that option makes the near mother wit. We have tested our 5700 XT boards with modest air coolers and they will still run at 2.1 GHz piece devising selfsame little noise, with temperatures in the 70 degree range. Expect custom AIB 5700 Crosstalk cards to hit shelves sometime next calendar month.