AMD's RX 6700 XT Could Be Its Highest Clocking GPU Ever

AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT
(Image credit: AMD)

In AMD's recent announcement of the RX 6700XT,  the company revealed that the new GPU would feature a game clock of 2,424 MHz. That spec is much higher than any of AMD's other RDNA2 GPUs, but now, according to a Geekbench 5 benchmark (Tweeted by APISAK), we have evidence that the RX 6700 XT could boost much higher than that.

In the openCL test for this specific RX 6700XT, Geekbench identified the GPU running at a peak core frequency of 2.85 GHz, which is 17% higher than the card's rated game clock.

With modern GPU algorithms, this type of behavior is not uncommon, both AMD's and Nvidia's GPUs for the past few years, including all the best graphics cards, have the ability to boost beyond their rated boost frequencies if power and temperature allow it.

But with the 6700XT in particular, the alleged extra headroom available is impressive. With AMD's Navi 21 GPUs, the extra headroom available is not as high as on the 6700XT without manually increasing power limits.

This could be a surprising benefit from AMD's new Navi 22 GPU (that the 6700XT is using), which features a 50% reduction in core count compared to Navi 21. The benefits of a reduced core count include less power output and as a result, less heat.

So theoretically, if the power delivery and cooling system on an RX 6700XT stay similar to that of an RX 6800, the RX 6700XT's remaining cores can boost much higher and gobble up all the remaining thermal and power headroom the other cores were using.

However, what Geekbench 5 reported was the GPU's maximum frequency, not the card's average clock speed which could be much lower, depending on how large the thermal and power envelope is. Plus we don't know if the card was manually overclocked.

But, if the RX 6700 XT can sustain anything close to 2.85 GHz, then this will be exciting news for RDNA2 enthusiasts and RX 6700XT buyers, as AMD is letting the cores boost as high as they can within reason.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • tennis2
    Bye bye power efficiency.
    Like in past situations like this, AMD had their product taped out and Nvidia's competition turned out stronger (or cheaper) than predicted, so AMD cranks the clocks to 11 with no regard to power efficiency so they can keep the product at the price/performance target they'd originally set.
    Reply
  • escksu
    Good news for AMD gamers and bad news for miners and Nvidia gamers.

    All the high core speed and infinity unfortunately don't do much for miners.... So, this card will have rather low mining hash rate (I est. ~45MH/s). So, I believe AMD gamers should be happy.

    But bad news for Nvidia gamers cause miners will go for 3060ti/3070/3080/3090 instead. So these cards will still be sold out and epensive.
    Reply
  • Conahl
    tennis2 said:
    Bye bye power efficiency.
    Like in past situations like this, AMD had their product taped out and Nvidia's competition turned out stronger (or cheaper) than predicted, so AMD cranks the clocks to 11 with no regard to power efficiency so they can keep the product at the price/performance target they'd originally set.
    and you know this how ? did you read the article ? the extra head room could be from this

    " This could be a surprising benefit from AMD's new Navi 22 GPU (that the 6700XT is using), which features a 50% reduction in core count compared to Navi 21. The benefits of a reduced core count include less power output and as a result, less heat.

    So theoretically, if the power delivery and cooling system on an RX 6700XT stay similar to that of an RX 6800, the RX 6700XT's remaining cores can boost much higher and gobble up all the remaining thermal and power headroom the other cores were using. "
    Reply
  • tennis2
    Conahl said:
    and you know this how ? did you read the article ? the extra head room could be from this
    Don't confuse "thermal headroom" from fewer cores (thermal DENSITY should also be considered) with power efficiency (performance per watt).

    In a given architecture (RDNA 2), each core is the same. They all have the same power efficiency curve. Doesn't matter how many cores are on the die.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    Conahl said:
    and you know this how ? did you read the article ? the extra head room could be from this

    " This could be a surprising benefit from AMD's new Navi 22 GPU (that the 6700XT is using), which features a 50% reduction in core count compared to Navi 21. The benefits of a reduced core count include less power output and as a result, less heat.

    So theoretically, if the power delivery and cooling system on an RX 6700XT stay similar to that of an RX 6800, the RX 6700XT's remaining cores can boost much higher and gobble up all the remaining thermal and power headroom the other cores were using. "
    That would be true if the die size were the same, but it's not. Navi 22 has basically the same power density as Navi 21.
    Reply