AMD's newest RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 graphics cards are setting the gaming world on fire, or they would be if not for limited supply and MSRP markups. For the lucky few who managed to get their hands on the cards, the 9070 XT can seemingly edge past Nvidia's RTX 5080 in real-world performance, thanks only to undervolting the card.
YouTube overclockers Der8auer and Alva Jonathan have shown off the most impressive boosts on the RX 9070 and 9070 XT this week. By only adjusting the power target and undervoltage curves of the GPUs in software, both YouTubers saw 10% boosts to FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 on both cards. Of note is that both of these boosts came without adjusting the GPU clock speed offset in software. The GPUs' clock speeds did increase thanks to the undervolt, but the offset remained unedited.
| Row 0 - Cell 0 | Avg FPS | GPU Clock Speed (GHz) | GPU Max Power Draw (W) | GPU Voltage Offset (mV) | GPU Power Target |
RX 9070 XT (OC) (source: Der8auer) | 66 | 3.36 | 358 | -170 | 110% |
RX 9070 XT (Stock)(source: Der8auer) | 60 | 2.90 | 339 | 0 | 100% |
Nvidia FE RTX 5080 (Stock)(source: Der8auer) | 65 | 2.61 | 336 | 0 | 100% |
RX 9070 (OC)(source: Alva Jonathan) | 60 | 3.00 | 270 | -125 | 110% |
RX 9070 (Stock)(source: Alva Jonathan) | 54 | 2.60 | 244 | 0 | 100% |
Both YouTubers tested with testbenches different enough that we should add a disclaimer that the above table does not portray a fair comparison between the RX 9070 XT and 9070 (slightly different CPUs and RAM were used between both Der8auer and Jonathan's testing arrays), but the RTX 5080 and RX 9070 XT as tested by Der8auer were on equal testing ground.
Der8auer tested with the PowerColor RX 9070 XT Red Devil, which sits near the pinnacle of RX 9070 XT factory-overclocked models. Interestingly, testing with increased clock speed offsets did not make any difference in his measured clock speeds or performance, likely because the card is already overclocked to its board limit from the factory. Overclocking the GPU's VRAM also resulted in higher clock speeds, but lower in-game performance; this is due to built-in error correction on the VRAM recalculating failed errors rather than displaying bad voxels.
Der8auer found the best results through increasing the GPU's power target to 110%, and then applying a GPU voltage offset of -170mV, allowing the RX 9070 XT to hit 3.36 GHz and see a 10% boost in FPS over a similar XTX-brand RX 9070 XT.
With AMD's Radeon software, undervolting a GPU does not simply lower the voltage it runs at. Instead, changing the voltage offset moves the voltage-frequency curve higher or lower, thus lowering the voltage required to hit higher frequencies. A fair comparison would be tuning a car's automatic transmission so a lower RPM is needed before automatically shifting to the next gear.
Alva Jonathan's testing used the ASRock RX 9070 Steel Legend, another heavily factory-overclocked model. Like Der8auer, adjusting GPU clock offsets did not result in much change for Jonathan, who also employed a similar voltage and power draw adjustment to hit a matching 10% boost in FPS. He also employed similar means to undervolt and under-power the board to hit the lowest power draw possible, a solid method for preserving the lifetime of the GPU.
Remember that both YouTubers tested with cards heavily overclocked from the factory, and (normally) selling for well above MSRP. The PowerColor Red Devil initially sold for $799 on Newegg, $200 above MSRP for the RX 9070 XT at launch. Likewise, the ASRock Steel Legend board was listed at $640, a cool $90 above MSRP for the RX 9070. With these markups comes better PCBs and much-improved cooling, which may be the silver bullet allowing for such aggressive undervolts to remain stable.
Still, in the magical Christmas land where new GPUs sell for MSRP, the PowerColor Red Devil still sits $200 cheaper than the RTX 5080, and can now surpass it in Cyberpunk 2077 (and a few other benchmarks which can be seen in Der8auer's testing) after some creative overclocking and tweaking. While ray-tracing, path-tracing, and software support are all Nvidia's games to lose, AMD puts up stiff competition with this undervolting-capable card — and does it without needing to be bundled with a smoke alarm.
