Radeon RX 9070 XT is faster than GeForce RTX 5080 in Cyberpunk 2077 and 3DMark after undervolting

Well-known overclocker and YouTube blogger Der8auer (Roman Hartung) experimented with manual overclocking of the PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil graphics card. It turned out that the traditional overclocking method with manual increase of the maximum GPU frequency practically does not work. However, the enthusiast was impressed by the result obtained from undervolting the graphics card.

Image source: YouTube / Der8auer

The PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil version is a premium solution in itself. It is equipped with a higher-quality component base and more efficient cooling compared to the RX 9070 XT versions with a recommended price of $599. In the factory version, the card is so quiet in operation that Der8auer initially thought that the manufacturer confused the quiet and productive modes of its operation (the card has a dual vBIOS system). However, in real conditions, both vBIOS showed almost identical performance results and operating temperatures: the graphics chip of the card warmed up to 62-63 degrees, and the hot spot temperature was 85 degrees Celsius.

First, Roman changed the fan profile, setting the maximum value to 49%. This immediately affected the increase in the maximum frequency of the GPU, which was able to automatically overclock to 3030 MHz. However, the chip speed did not reach the 3060 MHz value declared by PowerColor for this model.

Radeon RX 9070 XT with default settings (left) and with a modified fan profile (right). Image source: Der8auer

Only after increasing the power limit to 110% (about 360 W according to GPU-Z) was the card able to automatically overclock to a frequency above 3.1 GHz. Then Roman started undervolting the GPU, i.e. reducing the operating voltage of the chip to further reduce its temperature. First, he set -200 mV from the nominal (set by the manufacturer) value. Thanks to this, in the 3DMark Time Spy test, the card automatically overclocked to almost 3.4 GHz, which is 300 MHz higher than the declared value. However, this level of undervolting turned out to be excessive – the card behaved unstable and did not complete the test. A voltage reduction of 170 mV turned out to be stable. At the same time, the operating temperatures also dropped.

Radeon RX 9070 XT (-170 mV GPU voltage). Image source: Der8auer

As a result of successful undervolting, the PowerColor Radeon RX 9070 XT Red Devil turned out to be faster than the GeForce RTX 5080 FE in the Cyberpunk 2077 gaming test and the 3DMark synthetic benchmark. Of course, this victory is not a sure thing, since the RTX 5080 can also be overclocked and get an additional 10% of performance. But still, we are talking about comparing a video card costing $700-800 with a card costing $1000-1200.

Der8auer also noted that the card’s regular overclocking doesn’t work (there may be bugs in the driver) – increasing the GPU frequency doesn’t help. Apparently, AMD still has some work to do on its software.