AMD’s Radeon RX 6800 graphics card goes on sale tomorrow (along with the 6800 XT variant), and it has been spotted with a huge overclock applied, causing much excitement (particularly considering we’ve had several previous such mammoth overclock sightings, which this underlines).
In this case, CapFrameX (a benchmarking tool) shared its RX 6800 overclocking results on Twitter, and as you can see below, clock speeds were pushed to 2532MHz (on average – with a peak speed of 2553 MHz).
Big Navi clock speeds that make Nvidia cry...➡️ 2532MHz average OC➡️ 60° GPU core temp➡️ stable! pic.twitter.com/nJzEbmzDtJNovember 13, 2020
The really interesting bit here, though, is that even with clock speeds over the 2.5GHz mark, stability was maintained and temperatures stayed at an average of 60°C, peaking at just 63°C, which is impressively cool considering how hard those clocks are seemingly being pushed. Power consumption (for the GPU) hit 208W on average, peaking at 269W.
- Here's everything we know about RDNA 2
- We'll show you how to build a PC
- These are the best graphics cards
Tom’s Hardware, which spotted the tweet, raised the possibility that we could be seeing a Big Navi graphics card with liquid cooling – just maybe – but it seems that later in the Twitter thread, CapFrameX confirms that this is a reference cooler and board (albeit with a customized fan curve).
Past rumors
As ever, temper your expectations around pre-release speculation, but what gives this rumor a little more weight is that we have seen several past nuggets from the GPU grapevine indicating that 2.5GHz clocks could be a reality for Big Navi cards.
Just at the end of last week, Twitter user Raichu highlighted overclocks in excess of 2.5GHz for the 6800 XT. And well-known leaker Patrick Schur shared similar results with a purported Asus ROG Strix RX 6800 XT overclock.
Of course, we shouldn’t get too carried away over talks of such dizzying clock speeds anyway, because even if genuine, they won’t necessarily equate to the same proportional increase in performance. Clocks are far from the only important element when it comes to the performance of any graphics card, and pushing them hard and to high levels like 2.5GHz may not necessarily see performance boosts scale the same.
Although that said, Raichi, the source of the most recent overclock leak before this one, did say that purported performance levels of the overclocked 6800 XT in question did get close to the RTX 3090 (take that with a hefty dose of salt, though). AMD’s official position is that this card is the competitor for the RTX 3080, of course.
We will very soon know much more about the real performance of the initial Big Navi cards, as the first reviews – including ours – are imminent, with the RX 6800 and 6800 XT going on sale on November 18 tomorrow (how much stock there will be, however, is a definite point of concern).
- Check out all the best gaming PCs
