Overclocking RX 5700

Overclocking RX 5700

As most of you know, with most video cards you can apply a simple series of tricks to boost the overall performance a little. Typically you can tweak the core clock frequencies and voltages. By increasing the frequency of the video card's memory and GPU, we can make the video card increase its calculation clock cycles per second. It sounds hard, but it can really be done in less than a few minutes. I always tend to recommend to novice users and beginners, to not increase the frequency any higher than 5% on the core and memory clock. Example: If your card runs at 1500 MHz (which is pretty common these days) then I suggest that you don't increase the frequency any higher than 25 to 50 MHz.

More advanced users push the frequency often way higher. Usually, when your 3D graphics start to show artifacts such as white dots ("snow"), you should back down 25 MHz and leave it at that. Usually, when you are overclocking too hard, it'll start to show artifacts, empty polygons or it will even freeze. Carefully find that limit and then back down at least 25 MHz from the moment you notice an artifact. Look carefully and observe well. I really wouldn't know why you need to overclock today's tested card anyway, but we'll still show it. All in all... you always overclock at your own risk!
 

Reference	This sample	Overclocked
Boost Clock: 1725 MHz	Boost Clock: 1725 MHz	Boost Clock: ~1800 MHz
Memory Clock: 14000 MHz	Memory Clock: 14000 MHz	Memory Clock: 14400 MHz

The RX 5700 non-XT model has been limited towards 1850 MHz and 930 MHz x(8x2xDDR) = 14880 MHz. That and a +20 on the power limiter. 

However, the card would not work at such clocks. You will bump into memory limiters and a Wattman issue that limits tweaking results. We ended up adding 50 MHz on the GPU clock and a small 900 MHz (x8x2)= 14400 on the GDDR6 memory and gradually added some extra voltage through Wattman. So we passed on overclocking any deeper. We don't like Wattman software either, it's over-engineered up-to a point where it's just not user-friendly or fun to work with anymore. Once we get Afterburner up-to-snuff and AMD fixes some bugs, we'll revisit overclocking.

A 300 point increase though. To be continued ...