
Undervolting the AMD Radeon RX 9070 is a winning strategy that enhances its performance-to-power ratio without sacrificing its capabilities. This process makes the RX 9070 increasingly competitive in the graphics card market.
Impact of Undervolting: RX 9070 Performance Insights
Both the AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT and the standard RX 9070 exhibit remarkable performance retention when undervolted. Notable overclocker Der8auer highlights this enhancement in a recent experiment where fellow enthusiast Alva Jonathan from Indonesia demonstrated that his ASRock Radeon RX 9070 Steel Legend maintained competitive performance while significantly reducing power consumption.
In initial benchmarks, the RX 9070 achieves an impressive 54 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 under standard settings. Following some adjustments in the AMD Adrenalin software, the total power consumption was decreased by 30%.This modification resulted in a reduction in GPU voltage from approximately 850-900mV to about 770-780mV, and a corresponding drop in GPU clock speed to below 2.2 GHz.

Further experimentation revealed that a voltage reduction of 50mV led to an increase in GPU clock speed of approximately 100 MHz, stabilizing around 740-750mV. When adjusted to another 50mV decrease, the clock speed surged, transcending 2.4 GHz. Similar behavior was observed in Der8auer’s undervolting tests with the RX 9070 XT, although it was noted that stability issues arose when pushing beyond a -100mV undervolt.

After thorough benchmarking, the undervolted GPU produced a frame rate of 50 FPS, which, while 10% lower than stock performance, still delivered an exceptional 30% increase in FPS per watt. This demonstrates the RX 9070’s capability to outperform rivals, including the RTX 4070 Ti Super, which managed only 46 FPS.
The RX 9070 series has demonstrated impressive stability even at reduced power levels, operating efficiently at just 170W compared to the typical 200-220W under standard settings. Interestingly, the GPU was able to boost beyond 2.7 GHz with just a minor 10% power increase, reaching even greater heights above 2.8 GHz with a -50mV undervolt.

Upon decreasing the voltage by an additional 50mV, the RX 9070’s clock speed peaked at 2.95 GHz, surpassing the advertised boost clock by over 250 MHz. This optimization resulted in achieving 60 FPS, a notable 11% increase from stock settings. Both the RX 9070 XT and RX 9070 showcase significant performance potential, where a simple 10% enhancement could lead to a remarkable advantage in gameplay.
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