6800/6900 Overclock Results

R-Type

[H]ard|DCer of the Month - October 2011
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Mar 6, 2006
Messages
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Hopefully not a redundant thread but I wanted to compare OC results and tips for the big Navi cards. Overall, these are just as much fun to overclock as Vega was and take much the same approach. Until we get some soft ppt tables, the 6800XT won't go over 293W (+15% power limit) so you're trying to balance getting the voltage as low as possible to increase headroom while matching a top boost clock that it won't crash at with the low voltage.

For my 6800XT on air this seemed to be about 1025mV@2550mhz and 2130 ram (fast timings), this would reliably boost into the low 2500mhz range. With the waterblock on now and load temps in the mid 40's, this moved to 1035mV and 2650mhz (2550-2580 actual boost) with 2150 ram. This let me just squeak by 19,000 in Timespy.

What have you guys found?

Updated 2/26/22: Latest results compilation (mirroring post 373)
The rules are:
1. In your post, please include the score and a link to your validated result, and tell us if it is air cooling, water cooling, or extreme (AC, chiller, dry ice, LN2, hard mods, shunt mods, etc).
2. Leaderboard will consist of top 10 scores per cooling type only.



Have fun!

Extreme:
1.
2.
3.

Water Cooling:
1.25125 Nordskov https://www.3dmark.com/spy/26523801
2. 24029 Catsonar https://www.3dmark.com/spy/26133632
3. 23411 Zarathustra[H] https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/68596722?

4. 23029 Gideon https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/71914412?
5. 22530 R-Type http://www.3dmark.com/spy/24118057
6. 22062 Chassepot (6800XT)
7. 22048 Killroy67
8. 21738 Supercharged_Z06
9.
10.



Air Cooling:

1. 22735 bl4C3y37 https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/72273323?
2. 22663 John1780 https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/72045575?
3. 22160 Starfalcon https://www.3dmark.com/spy/26232360
4. 21364 Thecold
5. 21269 Gideon
6. 20994 kwikgta
7. 20978 newls1
8. 20908 jfreund
9. 20758 Tactical Spoon(6800XT)
10. 20533 wizzi01
 

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I haven't messed with overclocking much in a long time but I guess I could add results. Do you have to pay for 3D Mark now? I could try overclocking this card and seeing what I get. Are you just using the built in overclocking that comes with the radeon graphics software?
 
Don't have my 6800XT yet to report results (should be here by EOW, will be swapping out my 3080 with it), but looking forward to hearing other's findings. Already looks like the 6800/6900 are hell at overclocking compared to Ampere (I get a paltry +40mhz core on my 3080).
 
R-Type, what 6800xt did you get and what waterblock did you use?

I'm now running a 5900x with an Optimus wb on the cpu and an EK block on my Rad VII. Trying to source a 6800/6800XT but have to be sure it has a reference PCB so the 6800/6800xt/6900XT EK block will work.
 
I had the fastest with a 2700X for a while. My card does fairly well but is power capped and will only pull 323ish watts. Some parts of the test it will sit at 2700mhz.

6800XT Merc 319, 2nd bios, +15 power limit, 2150 FT. I think I can get a bit more out of her if I could get more power limit
68TS.png
 
R-Type, what 6800xt did you get and what waterblock did you use?

I'm now running a 5900x with an Optimus wb on the cpu and an EK block on my Rad VII. Trying to source a 6800/6800XT but have to be sure it has a reference PCB so the 6800/6800xt/6900XT EK block will work.

I have a reference Gigabyte 6800XT with the EKWB Vector block installed. The Alphacool Eisblock is coming out mid January for reference cards and is only like $135 with a backplate, a great option for anyone who hasn't yet purchased. Naturally, both have the necessary RGB so my case can keep its [H] theme.


I had the fastest with a 2700X for a while. My card does fairly well but is power capped and will only pull 323ish watts. Some parts of the test it will sit at 2700mhz.

6800XT Merc 319, 2nd bios, +15 power limit, 2150 FT. I think I can get a bit more out of her if I could get more power limit

Very nice, I'm jealous. I'm board limited at 293W and your extra 30W looks like an extra 100mhz. With Vega we had soft ppt tables that could be loaded via regedit, hopefully something similar can help with these RX 6000 series cards.
 

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I haven't messed with overclocking much in a long time but I guess I could add results. Do you have to pay for 3D Mark now? I could try overclocking this card and seeing what I get. Are you just using the built in overclocking that comes with the radeon graphics software?
It’s on sale in the Steam winter sale right now for like $5, well worth grabbing.
 
Very nice, I'm jealous. I'm board limited at 293W and your extra 30W looks like an extra 100mhz. With Vega we had soft ppt tables that could be loaded via regedit, hopefully something similar can help with these RX 6000 series cards.

Maybe in the future something like RBE will be able to change power limit or the clock speed limits currently in place. I know I had a good bit of fun bios modding my RX 570 to almost 200 watts lol
 
Maybe in the future something like RBE will be able to change power limit or the clock speed limits currently in place. I know I had a good bit of fun bios modding my RX 570 to almost 200 watts lol
Good point, I also hacked on my RX 580 bios with that tool. Though I’d much prefer a soft mod in lieu of flashing to the single bios on this unobtainium GPU at the moment. :)
 
Good point, I also hacked on my RX 580 bios with that tool. Though I’d much prefer a soft mod in lieu of flashing to the single bios on this unobtainium GPU at the moment. :)

Lucky for me the Merc has dual bios. Lol
 
Time Spy score with the custom overclock I've been fine tuning:

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/56186017 (16,596)
What voltage on core? Those Red Devil's are supposed to clock very high, I wouldn't be surprised to see you get another 1000 points on graphics if you OC the memory and get up closer to 2600mhz. You'll only be missing SAM, but the 2700x result above suggests its not that big of an impact.
 
You'll only be missing SAM, but the 2700x result above suggests its not that big of an impact.

Several X470 boards do support Resizable BAR now. My C7H does. My TS score was without SAM and I haven't retested with it enabled yet.
 
Several X470 boards do support Resizable BAR now. My C7H does. My TS score was without SAM and I haven't retested with it enabled yet.
Yeah, I have it enabled on my x470, but I thought you needed a 5000 series CPU. Is that not the case?
 
Yeah, I have it enabled on my x470, but I thought you needed a 5000 series CPU. Is that not the case?

Not that I can tell, seems to work on my 2700X just fine. Quick retest, SAM on was worth 161 points in TS.
 
What voltage on core? Those Red Devil's are supposed to clock very high, I wouldn't be surprised to see you get another 1000 points on graphics if you OC the memory and get up closer to 2600mhz. You'll only be missing SAM, but the 2700x result above suggests its not that big of an impact.
I'm undervolting currently to 1.028 based on some recommendations I saw.
 
I'm undervolting currently to 1.028 based on some recommendations I saw.
Your board is supposed to be able to do like 400W of power, I would suspect you need more voltage and a higher boost clock setting to unleash it. What does it show as the highest value in power draw during a run with the +15% power setting?
 
Your board is supposed to be able to do like 400W of power, I would suspect you need more voltage and a higher boost clock setting to unleash it. What does it show as the highest value in power draw during a run with the +15% power setting?
I've had it in the system less than a day. Lots more experimenting to do, with some playing in between. :)
 
I've had it in the system less than a day. Lots more experimenting to do, with some playing in between. :)
But I want to be jealous now! :)

Excited to see what you get out of it!
 
Was playing a little with mine for the first time yesterday. Dialed in a solid ~2550MHz playing CP2077.
 
Did a couple fresh tests on my 6900XT. Reference model. 2500min/2600max clock settings with 2100 memory (fast timings) @ 1039mv + max power limit (293W according to GPU-Z). According to 3dMark average clocks 2470-2480mhz.

Timespy: 20125 - https://www.3dmark.com/spy/17087377
Port Royal: 10720 - https://www.3dmark.com/pr/740107
Nice, I was curious how the scaling would work with the extra CUs given the 6800xts are already bouncing off the power limit. Looks like at least 5% extra performance in Timespy and more than 10% in Port Royal. It makes sense that the ray traced workload would scale closer to the dedicated hardware.
 
When I had my 6800xt, just toyed with OCing a tiny bit, but the actual clocks got up to 2627
(Built by AMD 6800xt)
1610036974053.png
 
Did a couple fresh tests on my 6900XT. Reference model. 2500min/2600max clock settings with 2100 memory (fast timings) @ 1039mv + max power limit (293W according to GPU-Z). According to 3dMark average clocks 2470-2480mhz.

Timespy: 20125 - https://www.3dmark.com/spy/17087377
Port Royal: 10720 - https://www.3dmark.com/pr/740107

That's pretty stout - very close to my 3090 when it comes to Timespy score.

By comparison, I get:
Timespy: 20228 - https://www.3dmark.com/spy/17171434
Port Royal: 14331 - https://www.3dmark.com/pr/748876

The new AMD GPUs definitely aren't slouches in the raster dept!

Edit: Added the benchmark score links.
 
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A couple of interesting notes as I pulled my 6800XT out of the loop to prepare for the incoming 6900XT:

- The difference between the low 40's temperature under water and the low 70's under air seems to be worth about 60mhz in stable boost clock
- The stock cooler uses one of those graphite pads for TIM. Replacing with IC Diamond during the reinstall dropped the temps about 5 degrees C air to air

Not sure what anyone would do with this info, but seemed pertinent to the overclocking. :)
 
Did a couple fresh tests on my 6900XT. Reference model. 2500min/2600max clock settings with 2100 memory (fast timings) @ 1039mv + max power limit (293W according to GPU-Z). According to 3dMark average clocks 2470-2480mhz.

Timespy: 20125 - https://www.3dmark.com/spy/17087377
Port Royal: 10720 - https://www.3dmark.com/pr/740107
Lol, here is my rather anemic 3090 with some OCing applied compared to your score:

TimeSpy.png
Port Royal compared to yours:

PortRoyal.png
AMD OC factor coming into play. I should be able to get mine higher but don't expect to reach your level in Time Spy without some major changes such as water cooling and bios change. RT did good for what it is worth.
 
Hmm... kinda disappointed in my results. I've got my 6900XT undervolted (at 92% of max), power limit at 110% of normal, and max frequency set at 110%, but I'm only getting 16,090 in Time Spy. GPU speed seems to be between 2300-2480MHz, although I've seen it spike to 2713MHz.

Info:
AMD 5800X processor
6900XT GPU (SAM enabled)
3600MHz RAM (32GB @ 16-19-19-39)
Resolution: 1440p
 
Hmm... kinda disappointed in my results. I've got my 6900XT undervolted (at 92% of max), power limit at 110% of normal, and max frequency set at 110%, but I'm only getting 16,090 in Time Spy. GPU speed seems to be between 2300-2480MHz, although I've seen it spike to 2713MHz.

Info:
AMD 5800X processor
6900XT GPU (SAM enabled)
3600MHz RAM (32GB @ 16-19-19-39)
Resolution: 1440p
Yeah that is way lower than I’d expect, that’s the graphics only score and not the blended score? (Everyone else is comparing graphics only.)

What is your pci-e link width set at?
Are you manually overriding resolution?
Did you overclock gpu memory?


I also think we’d be able to troubleshoot more easily if you switch to “advanced” so we can talk direct voltage and speed instead of %.
 
Been playing around with timespy and trying to overclock the core on this 6900 XT. So far this is disappointing, and I may have a bad sample.

Power limit set to +15% and a fan curve set, my junction temps are never over 90c. With this gpu, it's necessary to undervolt in order to get higher scores and increase your clock speeds. What I am finding is that this card will not allow a good undervolt, and anything under about 1125mv is unstable and results in crashes to the desktop in timespy. The second graphics test is what kills it every time, never the first. Most people who are getting excellent scores with these cards are able to run lower core voltage, 1080-1090mv for example.

I've tried setting lower max/min clocks I'm getting no where with it. It seems I may be able to push 19000 graphics score in timespy after I get the memory clocked up, but I'm not going to be anywhere near the best scores I'm seeing on the internet and on reviews.
 
Yeah that is way lower than I’d expect, that’s the graphics only score and not the blended score? (Everyone else is comparing graphics only.)

What is your pci-e link width set at?
Are you manually overriding resolution?
Did you overclock gpu memory?


I also think we’d be able to troubleshoot more easily if you switch to “advanced” so we can talk direct voltage and speed instead of %.

Hopefully this helps:

Here's my radeon settings. I had some instability going beyond this.
https://files.catbox.moe/fyec1m.png

Just re-ran after tweaking things some more and got 16.4k again and 10k in port royal
https://files.catbox.moe/ckqrue.png
https://files.catbox.moe/lw4zjg.png

PCIe link width is showing x16 on CPUZ. I tried overclocking the VRAM but was getting black screens so I have that disabled for now. Not sure on manually overriding the resolution but it's showing "
\\.\DISPLAY1 (2560 × 1440, 100% DPI scaling)" which matches my monitor's native resolution.

Temps seem to be normal. Maxing out at about 81-82C on GPU temp, and junction temp is hitting around 92C or so.

CPU is running at stock settings, I haven't messed with anything there yet.
 
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Been playing around with timespy and trying to overclock the core on this 6900 XT. So far this is disappointing, and I may have a bad sample.

Power limit set to +15% and a fan curve set, my junction temps are never over 90c. With this gpu, it's necessary to undervolt in order to get higher scores and increase your clock speeds. What I am finding is that this card will not allow a good undervolt, and anything under about 1125mv is unstable and results in crashes to the desktop in timespy. The second graphics test is what kills it every time, never the first. Most people who are getting excellent scores with these cards are able to run lower core voltage, 1080-1090mv for example.

I've tried setting lower max/min clocks I'm getting no where with it. It seems I may be able to push 19000 graphics score in timespy after I get the memory clocked up, but I'm not going to be anywhere near the best scores I'm seeing on the internet and on reviews.
Having just sold my 19k scoring 6800xt after I had an opportunity to get a 6900xt, this is not what I wanted to read! Fingers crossed...

I did see where the igorslab guys used a version of MPT to increase the 6900XT bios power limit to 335w but that version of the tool isn't posted yet from what I can see. That should be an option later though.
 
Hopefully this helps:

Here's my radeon settings. I had some instability going beyond this.
https://files.catbox.moe/fyec1m.png

Just re-ran after tweaking things some more and got 16.4k again and 10k in port royal
https://files.catbox.moe/ckqrue.png
https://files.catbox.moe/lw4zjg.png

PCIe link width is showing x16 on CPUZ. I tried overclocking the VRAM but was getting black screens so I have that disabled for now. Not sure on manually overriding the resolution but it's showing "
\\.\DISPLAY1 (2560 × 1440, 100% DPI scaling)" which matches my monitor's native resolution.

Temps seem to be normal. Maxing out at about 81-82C on GPU temp, and junction temp is hitting around 92C or so.

CPU is running at stock settings, I haven't messed with anything there yet.
LOL, you're getting 19.5k on graphics which is the number we're all comparing. You're doing fine! I do think you can tune more though. You likely are finding you can't undervolt further because on lightly loaded sections its boosting to that 2800+ frequency. Try lowering boost to like 2700 and your core to 1050 or 1067, if you find the voltage its stable with the lower boost you'll end up with a higher average core clock in the heavily loaded sections and a higher score over all. Once you find your max core, I would try memory again. I haven't seen anyone posting less than 2100mhz with tight timings as stable results.
 
Hmm... kinda disappointed in my results. I've got my 6900XT undervolted (at 92% of max), power limit at 110% of normal, and max frequency set at 110%, but I'm only getting 16,090 in Time Spy. GPU speed seems to be between 2300-2480MHz, although I've seen it spike to 2713MHz.

Info:
AMD 5800X processor
6900XT GPU (SAM enabled)
3600MHz RAM (32GB @ 16-19-19-39)
Resolution: 1440p
I got over 1000points increase overall as well as 1000points increase on the Graphics score, with stock 3090 settings by just upping system memory from 3200mhz 14,14,14,14,34 to 3733mhz 16,16,16,16,36. Meaning the GPU was not being feed enough with the lower system memory speeds. This surprised me. You might want to try to tighten up you memory timings, try faster speeds if the memory supports it. You can go the other way as in slow down your system memory to see if it decreases your graphics score, if it does then it maybe also limiting your score with your current memory speeds and timings.

Edit: This is probably a Threadripper/3dMark thing, turned off SMT and got over 3000pts increase in both Graphics and in the total scores. While not a 6900 XT, these new high end cards push the system and maybe more can be gained from tweaking the system vice just the graphics card. Now I have to see if SMT affects games as well. Below is stock EVGA 3090 XC3 Ultra settings
3733 mem Sys, no SMT, stock 3090 settings
3200 mem Sys, stock 3090 settings
This is the comparison of the two, a 31% increase in graphics score by only changing system memory speeds and turning off SMT, no change in 3090 settings, all stock
 
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I said this over a year ago was nearly ostracized for even mentioning turning off smt. It was the same with last gen zen cpus. Why segment cores if the workload cannot utilize them all? I have two bios profiles set up one for gaming and one for workloads that require max thread count.
 
I said this over a year ago was nearly ostracized for even mentioning turning off smt. It was the same with last gen zen cpus. Why segment cores if the workload cannot utilize them all? I have two bios profiles set up one for gaming and one for workloads that require max thread count.
Previously on slower cards, my experience it did not make that much difference but now with a much higher performing card 1080Ti to 3090 it makes a huge difference. Something for those here to try out if interested.
 
I got over 1000points increase overall as well as 1000points increase on the Graphics score, with stock 3090 settings by just upping system memory from 3200mhz 14,14,14,14,34 to 3733mhz 16,16,16,16,36. Meaning the GPU was not being feed enough with the lower system memory speeds. This surprised me. You might want to try to tighten up you memory timings, try faster speeds if the memory supports it. You can go the other way as in slow down your system memory to see if it decreases your graphics score, if it does then it maybe also limiting your score with your current memory speeds and timings.

Edit: This is probably a Threadripper/3dMark thing, turned off SMT and got over 3000pts increase in both Graphics and in the total scores. While not a 6900 XT, these new high end cards push the system and maybe more can be gained from tweaking the system vice just the graphics card. Now I have to see if SMT affects games as well. Below is stock EVGA 3090 XC3 Ultra settings
3733 mem Sys, no SMT, stock 3090 settings
3200 mem Sys, stock 3090 settings
This is the comparison of the two, a 31% increase in graphics score by only changing system memory speeds and turning off SMT, no change in 3090 settings, all stock
This is interesting and I agree, could be something tied to the higher latency of threadripper. My observations have been the other way, I'm surprised my score isn't coming in lower given I'm running PCI-E 3.0. I wonder if the inifinitycache built into the 6000 series is helping to keep the card fed better, it would be really interesting to see the results of a 6900XT in your system...
 
LOL, you're getting 19.5k on graphics which is the number we're all comparing. You're doing fine! I do think you can tune more though. You likely are finding you can't undervolt further because on lightly loaded sections its boosting to that 2800+ frequency. Try lowering boost to like 2700 and your core to 1050 or 1067, if you find the voltage its stable with the lower boost you'll end up with a higher average core clock in the heavily loaded sections and a higher score over all. Once you find your max core, I would try memory again. I haven't seen anyone posting less than 2100mhz with tight timings as stable results.

Ah, ok. I was worried. First time I've run 3Dmark in like a decade, lol.
 
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