AMD’s RX 9070 XT beats Nvidia’s $1,000+ GPU, but there’s a catch

AMD’s RX 9070 XT hit the shelves last week, and the response has been largely positive. The GPU was expected to perform on around the same level as Nvidia’s RTX 5070 Ti, making it capable of beating some of the best graphics cards. However, a known overclocker just managed to push the GPU to new heights, helping it beat Nvidia’s $1,000+ RTX 5080.

Der8auer took the RX 9070 XT out for an extensive spin and achieved interesting results. Prior to launch, many thought the RX 9070 XT would rival the RTX 5070 at best, but now, we’ve seen it beating not just the RTX 5070 Ti but also the RTX 5080 in today’s test. The catch? Not only did Der8auer use a premium card, but the GPU was also overclocked and undervolted.

Overclocking a GPU is a whole process, as is undervolting. It can be very rewarding (it certainly was in this case), but also scary if you’re not used to it. Der8auer’s goal was to push the GPU to the advertised maximum clock speed, which is at 3,060MHz for the PowerColor RX 9070 XT Red Devil model. Just overclocking didn’t do the trick though; the YouTuber only achieved 3.1GHz when increasing the power limit to 110%. He then undervolted the card by 200mV, which caused it to crash. In the end, he was able to achieve a stable overclock when running at -170mV. At that voltage, the RX 9070 XT hit an impressive 3.4GHz, which is a frequency previously unheard of for many GPUs.