A Reddit user known as Jedi95 decided to push the limits of the RX 7900 XTX, one of the top GPUs, by removing the power limit to see how fast it could go. With a high-end custom water-cooling setup and low coolant temperatures of 10 degrees Celsius, the modified RX 7900 XTX achieved remarkable performance, reaching RTX 4090 levels in 3DMark with an impressive clock speed of 3.33GHz. However, this achievement came at a cost, as the card had to consume nearly 700W to reach such high performance.

The performance achieved by this modified RX 7900 XTX demonstrates its capabilities in new territory. In 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, the GPU scored an impressive 18,335 points, surpassing the results of some RTX 4090 cards. For comparison, PCGamer’s RTX 4090 review recorded a GPU index score of 16,654 points, making Jedi95’s RX 7900 XTX benchmark result 10% faster.

This indicates that AMD’s RX 7900 XTX can compete with Nvidia’s flagship RTX 4090, surpassing the expected performance of an RTX 4080, albeit with higher power consumption. It’s important to note that 3DMark may not fully reflect real-world gaming performance.

Power throttling is a common occurrence on AMD’s RX 7900-series cards, as most games tend to reach the maximum power rating, causing the GPU to throttle or not reach peak clock speeds. This differs from Nvidia’s RTX 40-series GPUs, which often operate below their maximum power consumption figures during gaming.

Jedi95’s modified RX 7900 XTX also matched the best benchmark results of the stock RX 7900 XTX in the 3DMark browser, competing with GPUs that were likely cooled with liquid nitrogen.

The modification employed by Jedi95 was a “shunt-like” mod that tricked the VRM controller into reporting false power consumption figures to the GPU, bypassing AMD’s power limitations. This allowed the GPU to operate without any power restrictions, as it remained unaware of its actual power consumption. Jedi95 mentioned that this mod was superior to traditional shunt mods since power reporting could be controlled through software.

It’s not surprising that pushing voltage and frequency limits, along with improved cooling, can result in stable performance. However, power consumption scales with frequency and voltage squared, leading to extreme power usage, as demonstrated in this case.

This experiment provides insight into the capabilities of AMD’s RDNA 3 GPUs when power limits are disregarded. Operating without constraints, Navi 31 can achieve extremely high clock speeds well above 3.3 GHz, yielding significantly improved performance. Based on Jedi95’s findings, AMD may have sufficient headroom to potentially develop a theoretical RX 7950 XTX that could compete with the RTX 4090. However, accomplishing this would require a substantial increase in power draw by AMD.

Final Thoughts

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