Underneath regular circumstances, the AMD RX 7900 XTX graphics card is not any match for Nvidia’s flagship, the GeForce RTX 4090, when it comes to pure efficiency. However there’s a technique to match the latter in efficiency — although the worth it’s important to pay could be slightly too excessive for some.

When you take away the RX 7900 XTX’s energy limiter, it’s capable of match the RTX 4090 within the 3DMark10 benchmarks with a excessive clock pace of three.33GHz. In accordance with 3DMark Time Spy Excessive’s scoring, the graphics card was capable of attain as excessive as 18,335 factors, which is definitely 10% higher than the RTX 4090’s 16,654 (which PC Gamer recorded in its personal evaluation of the latter).

So as to pull this off, Reddit consumer Jedi95 used a mod to have the VRM controller report false energy consumption figures to the GPU, which bypassed AMD’s built-in energy limitations. Although it resulted in a powerful efficiency leap, it prices almost 700W of energy to overclock the graphics card to this degree.

Jedi95 detailed the in depth system wanted to maintain the cardboard from overheating at this insane energy degree, which included a high-end customized water-cooling setup paired with 10C coolant temperatures and loads of air flow.

Contemplating how costly 700W is on the typical electrical energy invoice mixed with the excessive price of each the RT 7900 XTX GPU itself and the cooling setup wanted to overclock it to this diploma, this methodology is unquestionably out of attain for many consumers.

Nice efficiency however too dangerous 

Not solely are the monetary prices a significant difficulty with utilizing this a lot energy with the intention to maximize efficiency, however there’s additionally the hazard of overheating the RX 7900 XTX — even with such an in depth cooling answer.

In accordance with Tom’s {Hardware}, the flagship graphics card has a difficulty with its vapor chamber, inflicting it to hit extraordinarily excessive hotspot temperatures in extra of 110C. Although this isn’t a widespread difficulty, going by the (very in depth) testing of overclocking professional Der8auer and reviews from different customers, it’s nonetheless one thing to take extraordinarily critically.

Working that a lot energy via a element not actually constructed to deal with it’s already dangerous, however coupling that with even the potential for a vapor chamber malfunction is way too harmful an opportunity to take. It’s fascinating that the 7900 XTX is able to such efficiency, nonetheless, displaying us that this card has loads of potential. 

However if you would like a graphics card with the efficiency of an RTX 4090, it’s higher to easily buy that GPU as an alternative because it’s optimized for that degree of efficiency straight out of the field. Positive, the RX 7900 XTX is kind of a bit cheaper, however if you would like top-notch efficiency, it’s higher to pay extra and never doubtlessly set your PC on fireplace.