AMD Radeon RX 7900 series: up to 3GHz GPU, those crazy 4GHz rumors were SO wrong

Remember those super-exciting, crazy rumors of 4GHz+ and beyond GPU clocks on Navi 31? Yeah, well, I've got some disappointing news for you.

AMD's new Radeon RX 7900 XTX and Radeon RX 7900 XT have now been unveiled and detailed (in some ways) but now we're hearing more information about Navi 31, the GPU inside of the two new Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards.

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PC World attended the RDNA 3 launch event in Las Vegas, where AMD confirmed with them that the company designed the new Navi 31 GPU to scale up to 3.0GHz... much higher than the GPU boost clocks on Navi 21, which is inside of the Radeon RX 6900 XT and Radeon RX 6950 XT graphics cards.

• Read more: AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT: AIBs are going to 'clock Navi 31 to the moon'

On top of that, YouTuber "coreteks" says that with early drivers, AIB partners are only seeing a tiny 3% overclocking boost on custom Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards. That's pretty piss poor, but I'm sure things will change with mature drivers over the coming weeks and tiny tweaks here and there. But there's a large, large difference between AIB partners clocking Navi 31 "to the moon" at those lofty, lofty 4.0GHz+ GPU clock speeds and AMD confirming that they designed Navi 31 for up to 3.0GHz.

AMD might have designed Navi 31 for 3.0GHz but that's also with dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors... here's hoping that AIB partners can blow the power consumption up by another 150W and drive GPU clocks higher. We might not see 4.0GHz, but it would be a damn shame if we don't see 10-20% higher GPU clocks out of custom Radeon RX 7900 series graphics cards.