News AMD RX 9070 vBIOS flash offers up-to 20% performance boost — modders claim OC beats 9070 XT

[Admin]

A member of the PCGH community flashed an RX 9070 XT vBIOS onto his RX 9070, reporting a 15-20% performance bump with boost clocks exceeding 3 GHz.

AMD RX 9070 vBIOS flash offers up-to 20% performance boost — modders claim OC beats 9070 XT : Read more

 

[ohio_buckeye]

While stuff like this is cool to talk about, wouldn’t simply overclocking the card be better so that you aren’t voiding the warranty? Or at least the bios is not modded in the event the card has defects?

 

[Makaveli]

I've done this on so many Radeons in the last 20 years good memories.

 

[alceryes]

While stuff like this is cool to talk about, wouldn’t simply overclocking the card be better so that you aren’t voiding the warranty? Or at least the bios is not modded in the event the card has defects?

Using modded BIOS' may allow power profiles and voltages not included with the stock 9070. This will vary, gen to gen, of course.

 

[Exploding PSU]

I've done this on so many Radeons in the last 20 years good memories.

My Vega 56 is giggling in the corner while I read this article... Good times...

 

[A Stoner]

This seems like it should be a no brainer that this would be the result. For all intents and purposes the only real difference between the 9070 and the 9070 XT is power and clocks. Now, at an individual card and manufacturer level there could be other differences in the power delivery circuitry and other card components that could make the 9070 xt a more robust card and the 9070 less reliable at the higher frequencies and power levels, not to mention cooling.

That said, the $50 difference and the cost to make custom items argues that most manufacturers are going to use common items between the cards they produce and it might really be that the only real difference is the bios on the board.

I would argue availability/price should be the driving factor in whether to use this method or not. If you need the 9070 XT performance but none are available or the XT price is significantly elevated vs the non-XT version, only then would the risk vs reward be reasonable.

 

[valthuer]

Reminds me of 2011, when I flashed the BIOS of my MSI Radeon HD 6950, effectively turning it into a 6970.

First thing I did after that, was play Crysis 2.

Those were the days, man!🔝

 

[TJ Hooker]

This seems like it should be a no brainer that this would be the result. For all intents and purposes the only real difference between the 9070 and the 9070 XT is power and clocks. Now, at an individual card and manufacturer level there could be other differences in the power delivery circuitry and other card components that could make the 9070 xt a more robust card and the 9070 less reliable at the higher frequencies and power levels, not to mention cooling.

Well, you still get ~14% more hardware with the 9070 XT, e.g. 14% more shader cores, 14% more AI cores, etc. And performance/power tends to scale better with more hardware resources compared to increasing clock speeds.

 

[tamalero]

Reminds me of 2011, when I flashed the BIOS of my MSI Radeon HD 6950, effectively turning it into a 6970.

First thing I did after that, was playing Crysis 2.

Those were the days, man!🔝

I still remember that soft mods to make your X800 GTO to X850XT, the performance hike was pretty big back then.

 

[DS426]

I can appreciate that AMD still allows vBIOS flashing. Great mentions so far, but I'm also reminded of a time when dual- and triple-core Phenom processors could get unlocked into being quad-core parts, even if it took some tinkering around as those previously disabled cores were usually weak.

 

[Heiro78]

This seems like it should be a no brainer that this would be the result. For all intents and purposes the only real difference between the 9070 and the 9070 XT is power and clocks. Now, at an individual card and manufacturer level there could be other differences in the power delivery circuitry and other card components that could make the 9070 xt a more robust card and the 9070 less reliable at the higher frequencies and power levels, not to mention cooling.

That said, the $50 difference and the cost to make custom items argues that most manufacturers are going to use common items between the cards they produce and it might really be that the only real difference is the bios on the board.

I would argue availability/price should be the driving factor in whether to use this method or not. If you need the 9070 XT performance but none are available or the XT price is significantly elevated vs the non-XT version, only then would the risk vs reward be reasonable.

The 9070s seem to have two 8pin connectors vs the three 8 pin connectors that the XT versions do. And reading the article, the vBios brings TDP to 321. So it eats away at the safety factor of the two 8pins on the non-XT. But somehow still not worse than the factor of safety that the 12VHPWR connectors have.

I recall an individual 8 pin has a safety factor of 1.68 at 150 watts and the 12VHPWR of 1.14 at 600 watts

typo: 8pins not 9pins

 

[valthuer]

I can appreciate that AMD still allows vBIOS flashing. Great mentions so far, but I'm also reminded of a time when dual- and triple-core Phenom processors could get unlocked into being quad-core parts, even if it took some tinkering around as those previously disabled cores were usually weak.

I wonder if my Phenom II X6 1055T fell into that category. I had an all-AMD rig back at the day, which i kept from 2010-11 to 2019.

 

[ilukey77]

maybe me but i dont like putting undue stress on my components ..

All for the fun of making something perform much better than intended but to my why not just buy a stock better card and leave it to do its job

 

[King_V]

maybe me but i dont like putting undue stress on my components ..

All for the fun of making something perform much better than intended but to my why not just buy a stock better card and leave it to do its job

I can definitely relate to that, and I do appreciate the significantly better performance-per-watt of the 9070 at stock specs.

 

[jkhoward]

This seems like it should be a no brainer that this would be the result. For all intents and purposes the only real difference between the 9070 and the 9070 XT is power and clocks. Now, at an individual card and manufacturer level there could be other differences in the power delivery circuitry and other card components that could make the 9070 xt a more robust card and the 9070 less reliable at the higher frequencies and power levels, not to mention cooling.

That said, the $50 difference and the cost to make custom items argues that most manufacturers are going to use common items between the cards they produce and it might really be that the only real difference is the bios on the board.

I would argue availability/price should be the driving factor in whether to use this method or not. If you need the 9070 XT performance but none are available or the XT price is significantly elevated vs the non-XT version, only then would the risk vs reward be reasonable.

I mean, as others have said, you have more cores on the 9700 XT.

Despite that though, in the past theirs been parts with less cores, that have been able to clock higher than a part with more cores (PS5 vs Xbox Series X, also the 3000 series 16 vs 8 core chips).

This is quite interesting, I’m hoping others toy around with this some more and see if they’re able to increase the power usage higher than the 9700 XT, we could get some interesting results at different resolutions and game engines (those optimized better for PS5 versus Xbox Series X as an example).

I remember disabling the even cores on my FX-8950 or whatever the monstrosity was called and got better performance, and higher clock speeds because the core wasn’t cut in half like Frankenstein.