Sapphire RX 470 OC Graphics Card Review

Overclocking and Overclocked Performance

Before I get into the overclocking results, it’s important to monitor the default configuration to determine the graphics card’s average boost clock. Unfortunately, just like the RX 480’s reference cooler, the boost clock fluctuates at a blistering pace and it’s very unlikely that you’ll see the 1216MHz maximum clock on a regular basis. According to my results, the average boost clock hovered around the 1140MHz mark and is well below the 1260MHz/1270MHz boost seen on custom models. This explains the difference in performance and showcases why you should opt for non-reference designs.

Using AMD’s Wattman utility, I managed to increase the boost clock to a perfectly stable 1250MHz with a slight voltage boost. Please note, the maximum voltage was initially applied to see how far the core could overclock. Then it was dialled back to improve the thermal loads. Unlike the factory setup, manually selecting the 1250MHz boost clock didn’t result in any fluctuations and the greatly improved performance. This is an interesting phenomenon and illustrates that the cooler might be good enough and just requires the end-user to tune the voltage. Of course, this is a pretty small boost and still slower than the factory overclock on RX 470 models like the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 470 OC. When it comes to memory overclocking, you should be able to reach 1790MHz or higher without any problems.

Here we can see the screenshot comparing the stock setup and final overclock:

Ashes of the Singularity

Once overclocked, the graphics card enjoyed a 3 frames-per-second average improvement which was enough to help it surpass the GTX 980.

Doom

In Doom, the overclock enabled the GPU to outperform a highly-acclaimed GTX 1060 retailing around £320. This is a wonderful result and emphasises the kind of real-world benefits you can achieve from manual overclocking.

Just Cause 3

On a similar note, the Sapphire RX 470 OC achieved a significant frame-rate improvement and it’s clear that the default setup isn’t using the graphics core to its maximum potential.