The overclocking headroom in AMD's Radeon 7000-series GPUs 'was certainly not accidental... the core of Radeon has to be all about value to the end user'
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"We understand that both for CPUs and GPUs, overclockability is a core part of what many of our gamers and enthusiasts are looking for."
Having only just finished my testing and review of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE before I flew out to Taipei for Computex 2026, I wanted to take the opportunity when I sat down with AMD's David McAfee to talk about one of the most impressive things I've seen in all the Navi 48 GPUs I've played with: the overclocking headroom.
More specifically, the performance headroom you can squeeze out of the GPU when you undervolt it. David McAfee runs AMD's Ryzen and Radeon business, so I was keen to find out how that came about given that for generations of GPU that hasn't been the case.
"It was certainly not accidental," says McAfee. "I think that we understand that, both for CPUs and GPUs, overclockability is a core part of what many of our buyers, our gamers and enthusiasts, are looking for. I think that in years past, you know, the product definition would squeeze every bit of overclocking headroom out of the product and productise it just as a stock SKU, a pre-configured SKU. And that left the community with really no room to have have fun with the product and experiment and see what they could do."
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But that is no longer the case and it's incredibly gratifying to note that was on deliberate and is a strategy going forward, too.
"Our strategy with this generation of products and going forward is very different," he says. "I was a part of the Ryzen journey from the very beginning, and stepping into the Radeon space, I think that it is the same sort of story arc that we want to create. Where Ryzen over the years was about giving users more for their money, being very community centric, and delivering the type of experience that they want out of that platform. And I think with Radeon it's the same thing.
AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE review | Is less VRAM worth the same MSRP? - YouTube
"Sure, it's going to take us generations to build the perfect Radeon platform, but I think the core of Radeon has to be all about value to the end user and what they get out of that system.
"It's all about great experiences in a GPU. That ties into things like FSR and game support, and really interesting new technology integrated into high-profile game titles. And I think the last part of it is listening to the community and understanding that you know what users are going to want out of those products and cards is not necessarily something where every bit of performance is delivered out of the box, and it's not always cranked up to 11, there's still a little bit of room to go."
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