What does AMD’s Radeon RX 5700 series Base, Boost and Gaming clocks mean?

When AMD announced their Radeon RX 5700 series of Navi graphics cards, they revealed a new naming scheme for the GPU’s clock speed variations. Before the release of Navi, AMD referred to their GPU clock speeds as Base and Boost clocks, but now AMD has added a new term to the equation “Gaming Clock”, which aims to clarify what each word means when referring to new Radeon graphics cards. 

AMD’s base clock is what could be considered as their minimum GPU clock speeds, what each graphics card will aim for when under extreme “power virus” loads such as FurMark. Navi’s clock speeds shouldn’t ever get lower than this under load, assuming that your PC is well enough ventilated to prevent thermal buildup and throttling. 

Navi’s Boost clock is what the Radeon RX 5700 series targets opportunistically. In ideal scenarios, the Radeon RX 5700 will target this clock speed, but it won’t be achievable under many workloads. With base and boost, Radeon has provided gamers with what could also be described as maximum and minimum clock speeds, which begs the question; what about an average? 

This is where AMD’s new “Gaming” clock speeds come into play. AMD has tested 25 games, which are a mix of unknown AAA and esports titles, and has used their performance data to calculate a clock speed which acts as a ballpark figure for what gamers should expect across most gaming titles. AMD has been a little conservative with their Gaming clock to ensure that most games will sit between their Gaming clock and boost clock speeds.