Best RX 560D Overclocking Settings Guide
If you’re looking to get more performance out of the RX 560D, this guide walks through the exact overclocking steps, settings, and benchmarks that show what this card can really do. The RX 560D is often overlooked, but with the right tuning it can deliver solid 1080p performance and punch well above its stock numbers:
In this video we’re going to quickly go through the basics of overclocking and benchmarking an RX 560D graphics card.
The AMD Radeon RX 560D is a mid range card first introduced in mid 2017. Oftentimes an overlooked card, the RX 560D is essentially a scaled down version of the full RX 560. The scaling down includes the disabling of 128 shading units as well as a slightly lower clock speed. This brings the performance very close in line with the full RX 460. So that being said, this card can still pack a punch and we should have no trouble with some solid 1080p performance.
So let’s see what this card offers. The RX 560D is based on the Polaris21 graphics processor and has 896 shading units running at 1090 MHz core clock and 1500 MHz memory clock. This card comes in both single and dual slot varieties as well as single and dual fan versions. This card can either be powered solely from the motherboard or require an additional 6 pin PCI power connection. The RX 560D comes with either 2 GB or 4 GB of GDDR5 memory. The example card we have here is the Yeston 560D which includes 4 GB of memory and a slightly higher than normal 1200 MHz core clock.
Let’s get ready to overclock and benchmark this card and see what kind of performance we can push out of it. The first thing we’ll want to do is update the drivers. Let’s jump over to AMD real quick and grab the latest ones.
Now that our drivers are fresh and updated, the next step is to install an overclocking program called MSI Afterburner. MSI Afterburner is a completely free tool that gives you a high level of control and monitoring over your graphics card. It’s made by the company MSI, but in no way do you have to use it with an MSI brand of card or anything like that.
Now that MSI Afterburner is installed, let’s go through the key settings we’ll be using. We’ll be focusing on the voltage, clock speed, and fan settings. We can see that the fan speed is currently set to Auto. You can turn this off and manually select the fan speed, but for this video we’re going to keep it on Auto.
We can set our core clock and memory clock values from the middle section here. For voltage, you can see the setting is grayed out by default. If you’d like to change the voltage, you’ll first need to go into Properties and then check the box labeled “Unlock Voltage Control”. I would recommend being very careful when changing the voltage and only doing it in small increments.
If you’re unhappy with your changes, you can reset them back to default by clicking on the reverse arrow at the bottom. Once you’re satisfied with your changes, you can click the check button to apply them. You can save your current settings to a profile by clicking the Save button and then clicking on one of the profiles along the right hand side. Finally, you can have the current settings automatically apply at Windows startup by clicking the Windows icon in the upper right corner.
Now I’m going to put a list of known successful RX 560D overclocks on the screen as well as in the video description. Every card is different, but this should give you a good starting point for possible overclock values that may work for you.
Now that we’ve locked in our overclock settings, we’re going to want to test them. We’re going to run through five different programs with benchmarks to test our overclock for stability and performance. All the programs we’re testing with are free. I’ll put links to them in the description.
What I’ll do is run through all five benchmarks with stock settings to get the base performance numbers. Then I’ll select a moderate initial increase in both core clock and memory clock settings. I’ll then run the 3DMark Demo benchmark tool over and over while increasing the overclock values slightly each time.
Once the settings have been pushed too far and I start seeing crashing, graphical glitches, or things just don’t seem to be working properly, I’ll dial back the settings to what they were just previously when everything was still running solid. At that point I now have a good idea of where the sweet spot is for overclocking my particular card. I can either stick with those settings or try tweaking things just a little bit further.
After a number of tests, this particular card was able to achieve an overclock to 1310 MHz core clock and 1770 MHz memory clock. I did tweak the voltage up slightly, but that only gave me an additional 50 MHz or so on the memory clock, so it may or may not be worth it for you.
Let’s go through each of the benchmarks to see how well our new and improved card did. First up is 3DMark Demo, the popular benchmarking tool released in 2013. Running at default settings, the original graphics score came in at 1693. After overclocking, graphics score improved to 1874. That’s an increase of 10.7 percent, so that’s a decent improvement.
Next up we’ve got Shadow of the Tomb Raider Trial benchmark tool. Running at 1080p in the Low settings preset, our initial frames rendered was 5977 with an average FPS of 38. After overclock, frames rendered increased to 6296 with an average FPS of 41. That’s a frames rendered increase of 5.3 percent. Not much, but better than nothing.
Third on the list is Star Control Origins benchmark. Running at 1080p on the Normal preset level, the base test achieved an average frame rate of 39.2. After overclock, the test achieved an average frame rate of 43.3. That’s an increase of 10.5 percent. Solid improvement here.
Benchmark number four is PCMark 10 Demo. This professional benchmarking tool from the same company behind 3DMark attempts to measure performance for more business and professional computing tasks. The initial test came in at a score of 3683, while the overclock score came in at 3708. This is an increase of less than one percent, so not much going on here.
For our fifth test we have Final Fantasy 14 Endwalker Benchmark Tool. At 1080p on the Standard preset, the RX 560D achieved a base score of 8024 with a rating of High. After overclocking, the card was able to achieve a score of 8773, also rated High. This is an increase of 9.3 percent, so certainly a noticeable improvement here as well.
All in all I’d say not bad. The AMD Radeon RX 560D overclocked and ready for action. If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment on the video and thanks so much for watching!
MSI Afterburner download page:
