I can state this, from experience: there is a BIG difference in performance with my 6900XT stock versus OCed (bumping power limit from 272W to 375W). With my OC, I'm playing Borderlands 3 right now with the memory clock at 2150mhz, and GPU core clock touching 2700mhz. This GPU only truly shines when put underwater and pushed hard.
I can state this, from experience: there is a BIG difference in performance with my 6900XT stock versus OCed (bumping power limit from 272W to 375W). With my OC, I'm playing Borderlands 3 right now with the memory clock at 2150mhz, and GPU core clock touching 2700mhz. This GPU only truly shines when put underwater and pushed hard.
It's shockingly stable too, and the core clocks don't drop off under water. But on air in stock form, the FPS and clocks were way down, and even though you *could* still jack up the power limit, there was little point, as the hot spot temp would be almost instantly over 100C under any stress/gaming, and clocks would start to throttle down. It's a total split personality card, it's happy as heck to run with a maxxed out memory clock, 2700+ core, and NOT needing any additional voltage (since that's currently locked), but it NEEDED a GOOD water block to unlock that potential. On air, the core would start at 2400mhz and possibly downclock from there depending on heat.
Yes the infinity cache is doing a lot of good work according to the post looz made the other day on latencies. It's definitely not a gimmick. Assuming the article he gave is factual but I don't see a reason for it to not be.
Glad to see you are seeing what the card is capable of from water. I just wish AMD didn't need a block to unlock the potential.