In this study, two methods, X-ray diffraction (nondestructive) and hole-drilling (destructive) are applied to measure the residual stress of gas metal arc welded steel plate. Both non-relaxed and relaxed (local heating, furnace annealing and bead blasting) weldments are examined to understand the residual stress distributions before and after elimination of residual stresses. Results show that the heat affected zone of gas metal arc welding method is about 10 mm from the weld centerline. The local heating method is very effective in reducing the residual stress caused by the cold work of the original steel plate. The furnace annealing method reduces the residual stress to compressive but not uniformly distributed. The detrimental fluctuation of residual stress is successfully reduced and uniformly relaxed to be beneficially compressive in the bead blasting. Most importantly, X-ray diffraction shows more precise and better handling than hole-drilling method in terms of data error.