RTX 5000 Breaks the 4 GHz Barrier, Record for NVIDIA: An Unexpected Model Surpasses Them

The 'misunderstood' flagship of NVIDIA, the GeForce RTX 5090D, has unexpectedly set the world record for the highest frequency achieved on an NVIDIA GPU. Although the card is based on the Blackwell architecture like its standard sibling, it represents a more limited model aimed solely at the Chinese market.

The result is credited to the Greek team Team OGS, who used a GALAX GeForce RTX 5090D HOF OC LAB during an extreme overclocking session recorded on HWBOT.

It should be noted that the test did not use the most recent version, RTX 5090D V2, which is profoundly different from the normal RTX 5090, but rather the original model that integrates the same graphics chip as the standard variant. The V2 variant, on the other hand, has a reduced configuration for both the graphics processor and the memory.

One of the key elements of the result concerns the video card used. The GALAX HOF OC LAB actually features two 16-pin power connectors and a 36-phase power circuit, designed to support extreme loads during overclocking sessions.

To achieve the new record, Team OGS integrated the External Clock Board (ECB) developed by Elmor. This device allows for excluding the integrated clock generator on the card and using an adjustable external source. In the test, the reference clock was raised to 28.7 MHz, an increase of 6.3% compared to the original value.

The increase in the reference clock affected all frequencies related to the GPU, including the GDDR7 memory, which went from 1,750 MHz to 1,860 MHz, equivalent to a speed close to 30 Gbps. The same system allows, at least theoretically, to push the memory up to 2,400 MHz, corresponding to 38.4 Gbps, compared to the 28 Gbps of the standard RTX 5090 configuration.

In the synthetic benchmark GPUPI v3.3 - 32B, which exclusively measures GPU performance, the card reached an operational frequency of 4,002 MHz, becoming the first Blackwell GPU to exceed the 4 GHz threshold. The test concluded in 35 seconds and 377 milliseconds, a time that improves over a second on the previous record registered on the HWBOT platform.

The previous record belonged to overclocker Splave, who had pushed an RTX 5090D to 3.88 GHz. The new result thus represents an important reference for extreme overclocking enthusiasts on Blackwell architecture.

Despite the new record obtained by NVIDIA in its generation of GPUs, the absolute frequency record remains in the hands of AMD. The Radeon RX 9060 XT indeed reached 4.769 GHz during a previous extreme overclocking session, which determines the absolute record among all GPUs.