Nvidia RTX 4090 Pushed to 4090 MHz

Extreme overclocker CENS has pushed an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card to 4,090 MHz for "a fun one." If we look at the German overclocker's screenshots, we can see they actually achieved 4,095 MHz, but we appreciate their eye for symmetry, and a headline.

CENS' liquid nitrogen fuelled overclocking feat certainly proves that timing is everything, as last week we covered the momentous occasion of the first Nvidia AD102 GPU to edge past the 4,000 MHz milestone. CENS and Splave had been earnestly jockeying for that crown through June and early July, but Splave managed to grab the glory last week.

While the official HWBot charts have a max CPU speed, max memory speed, and even a max motherboard speed category, there is no such general GPU frequency chart. Recently RTX 4090 GPU overclockers have run a benchmark, commonly GPUPi v3,3 32B, to register their GPU frequencies on the HWBot database. However, for some reason, possibly due to stability, CENS didn't even run GPUPi - so Splave retains that particular world record.

For the GeForce RTX 4090 pushed to 4090 MHz, all CENS shows is a GPU-Z screenshot, and a picture of his LN2 cooled system. In the GPU-Z info screens we can see that the 4,095 MHz was achieved while the GPU was cooled to about minus 35 degrees Celsius. We don't know exactly what the hardware used was this time around, but it is likely to be the same setup CENS used for previous 4 GHz GPU clock milestone attempts. Central to that setup was the Colorful GeForce RTX 4090 iGame LAB graphics card. CENS' wallpaper still has this graphics card logo on it. In his extreme RTX 4090 overclocking adventures, Splave seemed to prefer the Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090.

It is likely that CENS' other system components remained the same, namely an Intel Core i9 13900K, an EVGA DARK Kingpin Z690 motherboard, and specialist extreme cooling paraphernalia from KingPin and Elmor Labs.

More Just-for-Fun World Records, Please

The world's fastest verified CPU frequency according to HWBot is 9,009 MHz on an Intel Core i9 13900K (8P). Sadly, a just-for-fun world record where this CPU is pushed to 13,900 MHz seems to be way out of reach. The venerable AMD FX-8370 has been pushed well beyond its 'fun' stage, achieving 8,723 MHz to be second placed in the CPU frequency rankings.