Unmodified Overclock Sees Asus ROG Matrix RTX 4090 Approach 4 GHz

Renowned overclocker Allen 'Splave' Golibersuch has managed to overclock Nvidia's AD102 GPU on Asus's upcoming ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card to nearly 4.0 GHz — 3,945 MHz to be more exact — without modifying the card. With liquid nitrogen cooling, the board could pass the GPUPi 32B 3.3 test and even set the world's record in this benchmark.

By using liquid nitrogen cooler on the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 card (which has all chances to lead the best graphics cards list) that has been architected for overclocking, Splave managed to push the AD102 graphics processor to an unprecedented 3,945 MHz. He did not modify the card, just replaced the stock all-on-one liquid cooling system with the Kingpin Cooling TEK-9 Icon Extreme GPU pot for LN2 and attached three heaters and three ElmorLabs HOT300 heater controllers. All the tweaking and overclocking were then performed using BIOS settings and OC software.

The GPU running at 3,945 MHz calculated Pi to 32,000,000,000 digits in 46.077 seconds, which is a world record, according to Splave. GPUPi is certainly not a graphics workload, so it remains to be seen how high the ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 can push the GPU in actual games, but getting very close to the 4.0 GHz GPU clock milestone is important. To date, 3,825 MHz is AD102's record for 3D workloads.

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This is not the first time Nvidia's AD102 GPU has been overclocked significantly higher than its recommended 2,520 MHz boost clock, without voltmodding the card itself. Perhaps the Asus ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card is a device that does not need voltmodding? It uses a highly-custom printed circuit board (PCB) with a meticulously designed voltage regulating module (VRM) that can deliver up to 600W of very clean power (the maximum one can get from one 12VHPWR connector) to the GPU and memory, which is vital for a successful overclock.

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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

2 Comments Comment from the forums

Vanderlindemedia

I think overclocking is becoming dead at this point. If you don't qualify in having either LN2, Cascade or Subzero cooling, your stuck with marginal clock increases. And since GPU/CPU makers figure out ways to extract the best possible out of a peace of silicon, they taken quite the fun out of it.
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KnightSlash

Vanderlindemedia said:
I think overclocking is becoming dead at this point. If you don't qualify in having either LN2, Cascade or Subzero cooling, your stuck with marginal clock increases. And since GPU/CPU makers figure out ways to extract the best possible out of a peace of silicon, they taken quite the fun out of it.
At least on the GPU side, I would absolutely agree with you, most get less than 10% higher scores. But even modern CPUs can be overclocked a significant amount - for example, my 12600K with a 30 dollar CPU cooler easily overclocked to around 20% better XTU 2 scores, albeit with a little excessive noise. But even staying under 70C I got about 12% better scores, easily. Many others have gotten really good results like that, too, it's not just me. Ryzen with undervolt and overclock sees benefits too.
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