Overclocked RTX 3080 Hits 2.34 GHz, a New World Record

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition

Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)

The GeForce RTX 3080, which is the current performance king of graphics cards, is also a stud in overclocking. The Ampere-powered graphics card (via Wccftech) has set new world recorlds in 3DMark's Time Spy and Port Royal benchmark.

Brazilian overclocking legend Ronaldo "Rbuass" Buassali pushed his Galax GeForce RTX 3080 SG to 2,340 MHz to secure the first place on the Port Royal leaderboard. Time Spy is a bit more demanding so the avid overclocker dropped the GPU core clock to 2,130 MHz. Nevertheless, it was fast enough to allow Buassali to set a new world record in Time Spy as well. Interestingly, the GeForce RTX 3080's memory remained untouched in both runs so when Buassali gets around to overclocking it, the scores should improve.

Despite the fact that the GeForce RTX 3080 went on sale yesterday, some manufacturers still haven't updated the product pages for their flagship models. With the information that we have so far, the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G appears to be the fastest custom GeForce RTX 3080 on the market so far with a boost clock that tops out at 1,815 MHz. So, Buassali's overclocked GeForce RTX 3080 was running up to 28.9% faster than MSI's over-engineered model. However, the overclocker was likely using exotic cooling, such as liquid nitrogen to keep his graphics card's temperature under check.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Graphics CardBase Clock (MHz)Boost Clock (MHz)
MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio 10G?1,815
Galax GeForce RTX 3080 EX?1,755
EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 XC3 Ultra Gaming?1,755
Asus ROG Strix GeForce RTX 30801,4401,740
Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition1,4401,710

The GeForce RTX 3080 has had a rocky start. The graphics card is admittedly one of Nvidia's best in the last couple of years, but its short supply at retailers has enraged many potential buyers. Furthermore, scalpers are profiting off of the situation and flipping the GeForce RTX 3080 on eBay for obnoxious prices. A recent report exposes a bot company that has helped scalpers rack up enormous amounts of GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. One alleged scalper picked up as many as 42 units from Nvidia's online store. The chipmaker has pledged to review orders manually to look for any foul play and hopefully, puts the units back on sale.

Ampere's limited availability and the topic of scalpers will prove to be annoying problems for legit customers. The GeForce RTX 3090 lands on September 24 and the GeForce RTX 3070 on October 15. We'll probably see the same stiuation play out again. The panorama doesn't look favorable at all as Ampere's supply could be very scarce until next year.

Zhiye Liu
RAM Reviewer and News Editor

Zhiye Liu is a Freelance News Writer at Tom’s Hardware US. Although he loves everything that’s hardware, he has a soft spot for CPUs, GPUs, and RAM.