Nvidia's RTX 4080 is now the subject of overclocking experts, with blazingly fast clock speeds achieved by the GPU (having already seen huge overclocks achieved by the RTX 4090, as you may recall- estar).
Tom's Hardware (opens in a new tab) noticed that the Galax OC team was using the company's RTX 4080 SG 1-Click OC graphics card (SG stands for 'Serious Gamer') and managed to boost it to 3.615 GHz for a new record like the fastest 4080 we've ever seen.
That's over 1GHz more than the factory default boost for the SG, which is 2,565GHz by the way, with 1-click overclocking mode, the graphics card is named after the notch up to 2,58GHz to give you an idea of a more typical lightweight overclocker.
Another new record unlocked 🥳! The OC team managed to boost the clock speed of the GeForce RTX™ 4080 16GB SG 1-Click OC up to 3615 MHz, beating the original 1-Click OC clock by 40%⚡! #GALAX #PC #GeForceRTX4080SG #GeForceRTX40series #Overclocking pic.twitter.com/8IVBNG4d9hNovember 29, 2022
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As Galax notes, overclocking to 3,615GHz is actually 40% faster than 1-click overclocking, and that's an impressive achievement.
Unfortunately, no further information about the overclock is shared, although we can safely assume that it used liquid nitrogen cooling (or some other exotic method), since that kind of speed can't be achieved with a conventional cooler.
Analysis: A Truly Impressive Achievement, But It's Unlikely To Move Consumers
The RTX 4080 was criticized by reviewers and gamers alike, due to its flimsy overall value proposition – Nvidia has certainly pushed the price to the max with this GPU. The reality is that with the price of the RTX 4080, in some cases third-party custom cards cost almost as much as the RTX 4090, which is a considerably faster graphics card (and a ridiculous situation, of course).
Given that, you might not want to hear about the RTX 4080 hitting record speeds, or you might not care much, and we understand where you're coming from. But it's still interesting to see how far these Lovelace GPUs can be pushed when overclocking, with plenty of headroom available.
The RTX 4090 once hit a supercharged 3,825GHz, but remember this was the "HOF" (Hall Of Fame) edition of the Galax 4090, a card specifically designed to do well with overclocking (an expensive limited-edition proposition for overclockers). experts, essentially).
The RTX 4080 card used here is just a bare-bones Galax card aimed at consumers, so to see it clocking in at only 200 MHz less than the seriously custom HOF version of the 4090 is actually very impressive. This indicates that the GPU has some robust overclocking abilities, but it's unlikely to convince potential RTX 4080 buyers to take the plunge, mind you; instead, we think a price drop could help doing business there.
If Galax made a HOF version of the RTX 4080, it could obviously go a lot faster, but if that happens, who knows? While HOF variants of the RTX 3080 and 2080 (Super) have been produced by Galax, given the situation with the 4080 and its current popularity, or lack thereof, we don't expect it to arrive in the near future, shall we say: the Over Here .
The best recent news we've heard about the RTX 4080, quite frankly, is how the graphics card teaches scalpers a well-deserved lesson.
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