Nvidia RTX 4080 GPU hits a huge 3.6GHz overclock – but does anyone care?

Nvidia’s RTX 4080 is now the focus of overclocking experts, with seriously high clock speeds achieved by the GPU (having already seen massive overclocking with the RTX 4090, as you may recall).

Tom’s hardware (opens in new tab) saw the Galax OC team use the company’s proprietary RTX 4080 SG 1-Click OC graphics card (the SG stands for ‘Serious Gamer’) and managed to boost it to 3.615 GHz for a new record as the fastest 4080 that we have seen.

That’s over 1 GHz higher than the standard factory boost for the SG which is 2.565 GHz by the way with the 1 click overclock mode the graphics card is named after notching it down to 2.58 GHz to give you an idea of ​​a more typical light overclocking.

As Galax points out, the 3.615 GHz overclock is actually 40% faster than the 1-click overclock, and it’s an impressive feat.

Unfortunately, no other information is shared about the overclocking, although we can safely assume it used liquid nitrogen cooling (or some other exotic method), as these kind of speeds can’t be achieved with a conventional cooler.

Analysis: A seriously impressive feat, but unlikely to move consumers

The RTX 4080 was launched to put off reviewers and gamers alike, due to its shaky overall value proposition – Nvidia certainly pushed the price tag up as hard as it could with this GPU. The reality is that with the price of the RTX 4080, in some cases custom third-party boards cost almost as much as the RTX 4090 – which is a significantly faster graphics card (and certainly a ridiculous situation).

Given that, you may not want to hear about the RTX 4080 hitting record speeds, or care about it at all, and we understand where you’re coming from. But it’s still interesting to see how far these Lovelace GPUs can be pushed when overclocked, with plenty of headroom available.

The RTX 4090 has previously reached a boost speed of 3.825 GHz, but remember that this was the ‘HOF’ (Hall Of Fame) edition of the Galax 4090, a board specifically designed to do well with overclocking (a expensive limited edition proposition for expert overclockers, actually).

The RTX 4080 card used here is just a regular Galax board aimed at consumers, so it’s actually quite impressive to see it reach just 200MHz for the seriously modified HOF version of the 4090. It points out that the GPU has some solid overclocking chops, but that probably won’t convince would-be RTX 4080 buyers to take the plunge, mind you – instead, we think a drop in price could help do the trick there.

Of course, if Galax made a HOF version of the RTX 4080 it could go a lot faster, but whether that will happen, who knows? While HOF variants of the RTX 3080 and 2080 (Super) were produced by Galax, given the situation with the 4080 and its current popularity – or lack thereof – we don’t foresee one arriving in the near future, let’s just say in this way.

The best recent news we’ve heard about the RTX 4080 is honestly the way the graphics card teaches scalpers a well-deserved lesson.