ASUS has increased the headroom available for juicing up its top-end RTX 5080 graphics card, and by a large amount of wattage, although there are very much diminishing returns in terms of overclocking potential when it comes to flooding the GPU with power like this.
The board in question is the ROG Astral RTX 5080, and a new BIOS from ASUS has upped the ceiling for the TGP to 450W. Previously, it was 400W, so this is a jump of 12.5%, as highlighted by Tech Powerup (via VideoCardz).
However, if you're expecting to get 10% faster frame rates by pushing the power limit of the ROG Astral to 450W, then don't be under any illusions - that's not going to happen.
As Tech Powerup shows, another RTX 5080 graphics card that can be pushed to 450W is the GIGABYTE Gaming model. When cranked up from the 360W default power limit, that GIGABYTE model only gets an unimpressive 1.8% extra FPS for the 90W of extra expenditure.
In short, you are getting a couple more frames, but for the heat, noise, and stress on the GPU, it's not really worth bothering.
Still, if you really are into maximizing your FPS in a no-holds-barred manner, you've now got the option to turn up the ROG Astral RTX 5080 to 11 (er, we mean up to 450W).
In practice, many gamers undervolt their RTX 5080 slightly, to get the GPU running more smoothly and quietly - and perhaps playing nicer with a PSU that's borderline for capacity in terms of running their gaming rig - without much loss of FPS at all.
Read more: The priciest consumer GPU ever? Custom ASUS RTX 5090 is decked out in gold and signed by Jensen
