NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU hits a staggering 3.8GHz overclock in a 3D benchmark

NVIDIA's Lovelace flagship GPU has been spotted with a massive overclock applied, and not for the first time - however, it is the first time that such a significant ramping up of boost speed has been seen while running a 3D application.

The RTX 4090 in question was a Colorful model, its iGame LAB flagship card, which was overclocked to 3.825GHz by expert overclocker 'CENS' using liquid nitrogen cooling.

The RTX 4090 was run at that speed in the Unigine Superposition benchmark, which may not be a gaming test, but it is a full 3D test that pushes the GPU as a result. When running with such high clocks, that's obviously going to add quite some strain. What's more, the benchmark was undertaken at 8K resolution to make for a steep hill to climb.

As VideoCardz, which spotted this, points out, this contrasts with a previous overclock of an RTX 4090 - a Galax HOF model - where 3.825GHz was achieved, but with GPUPI, a less intensive test (calculating Pi).

With this latest overclock, CENS took the top spot in the Unigine Superposition (8K) results chart, scoring 18,701.

That beat the old record by some distance, which was held by Team OGS, who overclocked a Galax RTX 4090 to 3.66GHz, managing to attain a score of 18,145. So CENS was 3% faster than the previous chart-topping result.

For those interested in the rig used with the Colorful RTX 4090, it paired the GPU with an Intel Core i9-13900K processor, in an EVGA Z790 Dark Kingpin motherboard. The operating system was Windows 11.

Note that the Colorful iGame LAB RTX 4090 is a limited edition graphics card specifically designed for overclockers. Only a few hundred were produced, as far as we're aware.