Nvidia’s GTX 1080 Ti has reigned as the overclocking king for the past four years with its clock speed ramped up from 1,480MHz to 3,024MHz, but now AMD’s best graphics card has swooped in to steal the crown, with the RX 6900 XT breaking the world record for highest clock speeds.
Youtuber Der8auer pushed the card with liquid nitrogen cooling from its stock frequency of 1,825MHz all the way up to a record high of 3,225MHz. While other RX 6800 XT and RX 6900 XT models are limited to artificial maximum clock speeds of 2,800MHz and 3,000MHz respectively, the Powercolor GPU used contains a pre-binned chip with a 4GHz clock limit.
By simply increasing its voltage, they claim the card could possibly pass the 3.5GHz barrier, too. The Powercolor Liquid Devil Ultimate has its own water block out of the box, which doesn’t hold a candle to liquid nitrogen but can still squeeze a pretty impressive 2889MHz out of the GPU at a temperature of 86 degrees Celcius under full load.
So, when it comes to the GPU overclocking world, AMD’s now the top dog. Nvidia’s RTX 3090, specifically the one from Galax with its own crown and LCD screen, came close with a 3015MHz overclock, but close doesn’t cut it when you’re aiming for a new world record.
The title is just for bragging rights, though, and won’t exactly boost fps in your favourite games. Liquid nitrogen is expensive and isn’t a sustainable method of cooling – in this case the sub-zero temperatures caused the thermal paste to separate after just two hours. Not ideal for PC gaming.