You might be finding it tricky to get a hold of Nvidia’s new GeForce RTX 3080, but those lucky enough to have the GPU will be pleased to know it can be heavily overclocked.
A Galax RTX 3080 SG was overclocked to a hefty 2,340MHz, which is a big jump on the 1,710MHz boost clock speed the card comes with as standard. Wccftech reported that the overclock was carried out by Ronaldo Buassali, who happens to be Galax’s very own overclocker.
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When the overclocked RTX 3080 was given 3DMark’s Port Royal benchmark to take on, it delivered a score of 13,488. And in 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, it scored 10,595, breaking records and grabbing it the top spot for GPU performance in the benchmark; interestingly it did this only running at 2,310MHz so there could be headroom for even more performance.
Speaking of which, the Galax RTX 3080 SG only had its GPU clock speed overclocked. Buassali didn't touch the video memory clock or voltage controls. As such, there's even more potential for more power to be extracted out of the graphics card.
In real-world terms, overclocking GPUs and CPUs can result in a jump in frames per second in games. But even though benchmark figures are impressive, the actual benefit to gaming can sometimes be negligible, especially as there could be few games that can push the performance of new graphics cards.
However, there are plenty of PC enthusiasts who love to overclock things for the sheer joy of pushing their hardware to the max. And the RTX 3080 has plenty of appeal for that crowd.
Furthermore, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 is coming out in a few days on September 24, promising to bring in huge amounts of graphics power for $1,499. But if an overclocked RTX 3080 can snap at its heels, then the $699 graphics card could be even more appealing — and unfortunately harder to get.
