NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Could Be The Fastest “Out-of-the-Box” Clocked GPU Ever Made, Near 2.9 GHz Base Frequency

NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 5090 GPU is rumored to feature a base clock near the 3 GHz mark which would be a massive uplift over the 4090.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 Rumor Reveals Impressive Base Clocks For The Flagship Blackwell Gaming GPU

The latest rumor comes from Chiphell Forum member, Panzerlied, who had previously shared info on the Blackwell “GeForce RTX 50” GPUs. While we still have no official word on the NVIDIA RTX 50 “Blackwell” GPUs besides Jensen Huang saying during a Computex Q&A session that the next-gen 50-series is “something” and that he can’t wait to talk about it later.

So according to the newest rumor, it looks like the flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU will be an utter beast. It is stated that the base clock speed of the graphics card will be set at around 2.9 GHz, almost hitting the 3 GHz barrier. For comparison, the current flagship, the GeForce RTX 4090, has a base clock speed of 2235 MHz so that’s a 30% improvement in the base clock alone.

There’s no mention of the boost clock but knowing how previous GPUs worked, we can see it roaming above the 3 GHz clock with ease if the base clock mentioned here is true. The RTX 4090, despite having a boost clock of 2520 MHz (reference, would easily run around 2.8-2.9 GHz out of the box and some models even hit 3 GHz under the right thermal/power conditions. Well, that’s about it as far as the rumor goes.

• GeForce RTX 5090 (Rumor) – 448-bit (512-bit full chip) / ~2900 MHz Base Clock / 14 GDDR7 Modules (16 Full) / 28 GB VRAM
• GeForce RTX 4090 (Official) – 384-bit (384-bit full chip) / 2235 MHz Base Clock /  12 GDDR6X Modules (12 Full) 24 GB VRAM

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 is expected to feature the Blackwell GB202 GPU. Although the full chip features a 192 SM and 512-bit design, the RTX 5090 is expected to be a slightly cut-down die with a 448-bit bus interface and 28 GB of GDDR7 memory. It will be really interesting to see what NVIDIA churns up and a lot of these rumored configurations may be just test units that are far from the real specs that we will see on the retail graphics cards.

The GeForce RTX 5090 is expected to launch sometime later this year along with the RTX 5080 though there are reports that the GPU family may be moved to an early 2025 launch. It will truly be a missed opportunity for GPU makers if they ship their high-end lineups next year since both Intel and AMD will be launching their next-gen platforms in the second half of this year bringing more performance to the high-end desktop PC space.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 “Blackwell” GPU Lineup (Preliminary) Specs: