Another potential layer of GeForce RTX 5090 has been pulled back via a new leak, revealing its base clock speed. While everyone expects the next Nvidia flagship graphics card to be fast, it apparently comes within spitting distance of 3GHz. If true, this would make for a uplift of similar significance to the jump between GeForce RTX 3090 and 4090.
Presumed to be the best graphics card in the Nvidia RTX 50 series lineup, GeForce RTX 5090 is shaping up to be an absolute monster based on leaks and rumours. We’ve seen plenty of claims about the technical makeup of its GPU, as well as VRAM capacity, but this is the first inkling we’ve had on clock speeds. Now, with this piece of the pixel pusher puzzle to hand, the final picture of this Blackwell beast is looking all the more impressive.
This alleged clock speed comes from panzerlied, who’s previously leaked information on Nvidia graphics cards. In a post on Chiphell forums, they share that “the base frequency of the 5090 is almost 2.9G[Hz].”
Sure as panzerlied appears in their claim, they stop short of providing an exact clock speed figure. However, given their wording, we expect RTX 5090 frequencies to fall somewhere between 2.80-2.89GHz. If true, this would make for a mighty increase compared to GeForce RTX 4090.
For context, stock base clocks for GeForce RTX 4090 operate at 2,235MHz (2.24GHz). So, we could be looking at a 600MHz~ generational increase. This would be a large bump, but not quite as huge as the 840MHz difference we got moving from GeForce RTX 3090’s 1,395MHz clock.
Presumably, RTX 5090 will follow in the footsteps of its predecessors and boast a similar difference between boost and base clocks. With this in mind, we could be looking at boost clocks over 3,000MHz (3.0GHz).
As a reminder, flagship graphics cards like RTX 5090 tend to have lower base clocks than their lower-spec siblings. For example, GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super has higher frequencies than GeForce RTX 4090. In simple terms, this is because of the relative density of cores in their GPU, where more cores equals lower frequency and vice versa.
Absorbing this information alongside leaks that RTX 5090 will have 28GB of GDDR7 VRAM in addition to a possible 192 SMs, it’s hard not to get excited about Nvidia’s next flagship. As ever, though, keep that salt shaker handy right up until reviews drop.
