Overclocking MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GAMING X TRIO
Default GPU Frequency
With both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, the GPU frequency is dynamic. NVIDIA has GPU Boost, and AMD has its Game Clock and Boost Clock quoted frequencies. Typically, GPUs today can exceed the “Boost Clock” dynamically. We need to find out what the GPU frequency is while gaming. To do this we will record the GPU clock frequency over time while playing a game. We use Cyberpunk 2077 for this with a very long manual run-through at “Ultra” settings recording GPU-Z sensor data.
The MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GAMING X TRIO has a factory overclocked GPU Boost of 2595MHz. In the graph above we can see that the clock speed is running faster than the GPU Boost, NVIDIA GPU Boost is dynamically clocking the clock speed upwards beyond the rated speed. The clock speed started out at 2760MHz but averaged primarily around 2745MHz while gaming. The clock speed was also not consistent, it did fluctuate a bit dynamically as you can see. This behavior differs from the Founders Edition which was consistent and solidly delivered a GPU Boost of 2775MHz. Therefore, even though this card has a factory overclock, in actual gameplay its overall GPU Boost is slightly less than the Founders Edition specifically a 30MHz difference. It’s not enough though to make a gameplay difference. We tried both the SILENT and GAMING BIOS modes and had exactly the same behavior.
Overclocked
To overclock the MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GAMING X TRIO, we are using the manufacturer-provided overclocking software which in this case is MSI Afterburner. This is our highest stable overclock shown below.
The first thing to note is that we were able to increase the Power Limit by +15% up to 115% from the default 100%. This provided a bit of power headroom for overclocking. In addition, we set the fans to 100% to ensure the highest overclock. Our final stable overclock ended up being +200 on the Core Clock and the Memory Clock at +1800. This brings the rated GPU Boost up to 2795MHz. This brings the memory up to a very high 26GHz from the default 22.4GHz, bringing the memory bandwidth up to 832GB/s versus the default 716.8GB/s.
Overclocking the core was a lot of fun because we were chasing that 3GHz mark, and we came very close. In fact, we did manage to exceed 3GHz just slightly at +250 Core Clock briefly. We actually got 3015MHz briefly, but it did end up locking up. While we could not sustain 3GHz on the video card, our final result is still very close as you will see below with the Core Clock at +200.
With our final stable overclock of +200 on the Core Clock and +15% power, this resulted in a solid consistent line at 2970MHz while gaming! That is nearly 3GHz, it’s so close. What’s important about this overclock is how much more stable it is over the default behavior. This is a solid consistent line, there are no dynamics to the clock frequency, it’s solid 2970MHz performance. This is also with the memory running at its overclock of 26GHz as well, which is all around very impressive. At 2970MHz versus the default 2745MHz, we are getting an 8% GPU clock speed increase, or 225MHz. Our final overclock is 2970MHz/26GHz (GPU/Mem).