Nvidia’s RTX 50 series is imminent – both the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 will be available for purchase on January 30th, and people are already starting to camp outside Micro Center for them. For those in the UK, Scan will be hosting an exclusive event for the launch of the new GPUs, though they won’t be selling any Founders Edition cards.

RTX 5090 reviews went live late last week and it’s clear that Nvidia won’t have any close competition. However, many people have been noting that the generational leap – as far as rasterization goes – isn’t massively impressive. Even still, the 5090 is a powerhouse and a new overclocking video showcases just that, by easily beating the former 4090 OC world record.

RTX 5090 overclocked beats the 4090 and current world record

Now that hardware reviewers have their hands on the RTX 5090, they’ve been busy testing it in gaming, content creation, and synthetic benchmarks. The new flagship GPU is built with high-end performance in mind; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently said that “many of our customers are simply after the absolute best” and that’s what the 5090 aims to deliver against its high $1,999 price tag.

But, why not push it further? Well, that’s what popular YouTube JayzTwoCents has done, and he has recorded a new overclocking world record, beating the 4090 “by a lot”. It also beats the current world record, dual RTX 3090 Ti cards linked with Nvidia’s now-discontinued SLI technology. That’s without crazy amounts of additional cooling, too.

JayzTwoCents admits that he’s not an overclocking professional, but “it’s fun to be on the top of the leaderboard for a little while” before the pros really push the 5090 to its limit (likely with help from some liquid nitrogen cooling). In addition to synthetic benchmarks, the median uplift “across all games” tested was 5% – gaining 25W, ~8% clock speed, and 4% additional power. With that in mind, he notes that “there’s no reason to really overclock it because you’re not going to notice a 5% uplift in performance”. What you will notice, however, is high temps and louder operation.

Considering the 5090 has a high 575W TDP – 125W more than the RTX 4090 – it’s safe to say that you’re going to be using a ton of power when overclocking it. In fact, we imagine that many people might opt to undervolt/underclock the 5090 for the very same reason. The card is powerful enough for pretty much any game you throw at it, though Black Myth: Wukong’s Cinematic settings remain a struggle to run smoothly.

About the Author

Jack Goodall

At PC Guide, Jack is mostly responsible for reporting on hardware deals. He also specializes in monitors, TVs, and headsets and can be found putting his findings together in a review or best-of guide.