Rumor has it that Nvidia’s next-gen flagship, the RTX 5090, which succeeds the RTX 4090, could hit almost 2.9GHz base clock.
A year ago, news came out that Nvidia GeForce RTX 5000 graphics cards are unlikely to release before 2025.
This was later brushed aside when the board partners claimed that both RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 are in fact releasing this year itself.
Meanwhile, some specs of the GPU likely to power the RTX 5090 got leaked. Suggesting a 40% increase in the CUDA count.
Then even more rumors came out that the GPU powering RTX 5090 will use a massive 512-bit memory bus.
Then recently, VideoCardz reported that as per a known leaker panzerlied, Nvidia is unlikely to use a full 512-bit memory interface for the RTX 5090. Instead, it will use a cut-down 448-bit memory bus, which allows just 28GB of VRAM.
Now after leaks of likely release dates, CUDA counts, memory bus and VRAM capacity, we now have a rumor suggesting the clock speeds for the RTX 5090.
RTX 5090 Base Clock
VideoCardz reports that panzerlied has again leaked more information (translated) about the Nvidia RTX 5090 graphics card.
In a post, panzerlied reveals that Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 is likely to hit almost 2.9GHz of base clock. Which is more than 600MHz higher than the RTX 4090 which comes at a base clock of 2.23GHz.
What’s interesting is that RTX 4090 itself hits max 2.52GHz in boost speed. So not only the RTX 5090’s base speed is going to be faster than the RTX 4090’s boost speed, the RTX 5090’s boost speed is going to surpass 3.0GHz.
Specs Table
Just to give the readers some idea, here’s the specs table comparing RTX 4090 & RTX 5090.
| Specs | RTX 4090 | RTX 5090* |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | AD102 | GB202 |
| CUDA Cores | 16,384 | 24,576 |
| Base Clock | 2.23GHz | <2.9GHz |
| Boost Clock | 2.52GHz | >3.0GHz? |
| Memory Bus | 384-bit | 448-bit |
| VRAM Type | GDDR6X | GDDR7 |
| VRAM Capacity | 24GB | 28GB |
| VRAM Speed | 21Gbps | 28Gbps |
| Release Date | Oct 12th, 2022 | December 2024? |
Conclusion
There’s a question about how Nvidia has managed to increase the clocks so much. @kopite7kimi says that the RTX 5090 uses the same 4N (5nm) process node as the RTX 4090. So process node is not receiving any major upgrades.
There’s a possibility that Nvidia has improved the architecture further. That could be a good reason behind the clock speed increase.
It must be mentioned that finally these are just rumors and should be counted as just rumors.
Either way, we are likely to see either an announcement or a release for the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 in the later part of the year. Meanwhile, expect more leaks and also changes in some specs.
