The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition can be overclocked beyond the 3GHz mark. Well-known overclocker Kingpin proved that the card can clock up to 3.024GHz with big help courtesy of LN2 cooling and a bit of tweaks on the printed circuit board (PCB).
Kingpin's test showed that the GPU frequency of 3.012GHz squeezed earlier from a GTX 1060 HOF can surpassed. And the GTX 1080 Ti FE indeed exceeded all expectations by clocking "a mind-blowing 3024MHz," WCCFTech reported. The stress test returned "a rated pixel fillrate throughput of 229.3 GPixel/s and Texture fillrate throughput 583.7 GTexel/s," the report added.
The Kingpin test made GPU history and there was no hint of instability or overheating, thanks to the use of LN2 cooling. As noted by PC Gamer in a related report, the overclocker had earlier achieved an overclocked speed of 2.5GHz using the same NVIDIA GeForce card.
The extra 500MHz of mileage was gained partly due to LN2 cooling, and is not possible with both air and water cooling. According to PC Gamer, with air cooling the most overclock speed that one can get is around 2.5GHz and with water cooling, clocking near to 3.0GHz is just next to impossible.
But of course, the GTX 1080 Ti FE clocking beyond 3GHz was also made possible by performing some modifications on the PCB. "Kingpin also used some custom modding on the PCB to bypass voltage locks. This means that the card was modified and was made to hit the frequency," WCCFTech reported.
The modification done and the overclocking success only confirmed that NVIDIA made use of premium PCB on the GTX 1080 Ti FE. The card variant benefitted from the use of 14 Dual-FETs design on the PCB, which in turn translated to enhanced performance and higher overclocking potential without compromising on efficiency and stability, the report added.
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Founders Edition overclocked, breaching the 3.0GHz mark and shattering previous records could trigger a mad rush from PC gaming enthusiasts to grab the GPU card. But as of writing, the $699 GTX 1080 Ti FE is listed as out of stock, WCCFTech said.