CES 2025 set the stage for one of the biggest hardware reveals in recent years – the RTX 5090. Nvidia’s new flagship GPU has been shown off in all its glory, notably with an eye-watering $1,999 price tag. With all that power, it’s clear that the 5090 is built with enthusiasts in mind. CEO Jensen Huang even said that “many of our customers are simply after the absolute best” and that’s reflected in the new flagship.
Regardless of all that, what about pushing it even further? It may seem redundant to do so, but some popular Brazilian modders have been analyzing the 50 series and have their eye on boosting the memory clock speed. With the advent of GDDR7, it looks entirely possible that the 5090 could be boosted to feature double the bandwidth of the RTX 4090.
| Specification | RTX 5090 | RTX 4090 |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | Blackwell GB202-300-A1 | Ada Lovelace AD102-300-A1 |
| SM count | 170 | 128 |
| CUDA cores | 21,760 | 16,384 |
| VRAM | 32GB GDDR7 | 24GB GDDR6X |
| Memory bus | 512-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory clock | 28 Gbps | 21 Gbps |
| Memory bandwidth | 1,792 GB/s | 1,008 GB/s |
| Power connectors | 1 x 16-pin (12V-2×6) | 1 x 16-pin |
| TDP | 575W | 450W |
| Bus interface | PCIe 5.0 x16 | PCIe 4.0 x16 |
Modders might be able to hit 2 TB/s bandwidth on the RTX 5090
Interestingly enough, the RTX 5080 is the model that boasts the fastest memory – up to 32 Gbps modules according to a video posted online by Paulo Gomes. This revelation has opened up the possibility of modding opportunities to apply to the likes of the 5090, 5070 Ti, or 5070.
To put it simply, it could be a matter of soldering faster modules to the card with the potential to upgrade the 5090 from 28 Gbps up to 32 Gbps. If possible, this would push the 2 TB/s bandwidth milestone and double that of the 4090.
So far, it looks like Nvidia is the only company that is committing to GDDR7 on its new GPUs. We already know this is the case for the currently announced cards, but we also expect to see it from the upcoming RTX 5060 series. On the flip side, it seems as if AMD’s and Intel’s RDNA 4 and Battlemage cards will stick to GDDR6.