Flashing RTX 5090 With Asus 1,000W BIOS Delivers Additional Gains, But at Big Power Cost
It turns out the 1,000W special BIOS used for the ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 also works on other RTX 5090 GPUs, though the results aren't necessarily what one would expect. In one instance, YouTuber JayzTwoCents applied the BIOS to a Gigabyte RTX 5090 Aorus Master and found it did unlock an additional 10% performance when running at 900W, but oddly, one of the fans abruptly stopped working.
The RTX 5090 is a seriously powerful card, but it requires a lot of power. Even in its reference design form at stock clocks, it can still demand as much as 575W, and Nvidia recommends a minimum 950W PSU to cover transient power spikes and other demanding components. But there are some RTX 5090s out there with special BIOS and power configurations that allow them to draw much more than that.
It turns out that those cards aren't unique, which means others can enjoy the gains, too—for a price.
In his video, JayzTwoCents managed to get the Asus 1,000W BIOS working on a Zotac RTX 5090 and a Gigabyte version of the card. It was that latter card that seemed to work best with the new BIOS, managing a 10.3% increase in performance in the Port Royal benchmark after a 350 MHz overclock on the core and a near 4 GHz overclock on the memory. It did, however, demand over 33% more power for that achievement, pulling close to 1,000W at its peak.
This was enough to secure JayzTwoCents a top-100 World Record with the card, but not enough to see it pull ahead of the RTX 5090Ds that have dominated the top of the charts in recent months (alongside the RTX Pro 6000 ). For reference, JayzTwoCents managed a score of 43,315 in the benchmark with the Gigabyte card custom cooled, heavily overclocked, and with its BIOS modded. The number one Port Royal score from famed overclocking team OGS managed a score of 47,607 with a custom 5090D.
All that extra power resulted in a lot of extra heat, too, so JayzTwoCents had to get creative to keep the system cool. After one of the fans failed with the new BIOS, he installed a new fan with higher performance and connected a vented air conditioning unit to the card, giving it a steady stream of cold air.
