ASUS's 800W XOC BIOS, designed for the ROG Matrix RTX 5090, has been flashed on several custom designs from other AICs.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs From Several AICs receive Big Clock Boost Thanks To ASUS's 800W XOC BIOS for ROG Matrix
What was only possible previously through shunt mods, which require hardware changes to the PCB, is not achievable with ASUS's 800W XOC BIOS, designed for the ROG Matrix RTX 5090 GPU.
Unveiled back in August, the ASUS ROG Matrix GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card is a one-of-a-kind graphics card, featuring the iconic Matrix theme with a quad-fan solution. The graphics card features a custom & high-end PCB design, but the biggest thing about the graphics card was its 800W XOC BIOS, enabling up to 323 MHz clock boost over the stock speeds.
While the graphics card has hit retail shelves for a whopping $4000 US price tag, users who own a non-ROG Matrix RTX 5090 GPU are also able to flash their cards with the same 800W XOC BIOS and reap the benefits of the higher power limit.
At Overclock.net Forums, several users have managed to successfully flash their NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs from AIBs such as Gigabyte, PNY, and MSI with the 800W XOC BIOS successfully. One user managed to flash his AORUS GeForce RTX 5090 Xtreme Waterforce WB graphics, while others got it to work on the Gigabyte Master RTX 5090, Palit RTX 5090, MSI RTX 5090 Ventus, and even PNY's RTX 5090 ARGB.
Other users who own different variants of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 custom graphics cards weren't able to flash the firmware successfully or get it to work. Models such as the ASUS Astral Air/LC, ASUS TUF, MSI SUPRIM Liquid, and a few others.
Image Source: Overclock.net (Hairy MacChoir)
It is likely that the Matrix 800W XOC BIOS not working on all 5090s might be due to the Matrix's fan-channels, which include three fan headers. Cards equipped with a triple fan header configuration seem to work fine, and those without don't work.
Matrix BIOS isn’t failing on the Astral because of some mystical money grab conspiracy, it’s failing for a very simple, physical reason: Astral only has two fan headers, while the Matrix PCB is wired for three. Asus intentionally split the center and rear fans into separate headers starting with the Astral White, and that wasn’t arbitrary. They clearly did it to address the widespread complaints about aggressive fan noise.
For what it’s worth, a colleague of mine is running a Matrix BIOS on his Astral White 5090 without a single hiccup. And that lines up with what we’ve seen across the board: any card equipped with three fan headers has no issue running the Matrix BIOS.
The inverse is also true. If the BIOS exposes three fan control channels but the card physically only has two, it just doesn't work. That’s exactly why no other BIOS plays nicely with Astral or TUF cards, except the Gigabyte water BIOSes. Because, those are designed around two or less fan channels.
Same logic explains why the Astral BIOS boots on GB cards but you lose one fan, the BIOS expects three channels, and the hardware simply isn’t there to answer.
One user has shared some performance numbers, and it looks like the new BIOS makes the non-ASUS Matrix RTX 5090s sip much higher power and enables higher clock speeds (+100/200 MHz). This can overburden the 16-pin power connector, which has already been troublesome on the RTX 5090 & RTX 4090 graphics cards.
With that said, users who want to try the 800W XOC BIOS can grab it from here and use the following guide to update their BIOS. Note that we don't recommend GPU BIOS flashing, especially that from a different manufacturer, as it can cause unwanted behavior and even damage your graphics card.
[How to Flash the BIOS] 1. Boot into Windows. 2. Rename the BIOS file to m.rom to make it easier to type. 3. Open Command Prompt. 4. Run the command: nvflashb m.rom -6 5. After it flashes to 100%, reboot. The existing NVIDIA driver (581.80) will detect the card automatically—no driver reinstall needed.
