Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Review: The Next Level In Graphics Performance

Digital Foundry : Nvidia's RTX 4090 delivers a new level in graphics performance, to the point where there's an argument that in many/most gaming scenarios, you'll be hitting CPU limits - often, even at 4K resolution. In this review, we go into depth on what the RTX 4090 can deliver in the most punishing gaming graphics workloads, we examine its power consumption and efficiency, we look at image reconstruction, rasterisation and DLSS 3. Just how powerful is the RTX 4090? Find out here.

[phoenixwing]

Thing is an inefficient space heater that will trip your breaker. Kidding of course but it's power wattage is ridiculous

[Fishy Fingers]

"Its efficiency is significantly better than last gen"

Joules per frame. Yeah, the numbers are ridiculous but so is the performance.

[phoenixwing]

Unless power bills go down I'm bowing out at the ps5 Gen. Just too much of an energy bill. Just going to keep my ps5 and maybe get a 3000 series card when they're cheaper. Still have my 2070 super rtx

[Fishy Fingers]

For sure, I'm not saying its a good thing or anything. Just if youre buying one of these and have the pc and screen to make the most of it youre probably not fussed.

[phoenixwing]

Yeah I get what your saying a performance enthusiast would buy this day 1

[CrimsonIdol]

@Fishy Fingers. I mean, I would have considered it if it fit within the still-kinda-crazy 350w power window that the last gen 3080s and 3090s did (yeah I know the Ti versions bumped up a fair bit more). I've got a 4K 144Hz monitor.

But everyone's got their limits, their red lines. Everyone will need a new PSU to go with it, and you won't want to cheap out on it. You've got electricity bills to pay. The people who can justify spending this kind of money on a GPU isn't like a rich/not rich switch, you are invariably pricing more people in or out of the market with each additional dollar cost.

Any efficiency gains have been completely mitigated by using that to pump at higher clocks for maximum frames. As technically correct as it is to say it's more efficient at the end of the day it's still drawing 500 watts while you're playing a video game compared to about half that playing the same game with a top of the line card from a from a couple generations ago.

I actually wonder how viable it might be to underclock these babies to sacrifice some of the performance to fit it within a less insane power budget. It's clearly got the performance to spare tbh.

[--Onilink--]

Well, the founders edition is exactly the same as it was for the 3090ti. So while not exactly a small number, its still only 450w and you can technically run it with an 850w PSU (or 1000w more realistically depending on what else you are running).

The board partners are the ones that have gone a bit too crazy, both in size and power requirements

[CrimsonIdol]

The FE card draws 500w when fully GPU limited. And if you overclock the FE card that goes up closer to 670w. So it's not just the board partners going crazy

[--Onilink--]

@CrimsonIdol

I havent seen a single review mentioning anything close to 500w, let alone 670w.

If anything, there seemed to be plenty of scenarios where it was actually drawing even less power than the 3090ti at the same settings

[Name Last Name]

The 3080 already tripped my living room breakers and I had to move my setup to my bedroom. This thing would blow up my apartment.

[DashMad]

good space heater consume 1500w lmao if it's consume less than that it's a steal

[Vithar]

next level pricing too, need to mortage the house

[lonewolf10]

Sell more like, couldn't afford a mortgage after this.

[mastershredder]

Welcome to the Next level in electric bills.

[Father__Merrin]

450w tdp £1700 and the result.... Battlefield 2042 will look and play the same compared to a 2080ti

Can't imagine someone buys one for just gaming

[ChubbyBlade]

Higher framerates do not play the same as lower ones.

[badz149]

it's the same if you only have a 60Hz display though

[lonewolf10]

So a 2080Ti is all a gamer will ever need as only Battlefield 2042 is available ever , right.

Can't imagine someone buys one for just gaming

My god.

[StarkR3ality]

seeing the majority of games at ultra running at 150 - 300fps (other than cyberpunk) is nice but there's no need really, unless you're rich and have the display to take advantage. Personally think 60fps is perfectly fine, anything over 120fps is overkill.

[ChubbyBlade]

You’re forgetting upcoming titles.

[StarkR3ality]

Honestly by the time games are optimised to take advantage of the 4090, the 6090 will be out :L

The only games that push the 3090 hard now are unoptimised games like cyberpunk and the like. Games are built for console first, PC second most of the time, which is a hinderence to people who have bad ass GPU's

[JL2930]

Flush it.

[ChubbyBlade]

Nearly 100% improvement over the previous 90 cards is super impressive. That’s a huge jump. I wouldn’t buy one but we will be getting them for the office which will be great for our performance.

[TheLigX]

Nvidia needs some better competition. I hope intel tears the market up to take away some of their crazy pricing power.

[JsonHenry]

Everyone crying about energy bills. If you can afford one I'm betting you don't care that your electric bill goes up a few bucks a month. It is a bit of a steep increase in power but overall efficiency is up over last generation and the perfomance at 4k/8k is a vastly improved over the 30 series flagship offering.

[GoodGuy09]

Dlss3 seems insane....stupid it's locked behind buying a new very expensive card though smh.

[DivineHand125]

What I don't understand is that reviewers were saying that gamers shouldn't buy the 3090 but for some reason I don't hear the same about the 4090. This might be why NVIDIA launched the 4090 first.

[Binarycode]

I should think so, 450watts.

$1600,lol that's 4 digital ps5's.

That's why you should never attack consoles with PC's.

it's all about cost.

Imagine a console, A whole console,lol. Costing $1600. Nobody would buy it regardless of the power.

Don't get me wrong Nvidia produce quality products and are always market leaders, But if I were anyone thinking about buying said monster. I would wait first and see what AMD has coming this Novemeber.

[anast]

Good thing it's affordable...