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On September 20, Nvidia made RTX 4090 available to gamers worldwide. Except for the unreasonably high price, all reviews of the GPU have been excellent. The card not only produces fantastic frame rates at 4K, but it can even run select games at 8K/60 fps.
Display manufacturers are still limited to 4K resolution, with no 'cheap' 8K displays in sight, even as the focus of next-generation GPUs switches to high-resolution gaming. Since so few gamers use this resolution, 8K GPU testing is not very popular among reviewers. But this is clearly something that scientists would like to witness.
How well does the RTX 4090 scale at 8K?
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 has finally received reviews, and the card is an incredible beast. We might even claim that high-refresh-rate 4K gaming is now achievable on a consumer GPU for the first time ever. It turns out that 4090's maximum resolution is not 4K; the card is also capable of 8K gaming.
It is important to remember that Nvidia marketed its RTX 3090 GPU as the first 8K-capable gaming GPU in the world, yet even two years later, 8K screen adoption is still relatively low.
The current generation flagship GPU has been put to the test at 8K titles like Forza Horizon 5, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Cyberpunk 2077, to mention a few. It's true that "8K gaming" sounds absurd, and it is. But with such high resolution, we can measure the performance improvement made by Nvidia's flagship ADA Lovelace GPU.
The test bench and test results
The test system contained a 32GB DDR5-6200 memory module, an ASUS ROG Maximus X670E Hero motherboard, and a 16-core Ryzen 9 7950X Zen4 CPU. The games were played on a $3,500 65-inch Samsung Neo QLED QN800B 8K TV.
Performance in Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020)
RTX 4090 was able to produce an astounding 81 frames per second at 8K in Microsoft Flight Simulator with DLSS 3 enabled, High settings, and RT deactivated. Comparatively, the RTX 3090 only managed to get 46 frames per second with DLSS 2.1 and identical visual settings.
Performance in Cyberpunk 2077
The flagship GPU played Cyberpunk 2077 at 65 frames per second with ultra-performance DLSS 3 at 8K and with RT set to Max. Again, with the same settings and DLSS 2.1, the RTX 3090 only managed to get roughly 28 frames per second.
Performance in Forza Horizon 5
In Forza Horizon 5, the 4090 was able to produce 76 frames per second in Extreme settings without the need for picture reconstruction. Once more, the RTX 3090 only managed a significantly lower 35 frames per second.
Performance in Crysis Remastered
RTX 4090 was also able to run Crysis Remastered at the "Can it Run Crysis" preset with ease despite using the highest quality RT and generating 65 frames per second with ultra-performance DLSS turned on. RTX 3090, on the other hand, wasn't a slouch either and delivered 41 frames per second with the same settings.
Final thoughts
It's clear that the 4090 is Nvidia's most powerful GPU to date. The card can run almost anything in 4K at high refresh rates, and with DLSS 3, it can even play some of the most difficult games at 8K/60 fps.
