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The RTX 4090 was launched in October 2022 as the best-in-class offering from Nvidia. This graphics card is the successor to the RTX 3090 Ti. Like the last-gen 90-class offerings, the 4090 is a big ferocious GPU (BFGPU). It comes with a Titan-class performance at an eye-watering price tag of $1,599.
The GPU is quite popular among gamers. According to Newegg's bestseller list, it is the third most-selling graphics card, only behind the RTX 4080 and the 3060 Ti. However, the 4090 is selling nowhere near its MSRP, with even the cheapest models costing over $2,000 on the website.
The card also comes with innovations like DLSS 3 and frame generation. Portal with RTX was recently released as a showcase of what these technologies can achieve. Ray tracing adds new life and overhauls the visuals in old games.
Nvidia sent the RTX 4090 Founder's Edition card and a code for Portal with RTX for review. Thus, we ran the card and the video game through their paces, and in this article, we will share our thoughts on them.
Pre-delivery
The RTX 4090 is Nvidia's flagship option for this generation. This card is a significant step up from its last-gen counterpart, the RTX 3090 Ti. The GPU packs significantly more CUDA and RT cores. This pushes the rasterization and ray-tracing performance of the GPU to new levels.
Nvidia has paired the card with DLSS 3.0, which combines AI frame generation and AI upscaling to achieve performance metrics like never before. The on-paper specs of the GPU have been listed below.
Overall, the RTX 4090's specs hint at its beastly nature.
RTX 4090 and Ada Lovelace architecture
The RTX 40 series is based on the Ada Lovelace architecture. It is built on TSMC's 4nm process node and comes with support for 4th generation Tensor Cores and 3rd generation ray tracing cores.
The new architecture also comes with support for Nvidia's encoder and decoder (NVENC/NVDEC) and support for 8K 10-bit 60 FPS video encoding via AV1 fixed function hardware encoding.
Currently, three chips based on this architecture have been revealed. These include AD102, AD103, and AD104. The RTX 4090 is based on the AD102 graphics card. It is the first Ada Lovelace-based consumer graphics card that launched in the market.
Unboxing experience
The RTX 4090 comes in a huge black box. It features multiple interesting geometrical shapes and arches. Nvidia has spent a lot of time designing the packaging of the GPU.
The box opens up in a classic flip-up manner. Inside, the RTX 4090 is placed in a showpiece manner with meme-inspired velocity marks around it.
Alongside the graphics card, we got some paperwork and the 12 VHPWR cables in the box.
A closer look at the Founder's Edition card
The RTX 40 series Founder's Edition cards have a lot in common with the Ampere variants of the same GPU. However, multiple aspects of the design have been improved to better suit this new generation of video cards that come with a higher power draw and heat output.
Design language
Founder's Edition cards are among the best-looking options to choose from in the market. Like last-gen, these new cards come with a duotone design and a highly functional look.
Unlike most AIB cards, the FE cards use the heatsink fins as a design cue. This makes the card extremely detailed with multiple grooves and ridges running across the surface.
It comes with a total of four video output connections. This includes one HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a.
Overall, the 4090 FE packs a beast of cooler and ample video connections. The card looks sporty when installed in a rig.
Heatsink design and fan placement
The 40 series Founder's Edition comes with two 112mm fans placed on opposite sides of the video card. This layout is similar to the RTX 3090 FE video cards. Both fans draw air into the card and it is exhausted through the sides and the rear.
The card packs a massive heatsink that pushes up its weight to almost five pounds. In our testing, it weighed 2,205 grams (4.86 pounds).
99% of the card can be attributed to the massive heatsink. Initially, Nvidia was planning to push the GPUs higher than what they are currently rated for. Thus, the massive heatsinks were designed. However, the company decided to limit the cards to a much lower power draw and clock speed, but the heatsinks remained unaltered.
Currently, they keep the card unbearably cool. On the default fan curve, the Founder's Edition is very quiet. This makes the FE cards one of the best options to choose from in terms of thermals and acoustics.
Case compatibility issues
The card is wider now. However, it is thicker and shorter. This creates compatibility issues in a bunch of narrow cases.
For instance, I wasn't able to fit the 4090 with the 12VHPWR cable in my XPG Battlecruiser, which ranks among some of the largest cases available.
Even in Lian Li Lancool III, which is arguably one of the largest mid-towers out there, the RTX 4090 FE almost touches the tempered glass side panel.
Test bench
We used the same test setup as in our Ryzen 9 7950X review to test the RTX 4090. The card is set on an open-air bench to help us derive the best-case results.
Productivity performance
We extensively tested the RTX 4090 in multiple productivity and synthetic benchmarks to get an idea of how the card could theoretically perform in video games and professional software.
Synthetic benchmarks
We tested the 4090 in Unigine Superposition and a bunch of UL benchmarks.
In Unigine Superposition, the card hits over 21,000 points in the stock settings. This goes on to show the card's rasterization prowess.
On the UL benchmarks, the results are pretty impressive as well. Time Spy scores came in pretty close to 30,000, and in Port Royal, the GPU hit over 20,000 points in every run.
Productivity benchmarks
In the Blender benchmark, the RTX 4090 scored a massive 12683.239 points in Monster, Junkshopm and Classroom combined. This shows that the card is a rendering behemoth.
In Premiere Pro 4K export times, the RTX 4090 rendered a complex timeline in a record time of 8:03 seconds while rendering using the H.264 codec. H.265 caused a reduction in file size. However, the rendering time shot up to 11:17.
Since this is the first graphics card review on the website, we do not have performance marks from other cards to compare against. Thus, it might be hard to visualize how massive of a generational jump the 4090 is.
Gaming performance
The RTX 4090 is currently the fastest consumer video card for gaming. The GPU does not disappoint in any video games. Also, from this generation, 4K gaming at playable framerates is possible without temporal upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR.
Rasterization performance
In pure rasterization performance, the RTX 4090's 16,384 CUDA cores showcase their potential. At 1440p, in which games are mostly CPU-bound, we consistently get 100 frames or more across every modern AAA title.
In competitive titles, the card makes for a great option to play on a high refresh rate and high-resolution panel.
At 4K, we get some solid results as well. Without any form of upscaling technology, the card pulled off over 60 frames consistently across every video game we tested the card in. No previous-gen card, including the RTX 3090 Ti, could pull off such massive framerates at UHD resolution.
Fortnite has gotten insanely demanding with the new Chapter 4 update. This is evident from the fact that it is the only game that did not hit 60 frames per second at UHD resolution.
Ray-tracing performance
The RTX 4090 comes with third-generation RT cores. These improved ray tracing cores outperform their last-gen equivalents by a solid margin.
This is evident from the fact that the 4090 hits over 60 frames at 1440p with ray tracing and other settings set to the absolute maximum in every video game. The card did not rely on any temporal upscaling formula like DLSS or FSR for this test.
At 4K, a similar trend continues. Every game consistently hits playable framerates with ray tracing set to the absolute maximum without upscaling. This is a massive step up from the last-gen RTX 3090 Ti, which could not play most video games at 4K with ray tracing at native resolution.
Cyberpunk 2077 hit just 38 frames on average with 1% and 0.1% numbers dipping quite low. This proves how demanding this title is in the highest settings.
DLSS performance
DLSS has progressively improved with the RTX 40 series cards as they pack seventh-generation Tensor cores. These processors pack improved AI computing power, which increases the framerate gains with DLSS.
DLSS 2.0 works like a charm, and across every game, we get around 20 to 25% performance boost with temporal upscaling set to the Performance preset.
DLSS 3.0 and frame generation
With the RTX 40 series, Nvidia has introduced DLSS 3.0. This next-gen version of the upscaling technology combines DLSS frame generation and AI upscaling to achieve much higher framerate gains than its last-gen equivalent.
Frame generation uses AI to predict more frames in between those generated by the GPU. This effectively multiplies the framerate.
In our testing, the framerate in A Plague Tale: Requiem doubled and that in Portal RTX tripled. Coupled with this, DLSS 3.0 can output a much higher-quality image as compared to DLSS 2.0. The picture looked almost as good as the native resolution.
Since DLSS 3.0 is a relatively new technology and requires game-by-game implementation, very few games support it. However, more titles will join the list in the upcoming years.
Power consumption
The RTX 4090 is rated for 450W. Some third-party AIB partners have cards that draw 600W. Thus, it easily ranks among the least power-efficient cards out there.
In our continued stress test with FurMark, which represents a worst-case scenario, the card consistently drew around 448W power. However, this is not the case with video games.
At 1440p, the RTX 4090 barely draws around 225W to deliver peak performance in video games in stock settings. This makes it as power efficient as the RTX 3070 at the same resolution.
At 4K, the power draw hits around 290W maximum. In some other more demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077, it is slightly higher and it touches the 320W mark.
Thus, the card never gets to its advertised 450W mark unless it is stressed with a benchmark like FurMark.
Thermal efficiency
As mentioned earlier, the RTX 4090 Founder's Edition comes with a beefy heatsink that is overkill for the GPU. The card stays way below the 83℃ safe temperature limit even when stressed with FurMark for a sustained period.
Note that the ambient temperature for all of these tests was 25℃.
In our testing, the card hit a maximum of 71℃ at 1440p in the FurMark stress test. Since FurMark gives us a worst-case scenario, we tested the card's thermal efficiency in video games as well. It maintained a much lower temperature while gaming at both 1440p and 2160p.
While playing Fortnite in the highest settings with ray tracing turned on, the card stayed under 50 degrees, which is thoroughly impressive for a high-end 450W-rated GPU like the 4090.
At 2160p, the card almost hit 54℃, which is a bit higher than the number we got at 1440p. However, it is still a very impressive temperature, provided how much work the card has to do at 4K.
Clock speeds
Unlike any other Ada Lovelace-based video card, the RTX 4090 packs higher operating clock speeds, unlike last-gen cards. It has an advertised base clock of 2,235 MHz and can boost up to 2,520 MHz. The memory is clocked at 1313 MHz.
However, in our testing, the GPU consistently hits much higher clocks than the advertised marks. This is a result of the extra thermal headroom the card has due to its beefed-up heatsink design.
Fans
As mentioned earlier, the RTX 4090 FE packs two large fans. They do not operate in a union. The bottom fan spins faster than the one at the top to ensure a pressure difference that causes an extra flow of air in and out of the card.
In our testing, we did not find the fans hitting 50% of their maximum RPM rating. The bottom fans hit a maximum of 1,532 RPM and the second one topped out at 1,405 RPM.
Thus, if required, the card can push a much higher volume of air to maintain better temperatures.
Overclocking experience
The RTX 4090 is a beast of a card. Thus, overclocking it might sound unnecessary to many. However, we pushed the silicon to its maximum to check out its true potential.
The Founder's Edition card is not designed to be overclocked. This was evident from our test results. The RTX 4090 delivers maximum performance when we apply a GPU core clock offset of 150 MHz and a memory clock offset of 250 MHz.
Under these settings, the card was about one to two percent faster than the stock settings. As we pushed it further, the scores began to dip below these numbers. Thus, it touched the point of diminishing returns.
Overall, gamers should opt for a third-party OC edition from an AIB partner if they intend to overclock their card. Although a solid card, the FE is quite disappointing in this aspect.
Value
The RTX 4090 FE is available at an MSRP of $1,599. However, it is out of stock with every retailer at the moment. Most 4090 models are priced at over $2,000 currently. This further degrades the value proposition of the card.
While it is true that the RTX 4090 is unrivaled and no GPU can get close to the flagship offering from the green camp, most gamers will find the $2,000 price tag on the GPU a bit excessive.
However, looking at the other offerings from Nvidia and AMD, the RTX 4090 seems like a good deal for creators and 3D professionals. Gamers are better off with something cheaper.
Conclusion
The RTX 4090 is a fantastic video card. It is a massive generational uplift over the RTX 3090 and the 3090 Ti. So far, no AMD or Nvidia card can even get close to the number of pixels the 4090 can push per second.
Thus, it is an undisputed king in the consumer graphics card market. However, its price might scare away gamers. For many, spending over $1,000 behind a GPU can seem excessive and the 4090 falls in this category of ultra-expensive video cards.
However, those willing to get their hands on the latest and greatest in the market will not be disappointed with what the 4090 has to offer.
Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090 Founder's Edition
Product: Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090 Founder's Edition and Portal with RTX (provided by Nvidia)
Release date: October 12, 2022
Size: 350mm x 120mm x 60mm
Weight: 2,205g
Display ports: 1x HDMI 2.1, 3x DisplayPort 1.4a
Power draw: 450W
