Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090 in the test

You can read the conclusion of our content partner "PC Games Hardware's" review of the new Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090 here. You can find the entire original article by author Raffael Vötter here.

The king is dead, long live the queen! Unlike the real world, a monarch takes her seat on the throne of graphics cards and she goes by the name of Ada Lovelace. Nvidia's self-congratulation in the run-up turns out to be optimistic, but not completely out of touch: In fact, the Geforce RTX 4090 manages to double the performance of a Geforce RTX 3090 (Ti) in some scenarios. This house number was always denied to Ampere (RTX 30) in comparison with Turing (RTX 20), if you exclude special ray-tracing work. With this excellent result, the Geforce RTX 4090 proves to be the first choice for owners of high-resolution screens and especially ray tracing fans, because no other graphics card allows you to marvel at accurately illuminated, pixel-fine worlds so smoothly.

The chances of the energetic Ms Lovelace widening her gap over old Mr Ampere in the future are good, because Nvidia has placed features in the improved ray tracing cores that need developer attention. Cyberpunk 2077 will show the full potential of the new architecture with the "Overdrive" called path tracing mode. What already works very well is the power efficiency: the limit of 450 watts is only exhausted in the rarest of cases, and in normal operation the Geforce RTX 4090 ranks below 350 watts across a wide range of games and resolutions. The revised cooler of the Nvidia Founders Edition, meanwhile, is capable of dissipating even 450 watts with moderate noise emissions.

Like many next-generation graphics cards before it, however, the Geforce RTX 4090 has one problem: it is "too" fast. No processor in the world - not even a maxed-out AMD Ryzen 9 7950X or Intel Core i9-13900K - can keep the GPU behemoth busy in widespread resolutions. The potential for four-digit frame rates is not practically realised because the processor power is lacking. Although a Geforce RTX 4090 is also a worthwhile upgrade for Full HD and WQHD gamers, since the Nvidia driver can optimally supply the vast majority of games, an RTX 4090 is really worthwhile above all for owners of an Ultra HD screen with a high refresh rate. 4K144, ideally with G-Sync and HDR, is the perfect counterpart.

But Nvidia has an answer to that too: DLSS 3. The third version of AI-assisted upsampling introduces Frame Generation as the main innovation, which allows the GPU to generate new frames without the processor's intervention. While the idea is as old as the hills, with DLSS 3 we see the practical implementation in the first games - and are ambivalent. Depending on the game and the settings, the results vary between amazing and squishy, as we explain in the first practical test of DLSS 3. The method has the potential to be a "killer feature", but still needs two things, according to our assessment: further fine-tuning and widespread support in games. The former is underway as you read these lines and with the Unreal Engine 4/5 as well as Unity, major game engines are already equipped with corresponding plug-ins. Those who enjoy experimenting will surely find settings in every game where DLSS 3 performs well on a Geforce RTX 4090. Users of older graphics cards will unfortunately have to stay out, but at least for Ampere (RTX 30) the last word regarding DLSS 3 has not yet been spoken.

The Geforce RTX 4090 will go on official sale on 12 October. In addition to the Nvidia Founders Edition, there will be a direct choice between numerous custom designs from the board partners - EVGA excluded, because the manufacturer will not offer any new Geforce graphics cards. We are currently working on further articles addressing manufacturer designs, power supply requirements, DLSS 3 in the CPU limit and special ray tracing hard cases. Until then: What do you think of the Geforce RTX 4090? Will you strike, wait for the RTX 4080 (16GB/12GB), or wait for AMD? The announcement of the Radeon RX 7000 range in response to Ada Lovelace is expected on 3 November.
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