Nvidia RTX 4090 Graphics Card Review

When it comes to PC gaming, a pretty modest and affordable graphics card will go a lot further than you might think. A card that's a few generations old, or something much further down the range will play great. Actually, we retested the GTX 1070 Ti recently to prove this. Andy tested more old and current cards recently too, which you can check here. However, one of the advantages of PC gaming is that the sky is the limit, and if you're eager to push extreme resolutions, refresh rates, and ultra graphics with no compromise, well... you can do that too. Sure, the graphics card, such as the new Nvidia RTX 4090 series aren't cheap, if anything, they're just getting more expensive. However, by the time you invest in a CPU, motherboard, monitor and other hardware that can fully realise the potential of these new cards, it's safe to say it's less for your average gamer and more for sports, professionals and deep-pocketed enthusiasts. Of course, that's true of many hobbies, and in a way, the RTX 4090 is the F1 car of graphics cards. Nvidia RTX 4090 We've got two cards going all-out today, the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim X Graphics Card and the Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC Graphics Card. Both of these are very high-end models, so I'm expecting nothing but the best here. Make no mistake, spec-for-spec, these are the two most powerful GPUs we've ever tested, by a long way, so I think the benchmarks will tell us what we already know. However, I am eager to see if there's much difference between the two. These cards require new power connectors to deal with their increased power consumption. They have the largest GPU coolers I've ever seen to tame that monster of a chipset. They're massive too, so many mid-towers like won't even support them. Everything is next-level here. But with prices around £1600-2000+ for an RTX 4090, anything less than flawless performance will not be tolerated. Features 16384 NVIDIA CUDA Cores2.23 GHz Base Clock2.52 GHz Boost Clock24 GB Memory SizeGDDR6X MemoryPCIe Gen 4.0 Interface384-bit Memory Interface3rd Gen Ray Tracing Cores4th Gen Tensor CoresAda Lovely Architecture Additional Technologies DLSS 3.0Nvidia ReflexNvidia BroadcastResizable BARGeForce ExperienceNvidia AnselNvidia FreeStyleNvidia ShadowPlayNvidia HighlightsNvidia G-Sync DLSS 3.0 DLSS is a revolutionary breakthrough in AI-powered graphics that massively boosts performance. Powered by the new fourth-gen Tensor Cores and Optical Flow Accelerator on GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs, DLSS 3 uses AI to create additional high-quality frames. We're focusing on straight-up rendering performance for this feature though, and we'll follow up with a dedicated dive into DLSS very soon! Beyond Fast "The NVIDIA® GeForce RTX® 4090 is the ultimate GeForce GPU. It brings an enormous leap in performance, efficiency, and AI-powered graphics. Experience ultra-high-performance gaming, incredibly detailed virtual worlds, unprecedented productivity, and new ways to create. It’s powered by the NVIDIA Ada Lovelace architecture and comes with 24 GB of G6X memory to deliver the ultimate experience for gamers and creators." - Nvidia Video If you want to see our full video going through this, you can do so below. How We Test We continue to update our testing methods around once per year. As such, we re-test older hardware to reflect changes over time. These can be driver updates, Windows updates, game patches, and more; all of which have an impact on performance figures. Furthermore, we update our test benches to newer and more relevant hardware. This means that our new reviews aren’t always comparable to those of older reviews, so please compare the testing methodology on older reviews should you be trying to compare them with newer ones. Replicate Our Results When it comes to our benchmarks in our reviews, the benchmarks are pretty self-explanatory and are kept as simple as possible, although there are a few exceptions. Remember that your choice of a graphics card, CPU, the silicon lottery, and other factors can yield different numbers, and there’s always a margin for error when using any software. Links are provided below, as well as the settings we use. We encourage you to not just look at how one product compares to any other, but how it compares to your own. If you’re looking to build a new system, you should benchmark your current PC using the benchmarks available to you. You should then look at the percentage improvement from your current hardware to the hardware tested here to give you a ballpark figure of how much of an upgrade this will provide you with. Processor Test Systems Test System (GPU) Motherboard ASUS ROG Z690 Maximus HeroBIOS Version 1720 Buy Now Processor Intel Core i9 12900K Review Buy Now GPU Changes Per Review RAM Patriot Viper Venom 32GB (2x16GB) 6200MHz Review Buy Now CPU Cooler NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Buy Now Power Supply NZXT C1000 Gold Review Buy Now Storage Seagate FIRECUDA 530 1TB Review Buy Now Chassis NZXT H7 Flow Review Buy Now OS Windows 11 Pro Version 21H2 Drivers AMD Graphics: 22.10.1NVIDIA Graphics: 521.90 Additional Hardware Nvidia PCAT (Power Capture Analysis Tool) Software We use a variety of software from different developers to assist in our testing and to give us the most consistent results possible. Some applications are specifically used for testing, while others are simply used for monitoring and to aid us in making sure that our results are as accurate as possible. Software Used 3DMark FireStrike & TimeSpy (download) Gaming To gauge performance levels which are easily reproduced time after time, by both ourselves and our readers, we now stick strictly to games default profiles. Given how powerful most modern cards are getting, we've began using more demanding profiles for most games, but will otherwise state on a per game basis if we use other profiles beyond High, Ultra, Maximum or their respective equivalent at all resolutions. V-Sync is always disabled in our testing, and all FPS caps that can be removed are. We also enable XMP and Resizable bar technology across all platforms to keep things as fair as possible. Games While we test a lot of games, it's not possible to display all of the data on the website or in our videos. Instead, we include access to all of our testing data for our Patreon members (link), where members get a ton of other benefits as well. What we do however, is display charts for averages across all game titles to give a better picture of performance across all titles tested. Assassin's Creed ValhallaCall Of Duty WarzoneControlCyberpunk 2077Death StrandingDying Light 2F1 22Far Cry 6FortniteForza Horizon 5Horizon Zero DawnMarvel's Spider-Man RemasteredMicrosoft Flight Simulator 2020Shadow Of The Tomb RaiderWatch Dogs: Legion Resolutions 1080 (Full HD)14404K Some tests will also include features such as NVIDIA DLSS and Ray Tracing. However, these will be clearly labelled and may only appear in reviews for graphics cards that support those features. Power Consumption Not being content on simply reading total system power draw at both idle, we now have the ability thanks to the ElmorLabs PMD-USB device that allows us to measure power draw directly through the EPS power connectors. We test at idle, during gaming load, of which we measure drawing a run of Cyberpunk 2077 and during Cinebench R23 at load too. Temperatures We take temperature readings after 10 minutes of desktop idle with no background programs running, then take the recorded maximum delivered during the same runs as when we measure power consumption, being during our Cyberpunk 2033 run, and during Cinebench R23 at load too. 3DMark Port Royal 3DMark Port Royal is the world’s first real-time ray tracing benchmark for gamers. It shows you how well your PC handles ray-tracing effects in real time. Use Port Royal to benchmark graphics cards that support Microsoft DirectX Raytracing. Compare Port Royal benchmark scores to see how overclocking affects ray-tracing performance. Find your PC's performance limits with custom benchmark settings and detailed hardware monitoring charts. 3DMark is available on Steam here. In Port Royal we again see some huge gains of up to 72% in both the score and overall FPS for the MSI Suprim X model with the Gigabyte sitting just behind when looking at the gains compared to the Ampere flagship. 3DMark Timespy Extreme Time Spy Extreme is a new 4K DirectX 12 benchmark test, available in 3DMark Advanced and Professional Editions. You don't need a 4K monitor to run it, but you will need a GPU with at least 4 GB of dedicated memory. With its 4K Ultra HD rendering resolution, Time Spy Extreme is an ideal benchmark test for the latest high-end graphics cards. The CPU test has been redesigned to let processors with 8 or more cores perform to their full potential 3DMark is available on Steam here. So starting things off with some synthetic benchmarks and in Timespy Extreme, things get off to a flying start where we see a huge 50% uplift in the overall score and an even larger 69% improvement in the graphics score on both the Gigabyte and MSI 4090 cards when compared to the Gigabyte RTX 3090 Ti. PugetBench for Davinci A benchmark for both CPU and GPU performance that is a great basis for comparing the video and graphics editing capabilities of any system. Available now on Puget. In our last synthetic test, we're taking a look at the PugetBench for Davinci Resolve which gives us both standard and extended scores and in the standard test, we see a 17% uplift in performance when looking at the 3090 Ti and moving up to both the Gigabyte Gaming OC and MSI Suprim X models while the extended test shows a similar result with a 16% increase in performance over the 3090 Ti. Assassin's Creed Valhalla Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the twelfth major instalment in the Assassin's Creed series and the successor to 2018's Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Principally set in the years 872–878 AD, the game recounts a fictional story during the Viking expansions into the British Isles. Players control Eivor Varinsdottir, a Viking raider who becomes embroiled in the centuries-old conflict between the Assassin Brotherhood, who fight for peace and liberty, and the Templar Order, who desire peace through control. The modern-day portion of the story is set in the 21st century and follows Layla Hassan, an Assassin who relives Eivor's memories so as to find a way to save the Earth from destruction. Available now on UPlay. So moving onto our first game and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla where we see the Gigabyte card pushing ahead of the MSI by around 2 FPS which then puts it 43% faster than the 3090 Ti in the overall averages and around 34% faster in the 1% lows at 4K. Call Of Duty Warzone Warzone is the second main battle royale instalment in the Call of Duty franchise, following the "Blackout" mode of Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (2018). Warzone differs from Black Ops 4 by reducing reliance on equipable gadgets and instead encouraging the accumulation of a new in-game currency called Cash. Available now on CallofDuty.com. Call Of Duty Warzone saw a similar gain of 51% when looking at the performance gain on the MSI Suprim X card compared to that of the 3090 Ti and when looking at the 6900XT from the competition that gain increases further to 55% in pure rasterisation. Control A corruptive presence has invaded the Federal Bureau of Control…Only you have the power to stop it. The world is now your weapon in an epic fight to annihilate an ominous enemy through deep and unpredictable environments. Containment has failed, and humanity is at stake. Will you regain control? Available now on Steam. The improvements get even larger in Control at 4K where the RTX 4090 flies ahead of the 3090 Ti by just over 60% in the averages and holds a steady 53% lead in the 1% lows at well over 100 frames per second. Cyberpunk 2077 Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure RPG set in the megalopolis of Night City, where you play as a cyberpunk mercenary wrapped up in a do-or-die fight for survival. Improved and featuring all-new free additional content, customize your character and playstyle as you take on jobs, build a reputation, and unlock upgrades. The relationships you forge and the choices you make will shape the story and the world around you. Legends are made here. What will yours be? Available now on Steam. The gains keep on coming, where in Cyberpunk we finally see a card that’s able handle frame rates above 60 FPS in 4K on the Ultra preset and that shows that the 4090 is now between 42% and 46% faster than a 3090 Ti. Death Stranding From legendary game creator Hideo Kojima comes a genre-defying experience, now expanded in this definitive DIRECTOR’S CUT. As Sam Bridges, your mission is to deliver hope to humanity by connecting the last survivors of a decimated America. Can you reunite the shattered world, one step at a time? Available now on Steam. Death Stranding sees a similar 42% lead on the MSI Suprim X model while the Gigabyte still enjoys a 38% uplift when comparing both to the 3090 Ti. In terms of the gain over the 6900XT we still see between around a 50% lead from both models of 4090 we tested here today. Dying Light 2 The virus won and civilization has fallen back to the Dark Ages. The City, one of the last human settlements, is on the brink of collapse. Use your agility and combat skills to survive, and reshape the world. Your choices matter. Available now on Steam. Dying Light 2 is an intensive game, but the RTX 4090 makes light work of it offering up over 100 FPS at 4K on the high DX12 preset and pushing over 64% more performance than the 3090 Ti and a frankly laughable 86% improvement over the 6900XT. Ouch. F1 22 Enter the new era of Formula 1® in EA SPORTS™ F1® 22, the official video game of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship™. Take your seat for a new season as redesigned cars and overhauled rules redefine race day, test your skills around the new Miami International Autodrome, and get a taste of the glitz and glamour in F1® Life. Race the stunning, new cars of the Formula 1® 2022 season with the authentic lineup of all 20 drivers and 10 teams, and take control of your race experience with new immersive or broadcast race sequences. Create a team and take them to the front of the grid with new depth in the acclaimed My Team career mode, race head-to-head in split-screen or multiplayer, or change the pace by taking supercars from some of the sport’s biggest names to the track in our all-new Pirelli Hot Laps feature. The official video game of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship™: Available now on Steam. F1 22 sees a smaller 34% margin going from the 3090 Ti to the 4090 Gaming OC and a slightly larger 37% increase when comparing to the 4090 Suprim X while the hurt just keeps on coming where the 4090 from MSI comes in 48% faster than the 6900XT and we’ve not even got to Ray Tracing yet. Far Cry 6 Welcome to Yara, a tropical paradise frozen in time. As the dictator of Yara, Antón Castillo is intent on restoring his nation back to its former glory by any means, with his son, Diego, following in his bloody footsteps. Their oppressive rule has ignited a revolution. Available now on Ubisoft Connect. No surprises with Far Cry 6 with the HD textures installed on the Ultra preset, where at 4K we continue to see a large 43% improvement over the 3090 Ti from both 4090 models while that lead increases to 39% over the AMD current generation flagship. Fortnite Fortnite is a survival game where 100 players fight against each other in player-versus-player combat to be the last one standing. It is a fast-paced, action-packed game, not unlike The Hunger Games, where strategic thinking is a must in order to survive. There are an estimated 125 million players on Fortnite. Available now on EPIC. Fortnite saw some very interesting results as the lead dropped slightly, but still seeing a 25% improvement over the last generation's flagship is nothing to grumble about but where things are really harsh is in the 1% lows, but thankfully this is consistent across all cards tested. Forza Horizon 5 Your Ultimate Horizon Adventure awaits! Explore the vibrant and ever-evolving open-world landscapes of Mexico with limitless, fun driving action in hundreds of the world’s greatest cars. This is Your Horizon Adventure Lead breathtaking expeditions across the vibrant and ever-evolving open-world landscapes of Mexico with limitless, fun driving action in hundreds of the world’s greatest cars. This is a Diverse Open World Explore a world of striking contrast and beauty. Discover living deserts, lush jungles, historic cities, hidden ruins, pristine beaches, vast canyons and a towering snow-capped volcano. This is an adventurous Open World Immerse yourself in a deep campaign with hundreds of challenges that reward you for engaging in the activities you love. Meet new characters and choose the outcomes of their Horizon Story missions. Available now on Steam. Forza Horizon 5 saw some pretty solid gains of around 34% with the Gigabyte Gaming OC card just pulling ahead of the MSI model, and with some better 1% lows as well. When comparing to the 6900XT, we again see a healthy gain of 42% in performance overall, but will add for an interesting comparison based on cost to performance. Horizon Zero Dawn Experience Aloy’s entire legendary quest to unravel the mysteries of a world ruled by deadly Machines. An outcast from her tribe, the young hunter fights to uncover her past, discover her destiny… and stop a catastrophic threat to the future. Unleash devastating, tactical attacks against unique Machines and rival tribes as you explore an open world teeming with wildlife and danger. Horizon Zero Dawn is a multi-award-winning action role-playing game – and this Complete Edition for PC includes the huge expansion The Frozen Wilds, featuring new lands, skills, weapons and Machines. Available now on Steam. The RTX 4090 ended up 40% faster than the 3090 Ti in Horizon Zero Dawn which is impressive but the real talking point here is how the MSI Suprim X model comes in 100% faster than the 6900XT on Ultimate quality. I am almost speechless. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered Developed by Insomniac Games in collaboration with Marvel, and optimized for PC by Nixxes Software, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered on PC introduces an experienced Peter Parker who’s fighting big crime and iconic villains in Marvel’s New York. At the same time, he’s struggling to balance his chaotic personal life and career while the fate of Marvel’s New York rests upon his shoulders. Available now on Steam. Spider-Man was an interesting one because we did see another strong leap in performance of around 50% when comparing both 4090 cards to the 3090 Ti, but even at 4K, it did show that we were potentially being limited by our 12900K which sounds ridiculous, but the RTX 4090 is that good, that we ended up seeing similar performance across all 3 resolutions, which we’ll be posting up on our Patreon if you want to check that out. The other major thing to talk about is the 79% improvement over the 6950 XT, which almost makes it seem laughable at this point. Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 The Microsoft Flight Simulator Game of the Year (GOTY) Edition celebrates all the positive feedback, reviews and awards garnered, but it is also a “Thank You” to our fans – new and old – that have made Microsoft Flight Simulator such a phenomenon. Best of all, the Microsoft Flight Simulator Game of the Year Edition will be available as a free update for existing players on PC. Available now on Steam. Microsoft Flight Sim was another title that threw up some anomalies across multiple resolutions, all seeing around 64 frames per second at all 3 resolutions, again leading to a potential CPU bottleneck issue. That aside, it still gave us a 19% improvement over the 3090 Ti however the biggest talking point again is looking at the 84% gain over the 6950 XT. Shadow of the Tomb Raider Experience Lara Croft’s defining moment as she becomes the Tomb Raider. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara must master a deadly jungle, overcome terrifying tombs, and persevere through her darkest hour. As she races to save the world from a Maya apocalypse, Lara will ultimately be forged into the Tomb Raider she is destined to be. Available now on Steam. In Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, we again see some really solid numbers with the MSI Suprim X edging ahead of the Gigabyte card, albeit by 1%, while it pushes 66% ahead of the 3090 Ti and 82% ahead of the 6950 XT. Watch Dogs: Legion Build a resistance from virtually anyone you see as you hack, infiltrate, and fight to take back a near-future London that is facing its downfall. Welcome to the Resistance. Recruit and play as anyone in the city. Everyone you see has a unique backstory, personality, and skill set. Hack armed drones, deploy spider-bots and take down enemies using an Augmented Reality Cloak. Explore a massive urban open world featuring London’s many iconic landmarks and fun side activities. Take your recruits online and team up with your friends as you complete missions and challenging endgame content. Available now on UPlay. Finally in Watch Dogs: Legion, we again see a 57% performance boost over the 3090 Ti with the Gigabyte card edging slightly ahead of the Suprim X and also seeing a 63% uplift in performance over the 6950 XT. Overall Game Average FPS Testing a variety of games allows you to see how a particular piece of hardware performs in that title, but with the ability to look at overall game averages and how they perform across all titles, we can extrapolate the positioning of that hardware compared to similar hardware on the market. Taking a look at the overall frame rate averages, and at 1080p we see some pretty decent results with the Gigabyte Gaming OC 4090 coming in around 13% faster than the 3090 Ti and 10% faster than the 6900XT while the MSI improves on that further pushing 15% faster than the 3090 Ti and a 11% faster than the 6900XT. While these are impressive, running a GPU like this at 1080p really does show how you'd be CPU bound overall and will start to see some restrictions in performance due to the GPU being so powerful. At 1440p, the bottleneck of the CPU is still there but does alleviate slightly where we see both RTX 4090's push ahead of the 3090 Ti by around 23% and further cements its lead over the 6900XT by a 30% margin. When compared to the competition, the 4090 comes in 49% faster than the 6950 XT and a whopping 68% faster than the 6900 XT but obviously cost will play a factor too, which we’ll look at shortly. Before we do, it’s worth looking at ray tracing performance because it’s one of the main reasons why you’d buy NVIDIA over the competition, and with again, such bold claims when it comes to performance coming from the green team, it’s definitely one of the most interesting talking points of the RTX 4090. Control So looking at Control, we can see that performance took a 37% decrease once Ray Tracing was enabled but enabling DLSS and utilising the 1440p resolution to upscale from, allowed performance to dramatically gain by 87%. The most interesting talking point here is that with Ray Tracing enabled and DLSS on, you now have a visually stunning-looking game with 16% more performance than with Ray Tracing off. On top of this, those new RT cores really do a great job which sees a 47% uplift when compared to the 3090 Ti when just Ray Tracing is enabled and a 59% uplift compared to the 3090 Ti when looking at performance with Ray Tracing and DLSS both enabled. Cyberpunk 2077 Moving onto Cyberpunk and I want to choose my words carefully because while we did see a 45% decrease when enabling Ray Tracing, the more important thing to notice is that enabling DLSS sees us with Cyberpunk at 4K on the Ultra preset with Ray Tracing set to Ultra getting 78 frames per second from our MSI card. This is almost like the stuff dreams are made of but the comparison gets even better because by my calculations we actually lose only 0.9% when going from Cyberpunk with no Ray Tracing to Cyberpunk with Ray Tracing and DLSS enabled and with DLSS3 available on the 40 series cards, it’s something that we could go into for hours, so we’ll be creating more content solely focussed on the even bigger results that has to offer. Watchdogs Legion Finally in Watch Dogs: Legion we see a 39% decrease in performance to get those shiny reflections, which frankly looks awesome in the game to only seeing a 4.2% decrease from the original pure rasterisation result to having Ray Tracing and DLSS set to quality. Compared to the 3090 Ti with Ray Tracing and DLSS enabled, we now see a 55% performance gain when moving up to the 4090. Again, the stuff that dreams are made of. So pretty impressive stuff. I mean, who am I kidding, it’s pretty damn crazy seeing these huge gains in performance and while I get that not everyone is keen on DLSS and the way it does things, even at 4K, it just looks simply stunning and not having these huge hits in performance now is just next level stuff. Power Consumption So, the big one. Power usage. There’s been a lot of talk about Ada Lovelace, power spiking to stupidly high levels and needing higher wattage power supplies to run them. Before we get into the power, it’s worth noting that the NVIDIA reference power spec is 450 watts, and the Gigabyte Gaming OC card conforms to that, while the MSI is rated, in gaming mode and not silent mode to go above that to 480 watts, but during our testing, we actually found an issue affecting multiple SKUs of cards including MSI and ASUS cards that were showing restrictive power limits of 450 watts. Sadly, after creating this content, MSI took the card from us to rotate it around to another media, but we will definitely look to see about retesting the card when it comes back to see if any performance metrics change, but in our opinion, the difference would be deemed in the same realm as margin of error, which is around 1 to 2% so nothing really to worry about, but it’s worth noting the card was potentially not working to its rated spec and something I’m sure will be fixed by MSI and NVIDIA in conjunction with each other. Power Consumption Now, in the course of our benchmarking, we saw pretty decent figures at idle, with the Gigabyte card sipping another 28% more power when compared to the RTX 3090 Ti but actually around 4% less than our RTX 3090 Suprim X. The RTX 4090 Suprim X however, was a slightly different story as it consumed 98% more power at idle than the RTX 3090 Ti did. At load across 15 games, thanks to the new TSMC 4nm process, we see some pretty decent figures with the RTX 4090 Suprim X coming in with 18% less power draw when compared to the RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X. The Gigabyte card uses a little more at around 3% more power compared to the MSI 4090, which then gives us a slightly smaller decrease of 14% compared to the Ampere flagship. Right now, in terms of these figures, I’d be a little cautious with the MSI figure, due to the reasons I mentioned, and you could see this power draw increase ever so slightly. So power actually looks a bit better than what everyone was expecting, and for a very good reason. From our own industry insider sources, it seems that Ada Lovelace was always planned, at least from a power sense, to continue on Samsung’s 8nm node, and this was all finalised at the start of 2022 because these things like that generally take time when developing a product. Shortly after, as things drew closer to the summer, from what we’re hearing, that’s where TSMC stepped in and started producing for NVIDIA on the 4nm fabrication process and that’s why the power draw is actually a lot lower than what we were anticipating. That’s also why we were able to test through the NVIDIA PCAT which only has 3 8-pin power connectors on, even though our adapter cable uses 4 8-pin connectors because, as we confirmed in a video we did with JonnyGURU, each connector is capable of 342 Watts which is more than enough with a large overhead. Operating Costs With the cost of living increasing across the world, especially when it comes to the cost of electricity, it's worth looking at the cost of running a processor and how it compares to similar products on the market. By taking the average cost per kWh, we can calculate a rough running cost at idle, during a simulated workload test (Cinebench R23), to give us worst-case scenario costs, as well as gaming costs during a run of Cinebench R23. US Dollars (USD) So sticking with power, another big area comes down to the cost of running the cards, especially given the price of electricity increasing across the world and in the US, we see the MSI card at idle coming in around double that of the 3090 Ti at just over half a cent per hour. At load, you’d be looking at around 5.4 cents per hour to run, which is actually around 17% cheaper per hour to run than the 3090 Ti Gaming OC which the Gigabyte 4090 comes in around 14% cheaper to run per hour than the 3090 Ti Gaming OC. British Pound (GBP) In the UK, it doesn’t exactly fair great for the MSI card, which will end up costing around 1.35 pence per hour just sitting at the desktop, which is 98% higher than the 3090 Ti while the 4090 from Gigabyte is only 29% higher to run at idle when looking at the cost per hour. At load, it’s not a cheap one, but electricity isn’t cheap in the UK with a cost coming in at just under 12 pence per hour on the MSI 4090 and just over 12 pence per hour on the Gigabyte Gaming OC, though again, I’d consider that the MSI figures may be a little wrong based on this, lets call it, bug. Compared to the 3090 Ti, we obviously see the same 17% decrease in cost for the MSI and 14% for the Gigabyte. Performance Per Watt Taking a look at performance per watt, we can see a clear distinction where the RTX 4090 just offers amazing efficiency compared to all other cards tested. Not only are they 65% more efficient compared to the 3090 Ti, but are the same when compared against the 6950 XT and 38% more efficient than the reference 6900 XT from AMD. Temperatures Thermals are a key point to any GPU, as it allows it to boost for a prolonged amount of time and depending on the task that's being performed, thermals can be either higher or lower.. Lower temperatures in gameplay are a good indication we can overclock the card more. Higher temperatures mean the graphics cards are likely not hitting their peak boost clocks long enough and may need more cooling or even underclocking. So cooling wise, we did see slightly higher temperatures on the MSI card at 74 degrees on the hotspot, while the Gigabyte card came in slightly lower at 71 degrees. These are both a little higher than the 3090 Ti which came in at 70 degrees, but still falls well below any cause for concern. I guess that new TSMC 4nm process really does help, given the extra performance. Could you imagine if this was still using Samsung’s 8nm process? Toasty! Acoustics The acoustic performance of a graphics card is very important, it's one thing for a graphics card to do a great job rendering your game, but if it sounds like a jet engine while it does it, it may detract from the gaming experience. Ideally, we're looking for lower noise here, while still delivering great cooling performance. Lower noise levels mean there's still overhead to push the cool harder while overclocking. Thermals to one side, the acoustics were pretty reasonable, with the MSI coming in at 40 decibels during load, while the Gigabyte card came in slightly higher at 45 decibels, but both fall within what I’d personally class at reasonable limits. How Much Does It Cost? The performance is there, no doubt about that, but it does, of course, come at a heck of a cost. The Nvidia RTX 4090 is available on the Nvidia.com website with prices starting at £1,679, but custom cards will most often than not be above that. The Gigabyte card is £1829.99 in the UK and likely around $1599 in the US. The MSI card is suspected to be £1929 and $1699 respectively. Not cheap, actually, bonkers money really. However, the cost per frame tells us its relative value £ to FPS is excellent. We actually saw a 6% increase in cost if going for the Gigabyte 4090 over the 3090 Ti in the UK when looking at the cost per frame which overall, isn’t that bad considering this is bleeding-edge, new technology. The MSI comes in slightly higher at around 11% more per frame than a 3090 Ti. That's before we factor in other advantages like RT and DLSS improvements. MSI 4090 SUPRIM X In the US, the story is actually dramatically better with the Gigabyte 4090 only costing 1.7% more per frame than the 3090 Ti while the more expensive MSI card sits around 7% higher per frame. Sure $1700 is a lot to pay for a GPU but it just feels like you get a LOT for your money and things are only going to get better as games are optimised for the technology, DLSS3 becomes more prevalent, and any power limit bugs are ironed out. GIGABYTE 4090 GAMING OC Overview This review has been a wild ride, as while the price is a bitter pill to choke on, one can not argue with the raw performance of these new cards. Like, at all, as Nvidia said they were "beyond fast" and I'm inclined to agree. I'll even go to doubt AMD can counter with similar performance, this is a real leap forward in terms of performance. Not that AMD has to compete for the flagship crown, it just has to strike a stronger price-to-performance metric a little further down the range. More to Come I think we still have a lot of testing ahead of us to see what these cards can really do, so, that's what we're doing right now as you read this. We've got 30 games to test, 15 more than are featured here, and at more resolutions that may even include 8K, with even more of that available on our Patreon. We'll be diving into 500Hz monitor gaming, DLSS 3.0, Ray Tracing and more in great depth over the coming days and no doubt weeks as updates and more hardware rolls through the office. Oh, and expect proper reviews of each GPU, so you can get a proper closer look at those too. Also, as mentioned, we may need to retest the MSI card if and when it comes back to us, as MSI took it before a fix was made, so it was kind of out of our hands with that one and yes, we did plead with them, but they had their own reason behind it all. Beyond Fast Nvidia has raised the bar here, in terms of raw rendering performance, more advanced and powerful ray tracing processing and new innovations for DLSS. It's interesting to see that with performance being between 40-60% above that of the 3090 Ti, prices are actually up by around the same gen-vs-gen, albeit, that's for founders cards, not the much more expensive custom ones we've just tested. Regardless, we do hope to see those come down in the coming months regardless. However, while we need to do more testing, DLSS 3.0 could be the thing that really widens that performance gap, as it's only available on 4000 series cards, unfortunately. Should I Buy One? It's been one of the coolest products we've ever had the joy of testing. Bigger, faster, strong, cooler, and many other things which make this sound like a Daft Punk song. Nvidia promised it would be #BeyondFast and I'll be damned if they didn't deliver. Sure, it needs more power, it's going to take a huge PC case, and a big cash investment. However, once you fire up your favourite game and max out everything, you'll be grinning from ear to ear, I know I was! With RDNA3 coming from AMD, and Nvidia still rolling out the RTX 4080 cards in the coming weeks and months, the GPU market has gotten very exciting indeed.