NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition

[Why_Me]

Warzone is not a competitive game. I'm talking about CSGO, Quake Live/Quake Champions, Overwatch, Valotant, StarCraft 2.

I'm talking about gamers that have actual sponsors and yes there's plenty of those that play Warzone. The reason for 1440 > 1080 is for sniping as in depth. 240Hz 1440P is what it's about. For the poors who don't have sponsors .. then ya 1080P for them.

 

[Prima.Vera]

When you think a PS5 is 500$ and can play ANY game, you kind of start to laugh of those ridiculous prices from nGreedia. I mean, really. In the end is just a game you're playing.
Any price above 800$ for a GPU is not worthing at all.

 

[ModEl4]

As mentioned in the conclusion, it seems the driver overhead is higher than on Ampere, so this higher CPU usage will eat into the CPU time available for the game and thus make it even more CPU limited

Regarding why in some games 4090 is slower than Amprere models in 1080p, it's not only higher driver overhead imo.
Probably It's also the latency incurred being a 12 GPC (11 active) design, if I'm right, RTX 4080 16GB (being a 7 GPC design) will be slightly faster than RTX 4090 in these specific games in 1080p, we will see if my hypothesis is correct next month.

 

[swaaye]

When you think a PS5 is 500$ and can play ANY game, you kind of start to laugh of those ridiculous prices from nGreedia. I mean, really. In the end is just a game you're playing.
Any price above 800$ for a GPU is not worthing at all.

All this new hardware and the end of GPU mining is creating some lovely prices on all that now apparently completely undesirable hardware that many of these guys paid a lot of money for a year or two ago.

 

[Bwaze]

Wow makes the the RTX 3090Ti look like an RTX 3060 vs the 3090TI = (3090Ti vs RTX 4090)

Yeah, that's what new generation does. RTX 3090 did that to RTX 2080 Ti. As has been shown, rasterisation shows quite a normal and expected leap - and there is no "2 - 4x" leap even if you look at raytracing or DLSS.

Except this time around there is (yet) no cryptominers that would leap to such an expensive card.

And so the fall in next quarter's revenue will be squarely on us, unreliable gamers.

 

[The Von Matrices]

It's NV alright. Prices are historically high even in America which gets dirt cheap hardware anyway. That said it is not out of line compared to the 3090's launch price, and honestly, anyone with a GA102-based GPU should not be running around with their hair on fire, it's just FOMO, really.

If you spent $800-$1600+ on a high end GPU, give it at least 3 years before you replace it. I guarantee anyone on a 3080+ is going to be comfortable gaming on ultra high settings for the next year if not more.

As a 3090 owner, I'm debating whether to buy.

On one hand, it costs a lot of money at $1600.

On the other hand, each GPU generation now lasts about 2 years and prices move very little within those two years (absent external events like cryptocurrency crashes). Economics suggests that if I am going to buy it at any point in the next 2 years, I should buy as soon as possible. If I wait until 2023 or 2024 to buy, it will be the same price, and I will have given up 1-2 years I could have been using it.

It's an interesting consideration.

 

[Deleted member 185088]

Yes, the "gap" referenced is a new flagship vs last generation's flagship. No, the conclusion in this review is not warranted by the data. It's straight up nonsense that only makes sense if you let Nvidia's marketing department dictate how you evaluate their "generations" of GPUs.

Here are the actual "generations" of Nvidia GPUs, by architecture:
Fermi (GTX 4xx and 5xx)
Kepler (GTX 6xx and 7xx)
Maxwell (GTX 9xx)
Pascal (GTX 10xx)
Turing (RTX 20xx)
Ampere (RTX 30xx)
Ada (RTX 40xx)

Using any other criteria to determine a "generation" of GPU is ignorant and misleading. When one speaks of "generations" of graphics cards, one speaks of GPU architectures, not specific SKUs.

And here are the performance jumps from the top flagship card in each generation to the next, based on TPU's own data:

Tesla 2.0 (GTX 285) --> Fermi (GTX 580) = 67% performance jump gen on gen
Fermi (GTX 580) --> Kepler (GTX 780 Ti) = 104% performance jump gen on gen
Kepler (GTX 780 Ti) --> Maxwell (Titan X) = 45% performance jump gen on gen
Maxwell (Titan X) --> Pascal (Titan Xp) = 72% performance jump gen on gen [Titan Xp and 1080 Ti were very similar, 1080 Ti a couple points faster]
Pascal (GTX 1080 Ti/Titan Xp) --> Turing (RTX 2080 Ti) = 39% performance jump gen on gen
Turing (RTX 2080 Ti) --> Ampere (RTX 3090 Ti) = 56% performance jump gen on gen
Ampere (RTX 3090 Ti) --> Ada (RTX 4090) = 45% performance jump gen on gen

If you assume the "true" Ada flagship will be a 4090 Ti, and that card will be 10% faster than the 4090, then Ada is a 59% performance jump gen on gen.

In no way is this remarkable. It's decidedly unremarkable. Ordinary. Expected. Typical. If you exclude Kepler, which WAS extraordinary and remarkable, the average gen on gen performance jump is 54% per generation.

Such wisdom.
I would say nVidia marketing is very powerful, some philistines even call RT RTX, some reviewers (like DF) are basically nVidia's marketing tool (if you'd like similar analysis check NX Gamer, much more knowledgeable and impartial).
Another thing people tend to think about Turing most of the time, where performance stagnated (2080 vs 1080ti), hence lots of people got the impression that the 3080 was a huge step up.
I believe sites like Techpowerup should stand to this mediocrity, maybe the community here (which BTW is great compared to other fanboys/ignorants filled sites) can help avoid falling in the trap of marketing be it nVidia's, Intel's or AMD's.

 

[Dirt Chip]

This graphics card designed for a 4K, 8K gaming, not less. It ridiculous is using this powerful card for 1080p.
4K gaming 5800X quite enough here.

@W1zzard
Thanks for the review. Waiting also 5K, 6K, 8K test. And PCI-E 3.0 vs PCI-E 4.0?

One must have 500fps on FHD so no cpu in sight is enough...

 

[Legacy-ZA]

Will it melt down a Corsair SF Series 750W Platinum PSU or can be ok?

Hard to say; depends on what else and how much of that else you have in your system.

I would recommend an 850W Gold / Plat minimum PSU to be safe. I think if you are going to slot in an RTX4090 on a 750W PSU, your system probably won't post or if it does, you will have to power limit the card in MSI afterburner before use, and even if you power limit the card, what else might happen is, during load, your machine will "dip" out and reboot.

 

[Sake]

I actually think the 4090 is a good price, you need to think of it as the new Titan though. This card isn't meant for average gamers, it's meant for 4k stuff and 4k gamers pretty much exclusively. I honestly am not sad at all its out of my price range. I just hope RDNA3 can get me at 165 fps 165hz 1440p in games like cyberpunk 2077 with raytracing turned off.

That's all I want. lol

It is very expensive, the price have nothing to do with the MSRP.

 

[Luminescent]

I am surprised by how amazed reviewers are about rtx 4090 performance.
If you look at the numbers, this was to be expected.
RTX 3090 TI - 28,300 million transistors and lower clocks , RTX 4090 - 76,300 million transistors and much higher clocks.
While they claim they did some architectural changes and the usual marketing "second, third, fourth generation..........", i attribute this gain to TSMC and they took a look at what AMD did with infinity cache and did something similar, just look at that L2 cache now.
All this gain comes from much improved process node, this can't be done on previous Samsung 8nm.

 

[rrrrex]

Transistors 3x, Clock 1.35x, but Perfomance 1.5x

 

[Dyatlov A]

Just about everything in the EU is priced insane. Do you ever think it might be the EU and not Nvidia?

I think for Bieden primarily for super high prices, the war is sponsored from our savings, as by endless mad money printing cause huge inflation and our money always worth less. Better to spend our savings for a 4090, because in a year will worth again half.

 

[Why_Me]

It is very expensive, the price have nothing to do with the MSRP.
View attachment 265104

That's expensive!

https://www.newegg.com/p/pl?N=100007709 601408872 <--- US prices atm.

 

[N/A]

Transistors 3x, Clock 1.35x, but Perfomance 1.5x

That number 1,5x includes alot of CPU limited games that don't scale very well above 100 FPS. The frame rate is double at 4K in resident evil. This will be the case for many games coupled with 14900KS next year, triple with frame generation, and could quadruple with GDDR7 in the next gen or refresh. This is still sub optimal, no way around it. Work in progress. RT core, tensor and more $L2 does take a lot of space. But apparently it's the way forward.

 

[Luminescent]

I am from EU and i'm telling you, very few people will buy an RTX 4090, we have much bigger problems and a 400W GPU is not something anyone wants in a household with possible rations for energy.
Aside this, look at the share price of Nvidia, Intel and AMD, they continue to drop even though they released new shiny toys, very few people care anymore about flagship GPU's and cpu's.
I predict GPU's and cpu's will get cheaper even at a loss if need it just to get rid of them in a year or two, there is no interest from the masses for this anymore.

 

[clopezi]

very few people will buy an RTX 4090

I expect a total sold out. We are so many people in the world and everyone has a different situation.

with possible rations for energy.

There are not expected any energy rations on any house, maybe for the industry. For example, here in Spain, we don't have any problems with this, we have a lot of renewable energies and other solutions. There are many countries in Europe that doesn't have this problems, but as always, Germany problems has to be everyone problems.

Aside this, look at the share price of Nvidia, Intel and AMD, they continue to drop even though they released new shiny toys, very few people care anymore about flagship GPU's and cpu's.

Has nothing to do with this models, all semiconductor companies are down in market share because potatoes (and global situation, china chips bans, etc), but for example, in 2020 this companies went up a lot with the same sales.

However, Nvidia it's grewing up his revenue since... ¿6 years? Every quarter without interrumptions.

I predict GPU's and cpu's will get cheaper even at a loss if need it just to get rid of them in a year or two, there is no interest from the masses for this anymore.

This it's my desire but this it's impossible meanwhile only 2-3 companies in the world can make 4nm/3nm chips.

 

[1d10t]

Definitely fast card obviously not for me, I'm more interesting in how AMD counter these core heavy beast with their chiplet design.

 

[Bwaze]

I predict GPU's and cpu's will get cheaper even at a loss if need it just to get rid of them in a year or two, there is no interest from the masses for this anymore.

Not necessarily.

When cryptomarket broke in early 2018, prices of Pascal cards (GTX 10x0) remained very high, until the fall when Turing (RTX 20x0) came out with zero price / performance increase. Nvidia had several bad quarters, and aleggedly a huge stock of unsold high end Pascal chips. People were guessing if we were going to see a flood of cheap GTX 1080, 1080 Ti's, or some product based on those, but they just dissapeared.

Throwing the excess in the landfill, pushing on with high prices eventually paid off - with new generation and new crypto boom.

Nvidia can well afford a year or two of drought. Sure, they will blame us gamers for the bad market results, but that won't lower the prices.

And competitors are irrelevant. They reach only a small portion of the market, and are so limited in their ability to offer huge number of products that they can only price match Nvidia, or loose income by selling cheaper.

 

[tfdsaf]

Better than expected, but its way overpriced for what it does! And Nvidia should stop with the 'cheat codes' to boost fps like frame generation and crap like that. At $1600 starting price its way worse in price to performance than any of the AMD cards and much worse than Nvidia's own RTX 3080.

If This card released at $1100 I'd say this is the best GPU that released in the past 5-6 years no doubt, but its about $500-600 more expensive than it should be! $1600 just to be able to play a game at 80fps at 4k? Weren't we supposed to be gaming at 60+fps at 4k generations ago?

Oh NOW I can play old generation games at 60-80fps at 4k for "only" $1600, goody!

Gamers should STOP rewarding Ngreedia for way overpriced cards, $1200 should be the HIGHEST price anyone should pay for the highest tier gpu and it should be a 'Titan' class GPU, where you get that for $1200, but you have the TI version for $900, the vanilla version for $700, etc...

What I would have liked to see is the RTX 4090 starting at $1000, the RTX 4080 at $800, RTX 4080 12GB at $700, RTX 4070 at $500 and later on the RTX Ti at $1200. This would also have the mid range GPU's return to somewhat sane prices with the RTX 4060 at $350, RTX 4050 at $250, etc...

 

[big_glasses]

Would love to., Any recommendation.. that's not super CPU limited due to the pos that Unity is?

I'd personally love GTFO, but that'd be a proper pos to check (due to rng) (maybe the devs will respond to a benchmark level, doubt it)
Wsateland 3, Hardpoint: shipbreaker, Desperados?
Valheim is probably too CPU limited. same with Raft.

Kinda hard, given a lot of unity games are ether with RNG or "low graphical", personally would just love an indicator of how CPU/GPU's can performs with that engine

Performance benchmarking in Unity: How to get started

As a Unity developer, you want your users to love playing your games, enjoying a smooth experience across all the platforms they may play on. What if I told you that we just made it easier to create performance benchmarks? If you want to learn how to develop games or Unity tools with an eye on...

blog.unity.com

Maybe Unity devs could respond with a perf benchmark?

 

[GoldenTiger]

lol really? and I felt bad because I had only two games

You're one of the few... TheFpsReview had them up too though .

 

[gffermari]

The card and its price are fine. 2080Ti, 3090, 4090 are in the same price range and are ok for enthusiasts.
The 2080, 3080, 4080s should have some value but apart from the 1080 and 3080, the rest were a failure.

Even AMDs cards give a reasonable bump in performance in every gen.
The CPUs and the game engines are the problem which do not follow the performance increase accordingly.

 

[R0H1T]

That number 1,5x includes alot of CPU limited games that don't scale very well above 100 FPS. The frame rate is double at 4K in resident evil. This will be the case for many games coupled with 14900KS next year, triple with frame generation, and could quadruple with GDDR7 in the next gen or refresh. This is still sub optimal, no way around it. Work in progress. RT core, tensor and more $L2 does take a lot of space. But apparently it's the way forward.

Yeah and we'll have flying unicorns by then just as well

 

[igralec84]

Wouldn't mind one for 4K 144hz gaming, but not at 2000€... maybe 1700€ with gritted teeth

Hoping 7900XT is priced at 1200€ and very close to the 4090 in performance or at least less than 25% slower