NVIDIA's Ada Lovelace generation of GPUs made big waves just weeks ago at GTC when the new architecture was first presented. Yesterday we posted our Founders Edition review, today we have seven more reviews for you: ASUS STRIX OC, Colorful Vulcan OC-V, Gigabyte Gaming OC, MSI Suprim X, MSI Suprim Liquid X, Palit GameRock OC and Zotac Amp Extreme Airo.

Unlike Ampere, which saw RTX 3080 released first, and RTX 3090 later, NVIDIA is starting with the flagship this time. The new GeForce RTX 4090 is based on the AD102 graphics processor, which is the world's first 5 nanometer GPU, fabricated at TSMC Taiwan. On the RTX 4090, NVIDIA has enabled 16384 GPU cores (+88% vs RTX 3080, +52% vs RTX 3090 Ti)—this alone will achieve a big performance boost. NVIDIA didn't just add "more", they also made their units smarter. While the CUDA Cores haven't really changed since Ampere, the company increased L2 cache significantly, up to 72 MB from 6 MB on the RTX 3090 Ti—a huge increase. The ray tracing cores got several performance improvement features, like shader execution reordering, opacity tests and micro mesh generation (more about these on the Architecture page of this review). Last, but certainly not least is DLSS 3 Frame Generation, which introduces a completely new way of increasing FPS. With Frame Generation, the GPU will automagically generate an additional frame for each frame rendered, based on the movement in each frame—doubling FPS in the process.

For a majority of gamers, the "classic" raster performance is very important though—highest settings, RT off, DLSS off—so we made sure to extensively test this scenario using 25 games at three resolutions. The GeForce RTX 4090 achieves incredible performance results here: +45% vs RTX 3090 Ti. Compared to RTX 3080 the uplift is 89%, 64% faster than Radeon RX 6950 XT. The ASUS RTX 4090 STRIX OC is a factory overclocked variant of the RTX 4090 that's rated for 2610 MHz Boost, vs 2520 MHz on the FE, or 3.6%. Averaged over our benchmarks at 4K the card is indeed 3% faster, which isn't much, and impossible to notice subjectively. The average clock frequency across all our tests at 4K was 2865 MHz, the FE did 2701 MHz (6.1% difference).

All this testing is done at 4K resolution and that's the only resolution that really makes sense for the RTX 4090. Maybe 1440p, if you want to drive a 144+ Hz monitor at max FPS, but you'll end up a bit CPU-limited in many titles. Interestingly, when CPU limited at 1080p, the RTX 4090 is clearly behind Ampere cards in several games. It seems the new architecture has a bit higher CPU overhead, which further drags down the maximum FPS the CPU can achieve. This is more of an interesting curiosity though, not a real issue.

Where RTX 4090 can flex its muscle is with ray tracing enabled. While previously enabling RT at 4K always meant some compromises—either upscaling or reduced settings—the RTX 4090 will give you 60 FPS with RT active in nearly all titles. Taking a closer look at our ray tracing benchmarks we can see that the performance hit from enabling ray tracing is considerably lower than before, thanks to the various technological improvements. Compared to AMD, the ray tracing performance is often 3x as high—AMD has to innovate here with their next-gen, or they'll fall behind too much and NVIDIA will win ray tracing.

I have to say I really like the ASUS STRIX aesthetic, adding a splash of color made the cards much more vibrant, and the paint used screams "high-quality". What helps to make a difference is that depending on the viewing angle the color changes slightly, and there's lots of other subtle details in the surrounding elements. While other vendors combine a metal backplate with a plastic cooler shroud, ASUS went all out and uses an all-metal design. The colder feel of the thick metal further improves the experience when you hold this 2.5 kg brick in your hands. Under the hood we found one of the strongest VRMs we've ever seen. ASUS is using a 24+4 phase VRM design on their card, using only the most premium components available. Unlike nearly all cards reviewed today, which default to 450 W power limit out of the box, the ASUS STRIX ticks at 500 W by default, which adds a little bit of extra headroom for the card to boost higher out of the box. In terms of cooling, the card can impress too. This is the strongest air cooler tested today, only the watercooled MSI Suprim Liquid X does better in our apples-to-apples cooler comparison test, and only by a surprisingly small margin. Temperatures on the STRIX are super low with only 62°C, and noise levels are lower than on the FE. Once you enable the quiet BIOS, temperatures go up slightly, from 62°C to 65°C—no meaningful difference for all intents and purposes, but noise levels improve considerably, down to 29.8 dBA, only the MSI Suprim X and Suprim Liquid X (with quiet BIOS) emit lower noise than that, and the differences are really small at that point. Just like with all other GeForce RTX 4090 cards, you definitely need good ventilation in your case to get rid of all the generated heat.

We've tested NVIDIA's new DLSS 3 frame-generation capability, and I have to say I'm impressed. At first I was highly sceptical and thought it would be like the soap opera interpolation effect on TVs, but no, it works REALLY well. The algorithm takes two frames, measures how things have moved in those two frames and calculates an intermediate frame in which these things moved only half the distance. While this approach is definitely not problem-free, especially when pixel-peeping at stills or slowed down video, in real-time it's nearly impossible to notice any difference. As you run at higher FPS and resolution it becomes even more difficult because the deltas between each frame are getting smaller and smaller. I also feel like we're only seeing the beginning of this technology, and there will be numerous improvements in the future. Adoption rates should be good, because implementing DLSS 3 frame generation is very easy if you already have DLSS 2 support in your game. Another interesting NVIDIA Tech is "Reflex", which reduces the gaming latency, so you see things earlier on your screen and can react quicker, to get more kills, or survive for longer.

Thanks to the move from 8 nm Samsung to 5 nm TSMC, efficiency has improved drastically. Energy efficiency is almost doubled compared to cards like RTX 3090 / 3090 Ti, 50% better than AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT. Zotac's card consumes a little bit more power in gaming, but the difference is relatively small (346 W on FE vs 360 W on ASUS). What's a bit more relevant is the non-gaming power consumption, which is fairly high with 24 W in single-monitor idle and 41 W with two monitors.

With manual OC we almost broke the 3 GHz barrier, and memory reached 1475 MHz. While these two numbers aren't the highest today, the actual max FPS after OC was the second highest in our test group, closely behind the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim X. The differences between cards are fairly small though, and the silicon lottery also plays a role here.

ASUS confirmed to us a $2000 price point for the RTX 4090 STRIX OC, which is a massive $400 increase over the NVIDIA Founders Edition baseline pricing for RTX 4090. We're not aware of any 4090 model that sells for below $1600. No doubt, you're getting an amazing graphics card that's built like a tank, with only the most premium components and additional features like one more HDMI, dual BIOS, case fan headers etc., but +$400? That's really harsh. While there's always people who are willing to spend top dollar for "the best", I feel like with GeForce 40xx, MSI is really in striking distance to the STRIX, and they offer a watercooled SKU now which has slightly better cooling performance and noise at similar performance as the STRIX, but costing $1750, which is a significant price difference. I feel like an $1800 price point would change the value proposition for the STRIX considerably, if we can even talk about "value" in this segment. ASUS does offer more RTX 4090 models though, such as the TUF for $1600 and TUF OC for $1800.

Due to its high pricing, GeForce RTX 4090 is not for everyone. Rather it seems NVIDIA wanted to offer a new super high-end option, and it's priced accordingly. Looking at our Performance per Dollar charts, it seems that NVIDIA picked a perf/$ value that's competitive with the RTX 3090 and Radeon RX 6950 XT in today's market, just at a higher absolute price point because much higher performance is offered, and new features too, like DLSS3. In the community there's overwhelming disagreement with the $1600 price point, and I can't blame people who are trying to pay their gas and power bills first. Still, RTX 4090 is an amazing new product that's almost flawless, and it will definitely be a hit with the people who can afford it. Everybody else? Hold out a bit longer, for the RTX 4080 and especially AMD's new Radeon RX 7000 offerings.