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 MSI GeForce RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X is a factory overclocked variant of the RTX 4090 that's rated for 2625 MHz Boost, vs 2520 MHz on the FE, or 4.1%. Averaged over our benchmarks at 4K the card is 3% faster, which isn't much, and impossible to notice subjectively. The average clock frequency across all our tests at 4K was 2820 MHz, the FE did 2701 MHz (4.4% 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.

With the GeForce 40 Series, MSI is introducing a liquid cooled option to their lineup. I've always been a bit sceptical of AIO watercooling solutions on graphics cards, because they are bulky, don't make that much of a difference and the pump is always running with a high pitched whine. I guess you can imagine how surprised I was when I started noise measurements and heard absolutely no noise from the card, in a quiet room with everything turned off. I had to put my ear right next to the graphics card on an open test bench and stop breathing, just to hear a tiny bit of noise that sounds a bit like a pocket watch ticking. MSI did watercooling right! When the card is sitting idle and the fans are stopped, the pump (made by Cooler Master btw) will go to minimal RPMs, so that the water still circulates, but there's no noticeable sound. Just to clarify, when this card is installed in your case, there's no way you'll be able to hear the pump. As expected, temperatures are impressive, 58°C by default and 60°C with the quiet BIOS is better than any other RTX 4090 tested today. However, the differences in heat and noise to the best air cooled cards like MSI Suprim X and ASUS STRIX are surprisingly small. In our apples-to-apples cooler comparison test we could confirm that the Suprim Liquid X cooling capability is much better than any other card, due to the large radiator. I also feel like MSI could have given us a much quieter "quiet" BIOS—there's plenty of temperature headroom to do so. While it is kind of obvious, make sure to check if your case has enough space to fit the radiator—this is a small drawback of watercooling. On the other hand, unlike any other card tested today, the graphics card itself is just dual-slot, which potentially frees up more PCIe slots to use for other devices.

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. MSI's card consumes a little bit more power in gaming, but the difference is relatively small (346 W on FE vs 357 W on MSI). What's a bit more relevant is the non-gaming power consumption, which went from 21 W to 38 W, probably the RGB is to blame here. Surprisingly, it seems that the watercooling pump and radiator fans don't add much additional power consumption.

Manual OC worked very well on the Suprim Liquid X, just like on the Suprim X. Both cards reached over 500 FPS after manual OC—a new record. The differences between all RTX 4090 cards so far are fairly small though, and the silicon lottery also plays a role here.

According to MSI, the RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X will sell for $1750, which is a surprisingly small increase of $150 over the NVIDIA Founders Edition baseline pricing for RTX 4090. The air-cooled Suprim X goes for $1700, so an extra $50 for the watercooler is very reasonable. We're not aware of any model that sells for below $1600. These $150 get you 3% higher performance out of the box, a fantastic water cooler, nice RGB lighting and a dual BIOS. What makes the Liquid X stand out is that it takes up only two slots in your system, even the NVIDIA Founders Edition is triple slot. Of course you still need the space to fit the radiator, but it's an interesting alternative to classic air-cooled cards. What I really like is that MSI is slowing down the pump's speed when idle, which eliminates the permanent "hum" noise that all other GPU AIO watercooling solutions had (that I'm aware of).

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 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, such as DLSS 3. 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 RTX 4080 and especially AMD's new Radeon RX 7000 offerings.