Let's take a look at Nvidia's new flagship and top gaming graphics card at the moment, the GeForce RTX 4090. Against the backdrop of the rest of the news and the craziness that is happening around us, the release of the RTX 4090 is likely to get lost in the daily flow of information and events that are closer to home.
But the appearance of the Ada Lovelace semi-line even in the peaceful West failed to gain the necessary hype, and this is not surprising: it seems that Nvidia itself was ashamed of its new products, not mentioning their names either in the title of the presentation or in the timecodes in the video description.
Contents:
- General information
- Comparison of Geforce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 3090 Ti cards in ASUS TUF Gaming
- Tests
- Where can I buy a GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card?
General information
What attracted the most attention was not even the promised twofold increase in traditional rasterization and almost fourfold increase in raytracing games, but the size of the cards, their price, and power consumption, which has already reached 450 watts on official charts, which, by the way, is not the limit, but more on that later.
The RTX 4080 Healthy Person and RTX 4080 Smoker deserve a separate review when they get into our hands, but for now, Ada Lovelace looks like an upgrade to the current top of the RTX family, while the RTX 3080 and below are cheaper cards.
However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to pronounce this word in light of recent releases.
But such price tags do not shock us, given the inflation and rising prices for absolutely everything related to the production of fresh high-tech filling, and especially for fresh 4-nm semiconductor wafers from TSMC.
The AD102 chip based on them boasts as many as 76 billion transistors versus 28 in the previous flagship GA102 chip, a huge L2 cache of 72 megabytes versus six in its predecessor, and at least a twofold gap in theoretical computing power, which cannot be said about the video memory, which remained the same.
It's time to find out what kind of performance boost it will give us, what frequencies, temperatures and appetites we will see in games at maximum settings with 1440p and 4K rays. We will compare the new ASUS Tuf Gaming series with the RTX 3090 Ti of the same series. And as you may have noticed, the RTX 3090 Ti is noticeably smaller.
Comparison of Geforce RTX 4090 and GeForce RTX 3090 Ti cards in ASUS TUF Gaming
This leads to the disappointing conclusion that the power consumption of the RTX 4090 is clearly higher, but in practice it's not quite the same.
Even without running games and just looking at the card BIOS information in GPU-Z, we can see that the power consumption limits of the cards are exactly the same in the stock version: 450 watts for both.
This is, of course, a lot, and looking at the maximum 600W limit of the new top, all questions disappear: that's why such a massive cooling system and a new power adapter with four connectors versus three in the 3090 Ti.
ASUS recommends a kilowatt power supply for such a combination with a powerful processor, and if you get your hands on a power limit that can be raised by 33%, we recommend even more. But since we had to test with pre-release drivers and, of course, before the release, overclocking is a topic for future articles.
Since Huang stuttered about 3 GHz, we'll have to check for ourselves. The test bench is powered by Intel's Core i9-12900KF processor in conjunction with a top-of-the-line DDR5-6400 RAM set from G.Skill with CL32 XMP timings. The full list of components is below in the screenshot.
Tests
Cyberpunk 2077
Let's start right away with hardcore, Cyberpunk 2077, 2K resolution, rays on ultra and no DLSS. A great start, the new flagship is 80 percent ahead of the previous one in all respects, heats up less and even consumes less electricity than the previous one. To put it mildly, it's far from a three- and fourfold gap in raytracing, but this is without DLSS version 3, which we will be able to test very soon.
4K with rays without healing DLSS brings both flagships to their knees. But the same 80 percent difference in performance takes the RTX 4090 to a whole new level of playability. As the resolution has increased, so has the appetite: 430 watts is the ceiling of the new product out of the box, which you will see in the most demanding games.
Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy
Guardians of the Galaxy, 2K, ultra settings, and RT display. The gap between the cards is no longer 80 percent, but 47 percent. But judging by the power consumption of the RTX 4090, it will be able to perform better in higher resolutions. To understand whether there is a botleneck on the part of the processor or memory subsystem, it is better to proceed to the 4K test immediately.
In 4K, the gap has increased, but not by much. It doesn't live up to Huang's promises, but you can immediately feel the one-and-a-half times performance increase in gameplay, especially on a 4K monitor or TV.
Dying Light 2 Stay Human
Dying Light 2, 1440p, maximum settings, including the entire RT beauty range. The game is still very demanding with rays and without DLSS, and here the RTX 4090 performs almost like a cyberpunk game: 77 percent advantage in average FPS and almost 80 percent in rare events.
In 4K, the increase over the previous flagship remained unchanged. Without DLSS, both cards have a hard time, but the new product is still significantly closer to the 60 frames per second mark. The promised support for DLSS version 3 should bring the RTX 40-series to a new level of performance in this voracious game.
Hitman 3
RT rendering and shadows in Hitman 3 also have a big impact on the frame rate, but judging by the load of the RTX 4090 GPU, which is almost 70 percent faster, even in 2K resolution, the former flagship i9-12900K does not keep up with the video card. We didn't think this moment would come in 2022: 1440p becomes a CPU-centric benchmark.
With the transition to 4K, the gap between video cards has increased by 5 percent. And even in 4K, the GPU utilization is sometimes far from 100%. Now, with the release of this monster, it's time to update the Ryzen 9 7950X and Core i9-12900K comparison: the level of graphics performance has been raised so much that even for the current top processors, games are becoming a tough test.
Resident Evil Village
Resident Evil Village is interesting in its own way in that it looks beautiful, produces a lot of frames, RT GI and reflections are in place, but there is still no DLSS in the game. But the RTX 4090 didn't need it: it already broke away from the 3090 Ti by almost 100 frames and its performance on very rare events was equal to the average frame rate of the former flagship for $ 2 thousand!
In 4K, the new top downplays the previous one even more: the gap in average FPS was almost 75 percent. And judging by the results in this game, which can be praised for its excellent optimization and modest CPU appetite, the power of the RTX 4090 and, probably, a future competitor from AMD, will require only top-end processors in the mix, even for high resolutions.
Far Cry 6
In Far Cry 6, the picture is sad. It's not the graphics cards' fault, but the game's optimization, which is getting more and more lame with each new installment. Not a single video card could handle DXR shadows. And this is in 2K! Let's see how the graphics cards will behave in 4K.
In 4K, the new product has not much less frames, which cannot be said about the 3090 Ti. Still, the situation is not adequate. Will someone fix the performance in Far Cry 6? We doubt it, and we're not sure that new driver versions will be able to significantly improve the performance of the graphics engine in this game.
Deathloop
Although Deathloop is not the work of Ubisoft, the game has similar problems with scalability. And yes, this is a 2K resolution with RT shadows enabled. A 20 percent difference in the average frame rate is hardly adequate. That's why other games are chosen at presentations of new hardware, because many people still think that FPS is always the fault of the video card.
In 4K, everything is much more adequate: the difference between the 3090 Ti and 4090 soared to 83 percent in the average frame rate and almost as much in rare events. Maybe the Core i9-12900K is no longer suitable for next-gen? We will definitely check this out and compare the new Ryzen and the 13th generation of Intel processors that will be released very soon.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla
Now it's time for games without raytracing and let's see the difference in traditional rasterization. Assassin's Creed Valhalla, with the highest graphics preset and RTX 4090, delivers almost 70 frames more than its predecessor. Nvidia has clearly worked on optimization in this game, as previously the scalability and performance of their cards was not ideal.
The impressive advantage of the RTX 4090 continues in 4K, where the minimum FPS is close to the average of the previous flagship. If memory serves, the difference in at least rasterization between the 2080 Ti and 3090 was much smaller. But still, it falls short of the promised twofold.
Red Dead Redemption
Red Dead Redemption 2 is also not a model of perfect optimization and seems to bump into the processor at 1440p. But the results of frame time measurements show that according to the statistics of rare and very rare events, the RTX 4090 is more than twice as fast as the previous gaming flagship.
In 4K, the difference in the minimum frame rate has decreased, and in the average frame rate, as expected, it has increased to one and a half times. So we've reached the time when Red Dead Redemption 2 reaches 120 FPS at maximum settings and hits the processor or memory subsystem. Let's see what Rockstar will do and how the new GTA installment will work on this engine.
God of War
And finally, God of War with Sony's optimization for DirectX 11. 1440p, ultra settings. And we expected to see a more impressive advantage of the new flagship. 44 percent is not bad, but the rest of the games have already spoiled us. The difference in minimum FPS is even smaller. Most likely, we will see a different picture in 4K.
The picture was not that different: in 4K, the difference increased to 54 percent, and we honestly expected more. In this article, we tried to use recent games with ray tracing, but we all understand that there are no such things as too many games and tests. It is possible that in older and more graphically light games the advantage of the new line may be significantly different from what you just saw.
But we will definitely find out about all this, about DLSS version 3, as well as about the overclocking and processor dependence of the new flagship in the near future, and, apparently, a lot of interesting things are waiting for us.
Where to buy a GeForce RTX 4090 video card
Immediately after the video card goes on sale, it will be available in the Artline online store. The catalog now offers RTX 3090 Ti. Favorable prices and a warranty are available to customers. This resource offers original and certified products. Customers can be sure that they are buying a quality product.