- This is the world's fastest gaming GPU,
as of yesterday.
Today, Nvidia launches this:
the GeForce RTX 4090, a massive improvement
over its predecessor in almost every way.
So, why aren't I more excited?
The fact that I could, you know,
buy a cheap used car for what Nvidia is asking for,
this aside,
there are some other problems that we need to talk about,
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(upbeat music)
- Two years ago the GeForce RTX 3090 launched
at an eye watering 1500 US dollars,
and Nvidia's justification for this was
that it was a Titan class GPU.
Now of course, we all know now that that was BS
as Nvidia launched the RTX 3090 Ti just six months ago,
in March of 2022, at two grand,
with a very modest spec bump for the price,
and still no Titan class
floating point compute functionality.
Both cards are available at
around a thousand dollars or so today thanks to
the crash in GPU demand and competition
from AMD is actually coming in a little bit less than that.
The RTX 4090 that launches at $1,600 US.
What do you get for the price of three PS5 gaming consoles?
It's not a Titan class GPU, and it has the same amount
of VRAM as the previous gen RTX 3090,
but, that's where the similarities end.
Not only is the memory as fast
as what you'd find on an RTX 3090 Ti,
you're getting over 50% more CUDA cores
that are each clocked at over 35% higher.
I mean, say what you want,
but that alone would be a substantial upgrade
for a mere 7% increase in MSRP,
which is half the rate of inflation since 2020.
"And what a steal," is what I would say
if it weren't for the fact that it's, it's honestly,
it's still the price of an entire mid-range gaming PC
on its own.
So what else does this bring to the table?
Nvidia claims that each of their CUDA cores
is beefed up compared to the outgoing ampere architecture
in almost all respects,
with claimed performance improvements of up to two times
what the 30 series could achieve.
That's thanks in large part to nearly double the L1 cache,
and a substantial change in the core layout itself.
And also to the use of TSMC's new N4 process
that allows the total Die Area to be nearly
150 millimeters squared smaller than its predecessor.
Of course, we need to test Nvidia's claims,
so we cut the lamps to fire up
our shiny new socket am5 bench with a fresh install
of Windows 11 22H1 and go to town with testing.
Why 22H1?
Apparently 22H2 introduced some issues
that Nvidia is not going to have ironed out
by the time this video airs.
But for now let's turn our attention
to the main event: Games.
And right out of the gate,
even the traditional raster performance is spectacular
compared to the mighty 3090 Ti.
Yes, you're seeing that correctly.
Cyberpunk 2077 ran 2.5 times faster on the 4090
than the 3090 Ti, bringing minimum frame rates
up from sub 50 to over a hundred.
We had to triple check that just to be sure, but here it is.
We're also looking at minimum frame rates beyond 120
at 4K in Forza Horizon 5, compared to sub 90
on the 3090 Ti, and it is incredibly stable.
Assassins Creed, Valhalla's frame rate also shot up
by about 50% on the 4090 enabling 4K 120 FPS gameplay
without any compromises.
Remember, this is just the rasterization performance,
what we thought Nvidia was trying to hide
from us by showing off their RT performance
in the press materials.
Far Cry 6, another Ubisoft title,
doesn't see quite the same improvement, however,
at about 30% or so across the board.
It's not bad, like not at all, but I'm just ruined
after seeing those other results.
Improvements continue to become more modest
in Shadow of the Tomb Raider,
where we're likely starting to get CPU limited at 4K.
I'll let that sink in for a moment.
Maybe wash it down with a big swig from our
chungus 64 oz water bottle from lttstore.com.
We see exactly that problem again when we run CS:GO,
where, for some bizarre reason,
the situation is flipped on its head.
The RTX 3090 Ti outperforms the 4090
throughout multiple runs.
It's especially surprising because
the GPU core clocks and the load remained high.
I mean, if you've got an explanation,
I'd love to see your take in the comments.
Dropping the resolution down to 1440P,
it seems like we're becoming even more CPU bound,
but critically, the minimum frame rates
in Forza Horizon 5 are massively improved,
making for a smoother overall experience.
Interestingly, CS:GO actually manages
to return to normalcy at 1440P.
So, I don't know,
maybe we've got a driver bug at 4K or something.
Now, do you still remember that Cyberpunk result?
(laughing) Yeah. Okay.
Okay, so check this out.
We're going from 25 FPS on average on the 3090 Ti
to a staggering 96 FPS on the 4090 at 4K without DLSS.
That's almost four times the performance.
And when we turn ray tracing on in the much older
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, the 4090 is capable
of nearly doubling the minimum FPS of the 3090 Ti.
That brings this title from mostly 60 FPS or more at 4K
to a buttery smooth 100 to 120 FPS, all without DLSS.
With DLSS, in performance mode, Cyberpunk manages an average
of 144 FPS with 1% lows over 120 FPS.
That's right, you can get buttery smooth 4K 120
with ray tracing on this card if you're okay with DLSS.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider in DLSS quality mode
is just ridiculous.
Where the 3090 Ti can't quite reach 90 FPS in 5% lows.
The 4090 is fast enough to comfortably drive
144 hertz 4K monitor.
Now, you might be wondering about the new DLSS 3.0,
Nvidia's AI frame generation technology.
We're wondering too.
Unfortunately, all of our cards, even the third party ones
that we're not allowed to show you today,
all of them crashed a lot, like a lot a lot,
even across multiple benches.
As a result, the labs weren't able to properly test DLSS 3.0
and we'd like more ray tracing results than we got.
We'll have all of that missing data
in a follow up so stay tuned.
But okay, what if you're not a big gamer?
Well, you're in luck because this thing
is also a productivity beast.
In Blender it gets over double the samples per minute
in both the monster and junk shop scenes
and just under double in the older classroom scene.
That's a substantial time savings
and might be worth it on its own if you're a 3D artist.
Similarly, our 4K DaVinci Resolve export
finished nearly a minute faster,
a difference of roughly 25%,
Something that that'll also add up over time,
especially for timelines
with a lot of rendered graphical effects.
SPECviewperf meanwhile shows massive gains
across the board, with the most substantial improvements
in 3ds Max, Maya, Medical, and Solidworks
at nearly double the score.
While Creo only saw modest performance improvement
of around 10%.
Still, this is like looking at a completely different class
of GPU, not a typical generational improvement.
With all of these performance gains,
Maybe Nvidia had to price these at $1,600
if they had any hope at all of selling
through all of their mining surplus 3090s.
Whew. And that's not everything either.
Another big part of productivity that many companies,
Intel and Apple included, are taking very seriously
is video encoding,
and Nvidia has had to prove that they're
not sleeping on the job.
Not only do you get the same high quality encoder
that first debuted on the RTX 20-series
as we saw in our DaVinci resolve test,
but you get two of them, and they're both capable of AV1.
AV1 is the new codec that's likely to take over
for live and on-demand streaming
on sites like YouTube and Twitch.
And while it can produce significantly better video quality
at the same bit rates,
it's significantly more time consuming
and difficult to encode,
unless you have hardware dedicated for it.
Intel Arc launched with it as a headline feature,
and it's a safe bet that it'll become more important
as time goes on.
Unfortunately, we don't have the time right now
to do a proper test of it for the review.
So again, stay tuned for a future video
comparing AV1 encoders.
What I can tell you today is that
it's nearly as fast as Nvidia's existing H.264
and H.265 encoders, which is pretty impressive.
Of course, all of these capabilities come
with some drawbacks,
the first of which being the power draw.
In order to reach the power target
that Nvidia set for it,
the RTX 4090 universally requires an ATX 3.0 connector
and comes with adapters for it in the box.
As the specs indicated, our RTX 4090
draws nearly as much power under gaming load
as the RTX 3090 Ti, though it did stay closer
to 425 watts than its rated 450.
This is a sharp contrast against the RTX 3090 and 6950 XT,
which consistently both pulled nearly a hundred watts less.
This does not bode well for an eventual RTX 4090 Ti.
At least the power targets on the 4080 series cards
are lower, though we don't have any of those to test today.
When we hit the RTX 4090 with a more demanding load via
MSI Kombustor, power consumption skyrockets to the red line
for both the RTX 4090 and the 3090 Ti.
Though, curiously about halfway through it kind of dips
down to about 440, which is kind of strange.
Meanwhile, the RTX 3090 once again doesn't cross
that 350 watt threshold and neither did the 6950 XT.
With great power of course comes
great thermal output capacity
and the RTX 4090 is no exception.
With thermals while gaming tracking roughly
in line with the power consumption.
Its massive three and a half slot cooler keeps the hotspot
at the 80 degree mark while gaming,
placing it squarely between the RTX 3090 and the 6950 XT
despite the power draw.
A testament to Nvidia's cooler design.
Core clocks were obviously way higher
than any previous gen card,
and crucially they remain just as stable
throughout the run of about 2.6 to 2.7 gigahertz.
When we look again at our combustor results though,
the hotspot temperature crosses the 80 degree threshold
along with the RTX 3090 Ti,
and we again see that slight dip halfway into the run.
While the 3090 sits below 70 degrees.
Core clocks end up significantly lower
at around 2.25 gigahertz for the 4090
with the 3090 Ti throttling down to below
its less power hungry sibling.
Our AMD card meanwhile sort of did a heartbeat pattern
of boosting and throttling
that could result in uneven performance.
It's worth noting that these tests were performed inside
of a Corsair 5,000 D Airflow with a 360 millimeter rad
up top and 3 120 millimeter fans drawing air up front.
So it's not like we were starving the cards for oxygen
or feeding them hot air from the CPU.
In fact, in spite of all the airflow we gave them,
the RTX 4090 and 3090 Ti both caused internal case
air temperatures to hit highs of 39 to 40 degrees,
with significantly higher minimum internal temperatures
in the RTX 3090, all at an ambient temperature
of around 21 degrees.
That means that if your case can just barely handle a 3090,
you won't be able to manage a 4090.
Sorry, small form factor aficionados,
this card is not for you.
After all that, you might look at the specs sheet
and have some lingering questions like
"why isn't Nvidia supporting PCI Express Gen 5?"
and, "where's DisplayPort 2.0?"
And the answer to those questions, both of them,
whether you like it or not,
is that Nvidia doesn't think you need them
on a $1,600 graphics card.
(sniffing) You smell that?
Yeah, that's the distinct scent of copium.
While it's true that a GPU running a whole 16 lanes
of PCI Express Gen 5 probably won't be super useful today,
a GPU running eight lanes of Gen 5 certainly would be,
especially for those who also want lots of NVMe storage.
A good bet for a card of its class.
Remember, the faster the PCI Express link,
the fewer the lanes you need
for the same bandwidth requirements.
Nvidia should know this.
As for DisplayPort 2.0,
the official line is,
"DisplayPort 1.0 already supports 8K at 60 hertz,
and the consumer displays won't need more for while,"
which might sound fair until you realize
that you are also limited to 120 hertz at 4K,
a performance level the RTX 4090 can exceed, as we've seen.
The only way to get higher refresh rates
at DisplayPort 1.4 is to use Chroma subsampling
which is, to put it mildly, a suboptimal experience
on such premium hardware.
240 hertz 4K displays exist today
and will have DisplayPort 2.0 support soon.
Arc already supports it, and RDNA 3 has been confirmed
to support DisplayPort 2.0 since May.
Nvidia is clearly trying to save a buck again
on a GPU that costs as much as a Series X, a PS5,
a Switch and a Steam Deck, combined.
Or maybe these cards were just ready and waiting
in a warehouse for longer than we realized.
It's incredibly amusing to me
that the first GPU that might actually be capable
of running 8K gaming without asterisks is being handled
in such a lackadaisical fashion by Team Green.
The days of generational performance
for dollar gains are over, they say.
Moore's law is dead, they say.
And yet the competition doesn't seem to think so.
While it's true that nobody can touch
the 4090's mammoth performance right now,
as we saw with the RTX 3090, that won't last forever.
And that's where things get weird.
As it exists right now, while the RTX 4090 chugs
as much power as an RTX 3090 Ti,
it is a massive upgrade over both that card
and the vanilla 3090 in nearly every respect,
well in excess of its price increase.
For content creators, this is a no brainer.
But I cannot in good conscience recommend gamers
with more dollars than sense go out
and purchase a piece of hardware that is incapable
of driving the also very expensive displays that
might actually be able to take advantage of it,
especially when a less expensive and less power hungry card,
perhaps even Nvidia's own RTX 4080s, can do the same thing.
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- Thanks for watching guys.
This is, well, I guess a little bit more positive
and also negative than the Intel Arc review.
Go check that review out as well for a little bit
on the increasing competition in the GPU space.
I think we, we all think that it's long overdue.