The Geforce 4090 was often almost double the speed of my Geforce 3080 in practice.
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Obviously, there’s more to it than that, which I’ll be investigating in this video.
Let’s be honest: you’ve already seen Linus Tech Tip’s’s’s video on this card.
You’ve already seen Gamers Nexus, and all the others, and I just don’t have the resources
to compete with them.
So this video will focus on my experiences with the 4090, compared with my old 3080.
At first glance, comparing these two doesn’t make as much sense as comparing, say, the
3090 to the 4090, or the 3080 to the 4080.
Hell, even the 3090 to the 4080 would be interesting just to see how it would stack up against
the previous flagship.
But the 3080 to the 4090?
Who does that?!
Me.
Because I have no choice.
And I suppose, in a way it’s the most valid comparison for people looking to upgrade,
because the leap between these two will be the greatest.
But let’s be honest: most people on a 3080 or Radeon 6800 tier of graphics card are probably
quite happy with what they’ve got already!
Because those are really capable cards.
And unless you need LITERALLY the highest framerate in games possible, or 144 hz at
4K, then the Geforce 4090’s power is simply going to be wasted.
At least, until future games and processors can catch up with it.
I think this was the first time I was testing games at 4K and 8K and was having to check
that it wasn’t a lower resolution instead because I was still getting playable, or even
triple-digit framerates at these resolutions and settings, which just seemed…
wrong.
Is 8K gaming finally possible?
Yes, and natively so in less demanding or older titles like Assassins Creed Odyssey,
Red Dead Redemption 2 and Deus Ex Mankind Divided- and by possible, I mean at maximum
settings, at greater than 30 but less than 60 fps.
But Nvidia is increasingly blurring the lines of what counts as what, and if you factor
DLSS into the equation then 8K becomes a whole different story.
So the deal with DLSS is that you can get up-to-double the framerate by turning DLSS
2 on, and then can up-to-double it AGAIN with the new framerate interpolation tech which
they’ve branded as DLSS 3.
I have tested this in the few games that it supports, and it is actually really impressive!
Like I said, I’ll cover it more in a separate video, but to summarise: in some games, like
Flight Simulator 2020, it’s almost double the framerate for free- making it a complete
no-brainer to use if you have it.
Meanwhile, in other types of games like Cyberpunk where there’s a lot more fast-paced action,
it’s still a reasonable boost to the framerate that you SEE, but it comes with a detectable,
but subtle amount of what feels like mouse smoothing.
It does also introduce some graphical artifacts, I was concerned that they’d be obvious but
they really are not- or at least, aren’t at the 4090’s framerates- if I played back
some recordings at reduced speed then it was possible to detect the visual errors this
introduced, but in practice, they conceal themselves very well.
The artifacts only start showing themselves in areas of super-fast motion, or around thin
objects.
But unless you’re REALLY going out of your way to generate these, and are specifically
focusing your attention on where they’re being generated, you won’t notice these
effects, or you might just dismiss them as being artifacts from temporal anti-aliasing,
which looks similar and appears in the same sorts of locations.
It REALLY IS subtle- and that’s even in scenes where I was deliberately trying to
generate them.
The only real thing to be aware of with this framerate interpolation tech is the slight
mouse-smoothing effect that it introduces, which I would deem invisible in flight or
racing games, but it can be detected in first person shooting segments.
I’ll be covering DLSS 3 in more depth another video.
This video will contain my 4K testing; some games without DLSS, some with, and even some
with the new DLSS 3, but its support in games right now is so limited that it’s hardly
as important to your experience with existing games as improvements elsewhere to the card’s
architecture will be.
I suppose the other big thing I had concerns about was the Geforce 4090’s power consumption.
Rated at 450 watts, it’s almost 50% more power-hungry than the Geforce 3080 is.
The frameview readings I got put it closer to 20% more power-hungry than the 3080 in
practice, whilst delivering almost double the framerate.
In some games, like Flight Simulator and Death Stranding at lower resolutions (LIKE 4K) the
Geforce 4090 actually consumed LESS power than the 3080 did, presumably because those
are CPU-limited examples, and so it’s outputting the same amount of work but more efficiently
than the 3080 can.
So while it’s a bit difficult to wrap your head around this, if you use a Geforce 4090
to game at low settings or resolutions, then depending on which CPU you have you might
end up consuming LESS power than a less powerful graphics card would in the same situation!
So yeah, I would describe the Geforce 4090 as being a remarkably efficient card, but
that fact is obscured by its massive 450 watt power rating, and the fact that all previews
featured DLSS so heavily when talking about performance or efficiency.
And sure, DLSS will improve those things, but considering the 4090’s raw performance,
the card is already efficient without it.
So yeah.
That’s the low-down.
Let’s get onto the benchmarks.
The easiest game I tested was Death Stranding.
I didn’t test any game below 4K because these are evidently both 4K-capable cards,
but with this one I used DLSS Performance mode, so it is effectively a 1080p title and
I feel like both cards were getting a bit hamstrung by the game’s 240 fps framecap.
One card, more than the other.
The 3080 managed 178 FPS average with a 1% low of 143, while the 4090 managed 216, but
with a low not much higher at 149.
Rather interestingly, this is one of those cases where the 4090 consumes less power than
the 3080 does.
As expected, it seems like these cards need more challenging examples to get away from
CPU limitations.
Ramping it up to 8K, with DLSS performance preset (Not ultra performance, just performance)
the 3080 clung on with 61 fps, and the 4090 crushed it with 120.
Now we’re definitely being GPU-limited, the 4090 can pull further ahead to almost
double the speed.
So while it’s technically 4K being upscaled to 8K, it’s definitely how I’d choose
to play this game at this resolution.
I’m kind of proud that the second-easiest 4K benchmark I tested was Crysis 3.
What a time to be alive!
The Geforce 3080 managed an excellent 129 fps at highest settings, but the 4090 was
better, scoring 197 FPS.
In Crysis 3.
At 4K.
Like I said, what a time to be alive.
This still only makes it 50% faster than the 3080 is, mind- but something tells me I’m
still being a little bit CPU limited in this title.
Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition is next, and is a good example of a heavily raytraced game
that finally lets the 4090 stretch its legs!
Maxed out with all the raytraced effects at 4K, but using DLSS Quality mode, the Geforce
3080 managed 99 fps, and the 4090 output 190.
Now we’re beginning to approach the double performance gains I was talking about.
I’m not happy with how I benchmarked Assassins Creed Odyssey.
I wanted to max it out, but it eventually transpired that ONEDRIVE was coming back from
the dead to sneakily reset my graphics settings in this game to high every time, so I just
tested that instead and didn’t have time to redo it.
Unfortunately, this is one of those games that loves to stutter all over the place.
I averaged 3 different runs, yet despite being 54% faster on average, the Geforce 4090’s
minimums were still SLOWER than the 3080’s per the game’s built-in benchmark.
From my experience with this title, I wouldn’t say it’s too much to worry about and that
even the averages are still being quite majorly dictated by the CPU in the system at this
resolution, of which I’m not even sure what the resolution is because the anti-aliasing
preset in this game sneakily adjusts it a bit.
So not a fun one to benchmark here.
Let’s move on.
Back in 2017 I thought Shadow of War was a beautiful open-world game, but it goes to
show how far we’ve come since then since it looks kind of ugly.
Despite that, it’s a game I have beef with, since it’s proven to be a very challenging
game to run at high resolutions.
It was one of the first that forced me to drop the resolution below 4K on my Geforce
1080 card, and I have never forgiven it for that.
And I swear that even my 2080 TI would sometimes drop below 60 from time to time in this title.
But never fear: the Geforce 3080 manages 89 FPS in the benchmark, and the 4090’s 157
finally provides more FPS than my high refresh rate monitor can output.
I more than DOUBLED my average framerates in the first minute of the Deus Ex Mankind
Divided’s benchmark.
This game is 6 years old now, but it is nice to say that the game is finally able to be
maxed out at 4K, 144 HZ.
And it’s also a great example of how the 3080 can be a capable 4K gaming card, but
the 4090 is a capable high-refresh rate 4K gaming card.
Red Dead Redemption 2 ran almost double the speed on the Geforce 4090 as well.
This was at 4K, maximum preset and without upscaling of any sort.
Control is another game where I more than doubled my framerates by using the 4090.
Putting that into context, the 3080 still managed just over 60, while the 4090 was almost
achieving 144 hz.
And the last 2 games I tested happen to be the ones with support for DLSS 3, and looking
at it, it makes sense because they’re among the most demanding to run… but for different
reasons.
Flight Simulator 2020 first, which is demanding because it places strain on every component
inside -AND OUTSIDE- your system, ranging from your CPU, through to your storage drives,
and even your internet connection.
A direct comparison between the 3080 and 4090 showed that the latter was only 33% faster,
indicating holdups elsewhere.
And it’s THIS that makes DLSS 3 valuable in this title- because it means that the GPU
can be busy doing something, while it’s waiting for everything else to catch up.
Like I said, this is one title where I’d consider the framerate interpolation technology
to be a no-brainer to enable.
The OTHER DLSS 3-compatible title is Cyberpunk 2077, and it’s useful here because, firstly
it’s already a very demanding raytraced title, and secondly, because they’ve introduced
an EVEN HIGHER quality raytraced setting where you practically have to enable DLSS 3 if you
want to reach 60 FPS at 4K.
In this title, the 4090 was more than double the speed of the 3080, even before factoring
in framerate interpolation, which may suggest the title comes close to maxing out the 3080’s
10 GB of VRAM, or simply that the 4000 generation has optimised its raytracing performance in
some way.
Notice how DLSS 3 didn’t double the framerate in this title.
But here’s the thing: it did!
It’s just that DLSS 3 comes with its own framerate penalty- and Cyberpunk’s built-in
benchmark which can only display the base, pre-DLSS 3 framerate, reported the game dropped
from 66 to about 50 frames a second when DLSS 3 was enabled!
We don’t see this drop so much in more CPU-limited games like Flight Simulator, but in this more
GPU-bound situation, the amount of time it spends generating these interpolated frames
causes more of an impact to the base framerate, which could in turn contribute more towards
the amount of input lag felt when playing the game with DLSS 3 enabled.
I’m definitely very curious to see what other reviewers have noticed in this regard.
But the feature still opens up a new possibility: Up ‘till now, we’ve always seen DLSS as
being a technology to BOOST framerates, or to bring raytracing performance back up to
how it would have been without raytracing on in the first place.
But this suggests a third use: which is to enable an even HIGHER image quality, provided
you don’t mind relying on the framerate interpolation to bring the game’s performance
back up to the starting point again.
The way you use DLSS now really lets you choose what you want out of the technology.
In conclusion: everything about the Geforce 4090 feels like overkill, from its size to
its performance.
The fact it can double my performance compared with a previous high-end card is still something
I haven’t really got my head around, because I don’t think in my time with the 3080 I
ever thought that what I needed was double the framerate.
Sure, maybe 10 or 20% extra here or there in particularly demanding titles or scenes.
But certainly not DOUBLE!
I like to think of myself as a demanding user, yet to challenge this graphics card I’ve
felt the need to do silly things like 8K, or 4K native with raytracing.
And even then, this card still takes a good stab at that.
With Nvidia’s presentations leading up to this card’s launch, the focus was very much
on DLSS 3, and it shrouded all of the performance figures.
That, along with the 450 watt power consumption of the 4090 really tarnished how I expected
this card to perform.
But having tested it… it’s a beast!
It does NOT need DLSS 3, nor even DLSS 2 to run things at blistering speeds.
But obviously, those things help.
And it never feels like it’s breaking a sweat, either- my 3080 would regularly hit
80 degrees, and the fans would spin up to audible levels.
It SOUNDED like the card was struggling.
Yet the 4090 barely ever reaches 70 degrees and remains virtually silent over my case
fans, even when I’m demanding 8K raytracing from it.
It doesn’t begin shrieking, and I don’t expect a spectacular flash and a plume of
smoke to shoot out from my system.
It feels like this card is designed to handle its power limit.
So in a vacuum, the situation is obvious: the Geforce 4090 is the fastest card in the
world right now, and I doubt you’ll find anything it will struggle with at 4K or below.
But the real question is: how will the 4080’s compare?
Will they ALSO be really fast, with DLSS just there to boost them further still?
Or will they begin relying on DLSS to reach the speeds that we may expect from the high-end
tier of card?
Unfortunately, I don’t have the answer to that.
We’ll find that out next month.
But the 4090’s price-performance proposition majorly depends on how the 4080 cards perform,
and on how AMD’s upcoming 7000 series fares.
But for now at least, it’s a sad time for us in England.
This card was never going to be cheap, but $1,600 now translates to even more pounds,
and we’re looking at closer to £1,700 for this card, which is… really going to limit
who will be able to justify getting it.
I mean, there are many reasons for this card beyond the gaming ones that I’ve covered.
But within the gaming space, given how capable cards like the 3080 still are at high settings,
and will still be for many years to come, you’ve got to ask…
do you need it?