A forthcoming flagship graphics card from Nvidia, the RTX 4090, is expected to take over high-end gaming PCs and benchmark top-10 lists in the not-too-distant future. The discussion instead turns to how well the RTX 4090 will perform versus the current kings of the hill, the RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti, as there hasn't been much news about AMD's planned next-generation cards. Will these soon-to-be last-generation cards still compete, or will the RTX 4090 outperform all others in a way that has never been seen before?
Specs
We'll see a significant increase in CUDA cores with the upcoming GPU generation, as well as more RT and tensor cores to provide quicker ray tracing and improved DLSS. The next generation of Nvidia RT and tensor cores, as well as the significant increase in clock rates, will all contribute to the significant performance gains Nvidia claims are feasible. Even though we don't know for sure how many of these new cores will be available, a graph shown at Nvidia's GTC showcase suggested that there could be a lot more of them.
Nvidia looks to have been able to significantly increase the core count and clock speeds while maintaining the same power consumption as the RTX 3090 Ti thanks to the new architecture's increased efficiency on its new 4nm manufacturing. However, compared to some of the speculated totals that have been floating around in recent weeks, that is still a sizable TDP. Even though they are still a big step up from the RTX 3090, the memory options on the RTX 3090 Ti don't seem to have changed much. At its GTC keynote speech, Nvidia showed off (almost) all of the specs for the RTX 4090 for the first time, along with the RTX 4080:
| RTX 4090 | RTX 3090 Ti | RTX 3090 | |
| Architecture | Ada Lovelace | Ampere | Ampere |
| GPU | AD102 | GA102 | GA102 |
| Process node | 4nm TSMC | 8nm Samsung | 8nm Samsung |
| CUDA cores | 16,384 | 10,752 | 10,496 |
| RT cores | 144 3rd-gen (rumored) | 84 | 82 |
| Tensor cores | 576 4th-gen (rumored) | 336 | 328 |
| Base clock | 2,235 MHz | 1,560MHz | 1,395Mhz |
| Boost clock | 2,520 MHz | 1,860 MHz | 1,695MHz |
| Memory | 24GB GDDR6X | 24GB GDD6X | 24GB GDDR6X |
| Memory speed | 21 Gbps (rumored) | 21Gbps | 19.5Gbps |
| Memory bus width | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit |
| Bandwidth | 1,1018GBps (rumored) | 1,018GBps | 936GBps |
| TDP | 450W | 450W | 350W |
Prices and availability
In September 2020, not long after the flagship RTX 3080, the RTX 3090 was made available. It was originally $1,500, but over the past two years, its price has changed significantly, occasionally increasing to over $3,000. As of this writing, most dealers are selling it for roughly $1,100. The RTX 3090 Ti was on sale in March 2022 for $2,000 for the first time. Due to shortages at the time, it may have occasionally cost up to $4,000, but soon after, prices fell precipitously, and today it can be purchased for as low as $1,200.
The RTX 4090 made its debut on September 20 during Nvidia's keynote address at GTC. It will be available on October 12 and cost $1,599. That's a significant decrease from the 3090 Ti's launch price, demonstrating that Nvidia isn't dramatically raising prices across the board. But this is more than the original RTX 3090 cost, which suggests that the prices of cards in this new generation of GPUs might go up a little bit.
Performance
Undoubtedly, the Nvidia RTX 4090 will be faster than the RTX 3090 and 3090 Ti. At its GTC display, Nvidia avoided going into great detail about first-party benchmarks, instead stating that the Ada Lovelace GPU at the center of their new card can boost general rasterization speed by up to two times and ray tracing performance by up to four times when DLSS is enabled. Only a few games were used in these comparisons, but they claimed that Microsoft Flight Simulator might experience speed increases of up to two times, and the recently released Portal RTX mod could see performance increases of up to three times.
Even when used with a poor CPU, some reportedly leaked benchmarks of the RTX 4090 indicate it will easily shatter all previous records. That would make sense, but until we have a chance to put this card to the test, we won't be able to reach any conclusions about how effective it is. We do have some information on the RTX 3090 and 3090 Ti from our earlier tests, but much of it only revealed a very slight improvement from one card to the next. Performance is going to increase much more dramatically with the RTX 4090.
Features
Ray tracing and DLSS will both be supported by the RTX 4090, just like the 3090 Ti and 3090 before it. Additionally, it will experience a significant performance improvement over the previous generation when one or both of these are enabled because of its higher RT and Tensor core counts and next-generation hardware. At GTC, Nvidia promoted its new DLSS 3 algorithm and demonstrated how, when used, it may result in a significant improvement in performance. However, because it will depend on the game and require a unique implementation, its impact will initially be constrained, just like with prior DLSS releases.
However, the RTX 4090 will be far better equipped to use DLSS 1 and DLSS 2 than its forerunners, so it's feasible that this card will be able to run ray tracing and DLSS games at significantly higher frame rates, possibly even supporting 8K gaming in some circumstances. Nvidia hinted at that when it originally introduced the RTX 3000 series, but it wasn't practical outside of a select few games, with DLSS handling the majority of the work. The RTX 4090, on the other hand, may have the capability and feature set to make it happen.
Final Thoughts: It's still too soon to say how well these cards will compete against one another in the real world, but so far, all signs point to the RTX 4090 dominating in terms of performance while requiring a lot of power in return. Although it is large, pricey, and power-hungry, it is expected to serve as Nvidia's new flagship card for some time.
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