4090 reviews are hitting

Obviously it sounds like the card is FASTER and HOTTER than the current gen, but it also seems like you probably don't need to worry about upgrading unless you're in the market for 4K gaming (assuming you're already at the 3xxx level).

Here are some reviews.

I have a 3080 right now and I'm pretty happy with it at 3440x1440 resolution. I'd be in the market for a new souped-up card, but with the size of these things, that basically means I need a whole new computer before I can consider buying one, or at least a new PSU. That'd be expensive!

In pure rasterized games, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 is 100% faster than the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080. This is something that NVIDIA hinted at its Overwatch 2 benchmarks. And yes, we can confirm that the RTX 4090 is a rasterized beast.

Cool! I could use 100% more framerate at some point. But I think the bigger gripe I've seen is that there really aren't a lot of high-end AAA shiny-ass-graphics games coming out right now that are going to drive people towards these cards. There hasn't been a better-looking game to hit since Cyberpunk launched, and that game is almost two years old. When we get out of the COVID delay season, maybe that'll change, but we really need a new DOOM or something before I'm going to pony up for a new system.

Impressive numbers for 4K gaming. But I'm fine with my 6600xt and 1440p monitor and this is the problem with the 4000 series. Not only is it very expensive and you need an ultra tower to install it, but its pretty useless to most people outside of the FOMO types who NEED to get the newest, shiny tech to feel happy. And like a 8K television, there hardly isn't any content out there that will show how useful the new cards are. Most people will and should wait to get this, and I mean wait years not months.

This is an extreme example of how much better the 4090 can be from the Linus Tech Tips review. This card genuinely is absurdly, stupidly powerful. Also, I think that's supposed to be DLSS on, I don't remember exactly.

...but it's not something you need unless you have oodles of cash, a computer new enough to actually take advantage of everything the card has to offer, and a display that can actually take advantage of that resolution and framerate. If you have all of that... go nuts, you can probably safely afford this thing, or you're sacrificing literally everything else of value in your life. If you're in the latter camp, remember that this thing is also extremely power hungry, so I hope your power supply can handle it.

I think the story has kind of always been the same for these kinds of ultra cards anyway. They get all the buzz, they get all the discussion, all eyes are on these behemoths, but if you just want to fucking play video games you can get a "more than good enough" rig for the price of this card, so don't feel discouraged if you want to play PC games but don't have several thousand dollars laying around.

EDIT: The above result seems to have been caused by a bug and the 4090 isn't actually that much better, though it is still a lot better than the previous cards.

I stand by the rest of my statement. This is a top tier extravagant card to go with a top tier extravagant setup. You're not actually missing out on all that much if you decided to spend $1600 on an entire PC rather than just a card.

So... the rest of the 4000 series when, preferably one that can work with a 750 watt PSU?

I mean, sure. My power limit has more to do with not being in the mood to cable manage, but I'd also like to not have to set aside an additional $200 for a new PSU if Nvidia is going to price a 4070 or 4070 Ti at $700 or $800. ...says someone who bought a Strix 2080 Ti at MSRP, but, y'know, I'm not tippin' on four fours wrapped in four Vogues at the moment.

Hot take, the 4090, same as the 3090 before it, is just irresponsible waste of money and electricity for almost any consumer that doesn't need it for work. The 4060-4080 range is what most people should be looking at. I do get that it's fun to see what types of frame rates would theoretically be possible if there were no limits.

Even if you're going to talk about future proofing, you'll be able to buy a 50xx series card before a 4080 will show any signs of slowing down.

I doubt I would go for a 4090 (there's the cost factor and I also want to make sure I can fit everything in the case), but I'm still rocking a 1080. This was my first computer build and I told myself that I would upgrade stuff, but I never did. I'll probably go for a 4080 when that becomes available.

@facelessvixen: Probably sometimes next year. They really need to churn through their supplies of their 30 series card.

4090 is definitely faster, but also be weary of the fake frames they add to the benchmarks with frame interpolation that inflates the numbers even more.

I still feel like all these cards are overpriced and the price to performance leap is extremely bad. But if you want the fastest thing ever made then the 4090 is it.

These reviews are so impressive, my current GPU for my PC is AMD Radeon RX 6600 (Equivalent to Nvidia RTX 3060).

Gamers nexus is the review crew I personally trust the most, and they admit it’s on of the biggest generational performance jumps they have seen, but, what is the point when games aren’t gonna utilize that for a likely 2 year or so adjustment period, and even then there is gonna be a the console crossover that will limit what pc game devs utilize with only a few exceptions, so if you got something that do 60fps card now for what you use it for, why bother throwing $1600 at a new shiny if you are fine now?

I got a vanilla 3080, and I plan to keep it along with the rest of my pc hardware for at least another two years, which by then I predict will be more of a miniaturization and power efficiency/thermal generation. I can, have and will throw two grand at having a solid system if I need it, just feel like I don’t need it yet, despite my FPS chasing urge making me kinda want it anyway.

That said, for thos still rocking a 1080, it could be an ok upgrade, but wait and see the reviews on a 4080. If you aren’t a dev, then you likely don’t need anything in a xx90 series due to not being someone making your living off it. Like the 3090, seems like anyone not rendering stuff on the regular doesn’t really need it.

I'm running a 2060 and while I can afford such luxery GPU's, I won't play the long game Nvidia is doing. These cards, regardless of performance metrics no game will ever use 100%, should not cost this much. This is a dangerous precedent in which PC gaming will become a thing for the rich or people that have a lot of disposable income. This is a bad development and should be nipped in the bud. I expect that at some point only Saudi oligarchs will be able to game at the highest settings while the rest is stuck with budget cards that cost $/€1000.

I will go team AMD this time no matter what. No way I will pay €2000+.

I've never paid more for a GPU than the price of a new console and I'm not going to start now. I remember a decade or so ago when you build a whole gaming PC for under a grand that would whoop the PS3 and Xbox 360 in power. I miss those times.

@justin258: Just a heads up, the cyberpunk performance is incorrect because of a bug in the game.

As cool as this card seems, it feels like a card that won't be well utilized until the PS6 / whatever the Xbox calls its next thing. I have a 3080TI and play most things at 4K ultra at 60 FPS with rare exception anyway. It doesn't seem worth it to me. But I could see 20-series or below folks looking at it. I wonder though if the 4080s will be as impressive.

So NVIDA compared its 3080 to ist 4090....and "what" are we to make of that? Like, I should bloody well hope, the 4090 is better!

Yet....I smell a rat in all this too. They seem hard-pressed to make their graph with anything approaching transparency or truthfulness.

Apparently they are sending out the 4090 card to influencers/twitch streamers/YouTubers to shill for nvidia.

I'm also really impressed with MSI's RTX 4090 GPU's housing designs, which they look super futuristic, so here is the link to their catalogue of these GPU. Graphics card - The world leader in display performance | MSI Global

Gigabyte Aorus' RTX 4090 GPU looks pretty good too.
NVIDIA Series | Graphics Card - GIGABYTE Global

So, I'm torn on this. I went a bit all-out for my PC build a couple years ago, and therefore have the closest thing to a plausible reason for a 4090. I have a 4k 144hz monitor, and I'd love to see high framerates at 4k native for those games that don't have DLSS! Plus, I work in UE4/Premiere often and could always use the extra horsepower. I'm one of a handful of people that could make a plausible excuse to get this. However... it's still so excessive, and there's not actually much requiring that level of performance.

I also don't know how much I'll be bottlenecked by my CPU from last gen, (5950x) which feels absurd to say, but these are the concerns when dropping $1600 on a GPU. I wouldn't want to drop that money unless I was *truly* benefiting from it.

IMPORTANT EDIT: According to Linus Tech Tips, this doesn't even have display port 2, so you're capped at 4k 120hz. For a $1600 GPU whose only promise, really, is "you can play high framerate 4k..." that's a naw for me. It's an absurd reason to decline (120 fps is a lot,) but it's an absurd card.

@zinkn said:

I watched Jackfrag's "gamer's impressions of a 4090" video and got real "least amount of effort necessary for this free 4090" vibes.

just built myself a new rig a couple weeks ago after they announced these things ...sure these new cards look shiny n all but honestly we don't have anything new to need them. i got myself a 3080ti which will do me fine , i'd already beat cyberpunk a few weeks before on my basic 2080 n it worked mostly fine on mostly max settings apart from a memory-leak style lag issue the longer you played .. anyway when all was said n done the new rig cost me 2.6k or so and its got components that i shouldn't need to upgrade for a few years but can if need be down the road , i can't see paying 1.6k for a gpu that most games wont take advantage of till who knows when , and by then we'll have a newer model shinier than this i'm sure.

From what I gathered, the RTX 4090 looks really really good.

It is an impressive generational leap over the RTX 3090. It is much more power efficient than the Ampere line (30 series). And the card is so powerful that it can cause CPU bottlenecks in 1440p even with the best CPU on the market. This card only makes sense for 4K gaming with ray tracing turned on. I still don't think it makes sense to drop $1600 on this because...

DLSS 3 is a gimmick and only works if there is already high frame rate pre-DLSS. Turning on DLSS 3 will cause flickering and glitching at low initial framerates. Buying this for AV1 encoding is overkill, just get a cheap Intel Arc or wait for other video cards to adopt AV1 codec encoding. The reference design is huge and there are ridiculous AIB models that won't fit in most computer cases. Getting this card will require a 4k 120-144 Hz monitor, a fast CPU, power supply and large case which is easily another $1600 if you don't have those already.

I'm still planning to wait for what AMD's RDNA3 can bring. If their flagship comes within 70% the RTX 4090 rasterization performance, has a normal video card size, doesn't require more than a 850W power supply and costs up to $1000, that's a win for AMD in my book.

In other news... not sure if this belongs in another thread, but Nvidia is reportedly "unlaunching" the RTX 4080 12 GB model after fan feedback: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/12gb-4080-unlaunch/

A "literal" hot take. The amount of power draw and heat generation for just the graphics card is beyond the point of absurdity: it's a space heater that can do math really fast, at this point.

What's next... A totally separate power supply and box for *just* the graphics card?! A totally separate 240v, 30 - 50 amp wall plugin? (Hyperbole, I know.)

Or does the "snake eat its own tail" and do graphics eventually get so large and complex that they're basically a console and you don't even need anything else, because it's all on the card???

It's the "Hypercar" for Super Rich Bastards and Streamers (who have the money, but ironically will be given 40 series cards in exchange for being Corpo Shills on Twitch or YT--nothing new there.)

Considering the ever skyrocketing cost of PC hardware, do PC Gamers *still* champion PC gaming as "cheaper" than console gaming???

while it might not be 'cheaper' i would say the fact that Usually they run nicer for more years coupled with the fact that they're multi-purpose not just used for games in addition to the steeper sales you'll find on pc vs console over a given time and the better likelihood of indie games to happen on pc .... yes i would still say that . this said i've always been a console gamer at heart ( WASD hurts my hands and i'm a pigeon typer mostly ).. to be clear you can still get or make a budget pc that runs on par or better than a console these days , even more-so if used