Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Leaked benchmarks show the real performance of the Nvidia RTX 4090

Some leaked Geekbench scores for the new Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU just dropped, and the card appears to be 67% faster than the previous-generation RTX 3090 Ti card.

The Geekbench scores were impressive for the CUDA benchmark, with the GeForce RTX 4090 hitting 433,619 points. That’s almost double the RTX 3090 Ti, which scored 260,346 points. The Geekbench test had used a Ryzen 9 7950X CPU and 32 GB of DDR5 RAM at 2998MHz when tested with the RTX 4090.

The RTX 4090 among green stripes.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Upon its initial release, Nvidia claimed the RTX 40-series graphics cards were up to four times as fast as the previous-gen RTX 30-series cards. Taking things further, in a blog post released yesterday, Nvidia said the new GPUs with Nvidia Reflex could hit 360 frames per second (fps) while playing the new Overwatch 2 at 1440p resolution.

Of course, the apparent performance bump certainly comes with a couple of downsides in size and power consumption.

The top-of-the-line RTX 4090 is massive. It’s a triple-slot unit that takes up to 336mm (13.2 inches) of space lengthwise, and it’s a whopping 61mm (2.4 inches) in height. That’s massive, and some of the third-party cards look even bigger. The other 40-series cards are around the same size, so regardless of which you choose, you may end up needing to upgrade.

Another issue facing Nvidia’s mammoth 40-series GPUs is power consumption. The 4090 has a TGP of 450 watts and recommendations call for an 850W power supply at minimum. This is the exact same as the RTX 3090 Ti, and we thought it was a lot when that card first rolled out back in March.

The takeaway here is the 4090 is likely to be a beast of a graphics card. It represents a massive increase in power over the previous generation of Nvidia GPUs, but you had better be prepared for big, bulky cases and massive power demands if you want to enjoy it.

The RTX 4090 goes on sale October 12, while both versions of the RTX 4080 will be available sometime in November.

Editors' Recommendations

Nathan Drescher
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Nathan Drescher is a freelance journalist and writer from Ottawa, Canada. He's been writing about technology from around the…
I tested Nvidia’s new RTX feature, and it fixed the worst part of PC gaming
A Hallway in Portal Prelude RTX.

You wouldn't suspect that a mod like Portal: Prelude RTX would debut such a major piece of kit for the future of PC gaming. But lo and behold -- it's the first game we've seen with Nvidia's new RTX IO, a feature that was announced nearly three years ago.

It's not as flashy as ray tracing or DLSS, operating in the background and offering a slew of benefits without drawing attention to them. But according to my testing, RTX IO may have a bigger impact on PC gaming than any other RTX features.
What is RTX IO?
Portal: Prelude RTX | RTX IO Off vs On Comparison – Cake Scene

Read more
Did Nvidia just fix the RTX 4090’s melting power connectors?
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU.

Nvidia’s 40-series graphics cards have gained an unwanted reputation for the unreliability of their 12VHPWR power connectors, with numerous accounts circulating online of connectors melting and destroying GPUs. Now, though, it seems Nvidia might have solved the problem for its RTX 4090 graphics cards.

The idea came to light after a post by prackprackprack on Reddit, with the user asking whether their new RTX 4090 featured shorter sense pins compared to older versions of the card. Shorter pins would mean the power supply couldn’t properly connect to a user’s graphics card and send it higher wattages unless the connector was correctly pushed in.

Read more
Should you buy Nvidia’s RTX 4060 or RTX 4060 Ti?
Two RTX 4060 graphics cards stacked on top of each other.

Nvidia makes some of the best graphics cards you can buy, but two have been the topic of much debate over the past several weeks: the RTX 4060 and RTX 4060 Ti. These two GPUs are meant to hit the mainstream market for Team Green, though they struggle to hit that mark to varying degrees.

We put both on the test bench to see if you should buy the RTX 4060 or the RTX 4060 Ti. If you want a more in-depth look, make sure to read our RTX 4060 review and RTX 4060 Ti review.
Specs

Read more