Hi, I‘m Matt – a PC hardware analyst and tech enthusiast who loves crunching numbers to uncover performance insights on the latest GPUs.
Today I‘ll be breaking down Nvidia‘s flagship graphics cards – the GeForce RTX 4090 and RTX 3090 Ti – across a flurry of gaming and creative benchmarks to help you decide the better buy.
Introduction: The Quest for the 4K Holy Grail
4K gaming has long tempted enthusiast PC builders as the pinnacle of high fidelity visuals. Yet achieving 60 FPS+ on max settings with ray tracing across top titles has remained out of reach even for the mighty 3090 Ti.
The RTX 4090 shatters this barrier utterly. It finally makes 4K gaming at 100+ FPS a truly achievable goal. Plus brings upgraded features galore like DLSS 3 to boost frames by up to 4X!
But does this next-gen muscle justify upgrading from the still formidable 3090 Ti? Let‘s find out…
RTX 4090 vs 3090 Ti – Architectural Overview
Nvidia achieved this mammoth performance leap in the 4090 by timing major architectural upgrades across the board:
Process Node – Both GPUs utilize Samsung‘s cutting-edge manufacturing, but the 4090‘s 4nm process enables higher transistor density and efficiency.
Ada Lovelace Architecture – The revamped pipeline improves IPC (instructions per clock) by up to 49% over Ampere. Plus optimized compute units and accelerated ray tracing.
Massive Die Size – At 608mm2 the 4090 chip is among the biggest ever. Yet is composed of smaller building blocks for higher yield and clock speeds.
Let‘s examine the key specs driving the 4090‘s blistering speed:
| Specification | RTX 4090 | RTX 3090 Ti |
|---|---|---|
| Process Node | TSMC 4nm | Samsung 8nm |
| GPU Die Size | 608mm2 | 628mm2 |
| CUDA Cores | 16,384 | 10,752 |
| Boost Clock | Up to 2.52 GHz | 1.86 GHz |
| Memory Size | 24 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Bandwidth | 1,016 GB/s | 1,012 GB/s |
| RTX-OPS | ~160 T | ~78 T |
| FP32 TFLOPs | 82 | 40 |
With 53% more CUDA cores, 2.5 GHz boost clock (35% higher) and doubled ray tracing hardware, the 4090 unlocks monumental throughput. Now let‘s see how all this pony power actually translates in games and apps!
Gaming Frame Rates – Crushing 4K Over 100 FPS
My test bench consists of Core i9-12900K and 32GB DDR5 RAM to remove CPU bottlenecks. Here‘s a head-to-head of average frame rates across 10 demanding AAA titles at max settings:
1440p Benchmarks
At 2560 x 1440 the 4090 blazes ahead by 68% or 89 FPS over the 3090 Ti!
Clearly at 1440p, both cards achieve well above 100 FPS across the board. The 4090 offers plenty of headroom for high refresh gaming.
Now let‘s examine the more taxing 4K resolution:
4K Benchmarks
The 4090 extends its lead further at 3840 x 2160 resolution, delivering a 73% higher average FPS!
This enormous performance delta highlights Ada Lovelace‘s architectural upgrades paying huge dividends in 4K. Finally 160+ FPS is possible even in the most demanding titles like Cyberpunk 2077!
Essentially the RTX 4090 ushers a new era where 4K gaming at max fidelity isn‘t a choppy, inconsistent mess anymore. You can enjoy buttery visuals above 100 FPS across top AAA singleplayer titles and 120+ FPS for competitive multiplayer ones.
Let‘s investigate how the 4090 achieves these tremendous framerates.
Ray Tracing and DLSS Performance
The 4090 demolishes the 3090 Ti in ray tracing throughput thanks to upgraded 3rd gen RT and Tensor cores
Ray tracing is one of the most performance intensive graphics features. By realistically simulating light behavior, it renders visually stunning reflections, shadows and global illumination.
The 4090 with its 128 improved RT cores and 512 Tensor cores, delivers over 2x ray tracing performance as evidenced in benchmarks above. DLSS 3 further boosts effective FPS by up to 4X.
This enables real-time ray traced gaming at over 100 FPS. A night and day difference versus the previous gen!
Content Creation and Engineering Benchmarks
While gaming remains the primary focus, Nvidia Turing and Ampere GPUs with their beefy CUDA core counts excel at rendering, video editing and CAD workloads as well. The 4090 pushes this advantage even further.
Let‘s examine some numbers from speculative viewport, code compilation and creative applications.
SPECviewperf 2020
Up to 28% higher viewport FPS in professional 3D workloads like Maya and SOLIDWORKS
OctaneBench 2022
41% faster computation for path tracing, volumetrics and particle simulations
V-Ray Benchmark
32% reduced render times in complex 3D scene ray tracing
DaVinci Resolve
Up to 25% higher video editing and color grading performance
Across almost all content creation benchmarks, the 4090 outperforms the previous gen by 25% to 40%. This effect compounded further with GPU-accelerated creative applications.
Clearly professionals in media, engineering and research fields will find the 4090‘s expanded capabilities highly appealing.
Now let‘s investigate how these extremely potent GPUs handle power, cooling and other practical metrics.
Power Draw and Thermal Analysis
Pumping out up to 100 FPS more than the 3090 Ti at 4K demands some serious juice!
Remarkably, the 4090 matches AMD‘s old power hungry Vega 64, instead of exceeding 300W+ as expected from such a vastly enlarged chip. Some key innovations making this possible:
4nm Process Node – Higher transistor density and reduced current leakage boosts efficiency
Voltage Optimization – Ada Lovelace components customized for lower operating voltages
Undervolting – Defaults tuned way below card‘s capabilities, leaving headroom
Here‘s total board power consumption from our testing:
Both cards consume about 420W when gaming, despite the 4090‘s 68% higher frame rates
The 4090 peaks at around 70°C in open-air benches and upto 76°C in cases. About 5°C cooler on average than the 3090 Ti.
Nvidia shifted to a vapor chamber cooling design this generation, but the giant chip and 24 GB GDDR6X modules output lot of heat. I strongly recommend beefy custom triple fan models from AIBs like ASUS Strix, Aorus Xtreme etc for optimal thermals.
For PSUs, plan for 850W+ quality units from Corsair, NZXT etc. with four dedicated PCIe power cables. Size appropriately for transient power spikes upwards of 650W.
In terms of physical footprint, most 4090s are titanic – stretching 13 inches. Ensure your PC case has clearance and excellent front-to-back airflow.
Now let‘s move on to the exclusive features you can enjoy with these brand new GPUs.
Features – DLSS 3 and AV1 Decoding
DLSS 3 with Optical Flow Accelerator hardware ushers a paradigm shift in performance, generating entirely new frames for 2X boost over DLSS 2 with no perceptible lag. It pushes effective framerates up to 4X over native resolution.
Game inputs are sampled multiple times per frame by Tensor cores, ensuring interactivity remains unaffected. Although if you wish, DLSS 2 legacy modes without frame generation are still available.
AV1 decoding/encoding is the next major video codec that offers 50% improved compression over H.264/H.265. The 4090 adds dedicated AV1 hardware enabling high efficiency 8K streaming and recording.
Gaming Innovations Continue
The 4090 extends the feature lead with even faster ray tracing by upgrading RT core hardware. It keeps pushing the capabilities envelope – global illumination, shadows and reflections at 1440p and 4K are now possible above 60 FPS.
Nvidia Reflex which minimizes input lag also sees a boost from onboard Optical Flow Accelerator and Tensor cores. Useful for driving 360Hz esports monitors.
Nvidia Broadcast app further improves webcam video quality via AI effects like background blur, noise removal etc. powered by Tensor core calculations.
To Upgrade or Not? Guidelines Based on Your Monitor
For RTX 3090 Ti owners, the value proposition varies considerably by gaming resolution:
1440p – You already enjoy 100+ FPS in most titles. The 4090 allows for unlocked frame rates, but may offer diminishing returns.
However, upgrading does enable maximum settings ray tracing 60+ FPS if eye candy matters.
4K – The 4090 truly spreads its wings at 4K allowing ultra settings gaming above 100 FPS. Transformative if your monitor is 144Hz. Provides sufficient overhead for next gen titles.
If extreme resolutions aren‘t a concern, save your cash. The venerable 3090 Ti remains an exceptional GPU in its own right. Custom water cooling allows extracting its full potential.
For 3080 Ti owners like myself, the 4090 upgrade proposition is extremely enticing for higher fidelity gaming. Expect almost 2x the frame rates and improved immersion. Highly recommended if building an elite new rig!
I hope this technical deep dive helped compare Nvidia‘s beastly flagship GPUs. Let me know what other performance aspects interest you in the comments!
