Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 review: a new level in graphics power

We've completely revised our test bench to better reflect the future of gaming technology - that means we're zeroing in on titles using key engines and low-level gaming APIs, while we've beefed up representation for ray tracing and image reconstruction. Some of our line-up may need tweaks as the results come in, but right now, we're mostly happy with this more forward-looking approach.

With all of that said, rasterisation results are still important across the stack of GPUs, but what you'll find in many of these results is that the RTX 4090 is so powerful, you actually hit under-utilisation issues. Even at 4K max settings, you may find yourself hitting the CPU limit, effectively meaning we're not seeing everything the RTX 4090 has to offer - the results may skew more in favour of the GPU's power by looking at the RT bench instead.

Looking at our benchmarks here, you'll get a basic overview of our findings on mobile, with metadata from the video capture of each GPU being translated into simple bar charts with average frame-rate and lowest one per cent measurements for easy comparisons.

On a desktop-class browser, you'll get the full-fat DF experience with embedded YouTube videos of each test scene and live performance metrics. Play the video, and you'll see exactly how each card handled the scene as it progresses. Below the real-time metrics is a bar chart, which you can mouse over to see different measurements and click to switch between actual frame-rates and percentage differences. All the data here is derived from video captured directly from each GPU, ensuring an accurate replay of real performance.

Control

A strong opener for the RTX 4090, though to be honest, with a card of this class, you really should be running with DLSS and all RT features enabled. It looks spectacular. AMD has always had a problem with Control maxed out and it's the case here too, under-performing to the extent that even without ray tracing, the RTX 4090 is effectively twice as fast at 4K. An effective 50 percent boost over the RTX 3090 Ti and 70 percent over RTX 3090 seems like a strong opener, but the card can do more.

Cyberpunk 2077

Running everything maxed on Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K resolution produces some bizarre results - the fully maxed ray tracing experience is not that much slower than this. That's reflected in poorer than expected performance boosts compared to the current top-end offerings. At 1440p resolution, you get something closer to the expected differentials under rasterisation.

Doom Eternal

When we put together our new test bench, we thought this Doom Eternal sequence would put sufficient load on the GPU - but we've got to put our hands up here, we were wrong. If you watch the graphing play-out, you'll see that much of the benchmark - in the initial area at least - isn't that much faster than prior generation cards. In short, we've hit the CPU limit, which explains the circa 46 percent boost at 4K over 3090 Ti. While we'll likely need to choose a more challenging area of the game to make this bench more viable, it does highlight that in many gaming workloads - even on maxed settings - you will find that surrounding components in your system may well be holding the RTX 4090 back.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 analysis

• Introduction, hardware and power analysis
• Game benchmarks: Control, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal [This Page]
• Game benchmarks: F1 22, Forza Horizon 5, Gears 5
• Game benchmarks: Hitman 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• RT benchmarks: Control, Dying Light 2, Cyberpunk 2077, F1 22
• RT benchmarks: Hitman 3, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Marvel's Spider-Man
• DLSS vs FSR 2.0: Dying Light 2, Marvel's Spider-Man
• DLSS 3: Marvel's Spider-Man, Cyberpunk 2077
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090: the Digital Foundry verdict