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

Onto our next array of titles using rasterisation for their rendering basis. There are a couple of takeaways from this selection of tests - firstly, that 4K max settings is effectively 'solved' in that it's relatively easy to run games at the full 144Hz limit of a top-end Ultra HD screen. However, on the flipside, in practically all cases here, there's also evidence to suggest that the RTX 4090's throughput is being held back by CPU limitations - even with the processor that currently tops our gaming performance chart, the Core i9 12900K.

Just to reiterate how our benchmarking system presents according to the device you're viewing this review on, 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.

F1 22

The trend of impressive - but lower than fully expected - benchmark results for the RTX 4090 continues as we power on into F1 22. While percentage point increases impress, rest assured that RTX 4090 can do better. For example, the exact same test benchmark sequence with full RT sees the leap in performance from RTX 3090 Ti to RTX 4090 jump from the mediocre 49 percent seen here to 70 percent in the RT bench you'll see on page five. Frame-rates without RT are a lot higher, of course, but then again - you've still got DLSS 2 to play with in this title, with a DLSS 3 update to come.

Forza Horizon 5

Forza Horizon 5 provides some pleasing uplifts to performance here at 4K resolution - a 65 percentage point boost for RTX 4090 over RTX 3090 Ti, increasing to just 70 points over RTX 3090. Why? Well, if you go back to the power usage table on the first page, you'll note that power consumption is very low. Looking at frame-times here, the evidence strongly suggests that (you're probably ahead of me here) we are indeed CPU-limited, even with a Core i9 12900K overclocked to 5.2GHz and backed by 6000MT/s DDR5 memory.

Gears 5

We've chosen Gears 5 to represent Unreal Engine 4 in our test suite simply because it's one of the very UE4 titles that does not stutter owing to shader compilation issues - which essentially demands multiple runs to accurately measure GPU performance. Gears 5 was authored to overcome this issue. At 4K max resolution, The Coalition's game once again shows good - but not great - performance uplifts. Looking at lower resolutions, RTX 4090 scaling gradually disappears to almost nothing, simply because there's not enoughu CPU grunt to keep the GPU fed.

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 analysis

• Introduction, hardware and power analysis
• Game benchmarks: Control, Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal
• Game benchmarks: F1 22, Forza Horizon 5, Gears 5 [This Page]
• 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