Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Time Spy Extreme5. Game Benchmarks6. Clock Speed7. GPU Temperatures8. Memory Temperatures9. Acoustics10. Noise-Normalised Temperatures11. Power Draw12. Overclocking13. Closing Thoughts14. View All Pages

With our fifth RTX 4090 review, today our attention turns to the beast that is the Gigabyte Gaming OC model. Offering a huge, quad-slot cooler, dual-BIOS, and a power limit that can hit up to 600W when overclocking, there's certainly a lot to like about this card on paper. We put the Gaming OC through its paces and see how it stacks up against the competition.

While our previous RTX 4090 review assessed the liquid-cooled MSI Suprim Liquid X, today we take a look at a huge air-cooled card in the form of the Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC. Despite its gargantuan size, the Gaming OC only offers a 15MHz factory overclock versus the reference spec, so it will be interesting to take a closer look at clock speed behaviour in this review.

Alongside the choice of either the OC or Silent BIOS, Gigabyte also offers gamers a smattering of RGB lighting, a metal backplate and a vapour chamber cooler, so without further ado, let's get into the nitty gritty…

	RTX 4090	RTX 3090 Ti	RTX 3090	RTX 3080 Ti	RTX 3080
Process	TSMC 4N	Samsung 8N	Samsung 8N	Samsung 8N	Samsung 8N
SMs	128	84	82	80	68
CUDA Cores	16384	10752	10496	10240	8704
Tensor Cores	512	336	328	320	272
RT Cores	128	84	82	80	68
Texture Units	512	336	328	320	272
ROPs	176	112	112	112	96
GPU Boost Clock	2520 MHz	1860 MHz	1695 MHz	1665 MHz	1710 MHz
Memory Data Rate	21 Gbps	21 Gbps	19.5 Gbps	19 Gbps	19 Gbps
L2 Cache	73729 KB	6144 KB	6144 KB	6144 KB	5120 KB
Total Video Memory	24GB GDDR6X	24GB GDDR6X	24GB GDDR6X	12GB GDDR6X	10GB GDDR6X
Memory Interface	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit	384-bit	320-bit
Memory Bandwidth	1008 GB/Sec	1008 GB/Sec	936 GB/Sec	912 GB/Sec	760 GB/Sec
TGP	450W	450W	350W	350W	320W

First, for a quick spec recap. Using TSMC's 4nm node has allowed Nvidia to vastly increase transistor count, up from 28.3 billion with GA102, to a staggering 76.3 billion with the largest Ada GPU, AD102. Accordingly, core count has gone through the roof, with the RTX 4090 home to 16384 CUDA cores, with 512 Tensor cores and 128 RT cores, with a sizeable increase to the ROP count too, up to 176.

Such a leap forward in process node has also allowed Nvidia to crank the clock speed significantly, with the RTX 4090 now sporting a 2520MHz rated boost clock. The Gigabyte Gaming OC we are reviewing today has tweaked that further, adding an extra 15MHz out of the box.

Memory configuration is almost identical to the RTX 3090 Ti, with 24GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, operating over a 384-bit interface, totalling memory bandwidth of just over 1TB/s. That said, there has been a substantial upgrade to the L2 cache with the Ada architecture, with the RTX 4090 now offering 73MB, compared to 6MB for GA102.

Power draw also remains at 450W, as per the RTX 3090 Ti, though the Gaming OC can reach up to 600W when overclocking.

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