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With our fifth RTX 4090 review, our attention has turned to the Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC. As Gigabyte's ‘middle child', sitting below the Aorus lineup but above the Windforce family, the Gaming OC could appeal to those looking for more advanced features without going all-out with a top-tier card like the Aorus Master.
It's certainly a very solid card across the board. Performance is exactly what we'd expect from an RTX 4090, and granted the card doesn't ship with a particularly aggressive factory overclock, but being completely honest it doesn't really matter – this RTX 4090 performs like an RTX 4090, so it's going to deliver an incredible gaming experience regardless.
Thermals are also impressive, particularly using the OC BIOS where we saw a peak of just 65.6C on the GPU. GDDR6X temperatures are even more impressive, with a peak of just 66C out of the box – the best result of any RTX 4090 we have tested so far.
The OC BIOS does run a touch louder than I'd like, hitting 41dBa, which makes it as loud as the Founders Edition. Thankfully the Silent BIOS runs a more relaxed fan curve and this dropped noise output to 37dBa, a noticeable improvement.
Noise-normalised temperatures were still perfectly acceptable and an improvement over the Founders, but the Gaming OC actually ran hotter than both the Inno3D X3 OC and the Palit GameRock OC when noise output was tuned to 40dBa. It's certainly nothing to worry about as the results were still below 70C for the GPU, but I would have expected slightly better considering the sheer size of this cooler – it's very nearly a quad-slot card, after all.
That about sums up the Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC. It is a very capable graphics card and really has no major weaknesses. That said, I wouldn't say it has a clear USP either – I was expecting this to be the coolest-running 4090 considering its size, but that was not the case. To be clear, this is still a very competent card and it will not disappoint if you do pick one up, but compared to the competition, I can't say it has blown them out of the water.
We found the Gaming OC listed on Overclockers UK HERE, though it is currently out of stock.
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Pros
- Understated aesthetic.
- Best memory thermals we've seen so far.
- Dual-BIOS.
- Can hit 600W when overclocking.
- Included support bracket.
Cons
- Shroud is too plasticky for my liking.
- Noise-normalised thermals are good but slightly behind other air-cooled cards we have tested.
- Incredibly large – biggest 4090 we have tested.
KitGuru says: The Gaming OC is a solid graphics card – in every sense of the word! – and while it hasn't blown our socks off, it will do a very competent job.
