MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X3. 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 graphics card power draw increasing generation-on-generation, Nvidia's flagship RTX 4090 can often pull more than 450W. That's a lot of heat to deal with, which is why the graphics cards themselves are bigger than ever. MSI, however, is taking a different approach with the Suprim Liquid X. The card itself is relatively compact as it makes use of a 240mm all-in-one liquid cooler. What benefit does this provide for thermals and noise levels? We find out today…

Alongside the 240mm AIO cooler, the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X ticks a lot of boxes that we'd expect from a top-tier graphics card. A custom PCB design is used, dual-BIOS is present, there's an aggressive 105MHz factory overclock plus all the usual RGB bells and whistles.

There's no denying that such a bevy of features for a watercooled GPU comes at a price. Rather eye-wateringly, the Suprim Liquid X has an MSRP of £2179.99 here in the UK. Today we find out exactly what sort of performance is on offer for the money.

	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 MSI Suprim Liquid X we are reviewing today has tweaked that further, adding an extra 105MHz 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 MSI has increased this further to 480W out of the box, and it can reach up to 530W when overclocking.

Become a Patron!