Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition Review

1. Introduction2. Meet the RTX 4090 Founders Edition3. Testing Methodology4. 3DMark Fire Strike & Time Spy5. 3DMark DirectX Raytracing6. Assassin's Creed Valhalla7. Cyberpunk 20778. Days Gone9. Dying Light 210. Far Cry 611. Forza Horizon 512. God of War13. Horizon Zero Dawn14. Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered15. Red Dead Redemption 216. Resident Evil Village17. Total War: Warhammer III18. Performance Summary (12-Game Average)19. Cost Per Frame Analysis20. Ray Tracing: Cyberpunk 207721. Ray Tracing: Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered22. Ray Tracing: Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition23. Ray Tracing: Resident Evil Village24. Clock Speed25. GPU Temperatures26. Acoustics27. Noise-Normalised Temperatures28. Power Draw: 1080p29. Power Draw: 1440p30. Power Draw: 2160p (4K)31. Performance per Watt: 1080p32. Performance per Watt: 1440p33. Performance per Watt: 2160p (4K)34. Total System Power Draw35. Overclocking36. Closing Thoughts37. View All Pages

We take our noise measurements with the sound meter positioned 1 foot from the graphics card. I measured the noise floor to be 32 dBA, thus anything above this level can be attributed to the graphics cards. The power supply is passive for the entire power output range we tested all graphics cards in, while all CPU and system fans were disabled. A reading under load comes from running Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition for 30 minutes.

As for noise levels, the 4090 Founders Edition certainly isn't loud, but it's not as quiet as the likes of the RTX 3070 FE, hitting 41dBa on our sound meter. Default fan behaviour includes asynchronous control of the two fans – fan 1, the one on the bottom of the card that intakes air, ran at 49% speed, or about 1520rpm. Fan 2, meanwhile, being the one on the top of the card, ran at 43%, or about 1395rpm.

I also found the fan on the top to sound just a little bit whiney in its sound profile. It's not a big deal at all but the pitch of the fan did cut across the rest of my case fans on occasion – you can find a sound test in our video on the first page.

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