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

Here we present power draw figures for the graphics card-only, on a per-game basis for all twelve games we tested at 2160p (4K). This is measured using Nvidia's Power Capture Analysis Tool, also known as PCAT. You can read more about our updated power draw testing methodology HERE.

Per-Game Results at 2160p (4K):

Click to enlarge.

12-Game Average at 2160p (4K):

Up at 4K, the RTX 4090 is still not consistently hitting over 400W. Don't get me wrong, power draw is still very high for a single GPU, but the RTX 3090 Ti does draw more power across the board. I wonder how much of this is due to current game engines simply not being designed around such a large, high core-count GPU as the 4090 – only time will tell.

You can clearly see just how much variance there is in power draw from this chart above. This also includes our ray-traced benchmarks, with Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition proving to be the most strenuous load, resulting in 461W power draw. Games which historically don't scale as well – including Assassin's Creed Valhalla and Far Cry 6 – see much lower power figures.

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