Palit RTX 4090 GameRock OC Review – Midnight Kaleidoscope

1. Introduction2. Meet the Palit RTX 4090 GameRock 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

Today we follow up our initial RTX 4090 coverage with another AIB card review. This time we are assessing the Palit RTX 4090 GameRock OC, dubbed ‘Midnight Kaleidoscope' due to the new design. It's still packing an eye-catching amount of RGB lighting, dual-BIOS and a triple-slot cooler, so let's see what this card can do as we compare it against the Nvidia Founders Edition and Inno3D X3 OC.

While the Palit RTX 4090 GameRock OC may not look radically different from the GameRock cards of the 30-series, it has undergone a few changes, including a tweaked colourway, new fan design, and updated heatsink.

Factor in the dual-BIOS, with the performance mode that allows the power limit to be pushed up to 500W, and on paper, the GameRock OC looks like a very appealing card if you're in the market for an RTX 4090. We put it through its paces today…

	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. Fabbed on 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 Palit GameRock OC we are reviewing today has tweaked that further, adding an extra 90MHz 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, and while this is also the case for the Palit GameRock OC, it can reach up to 500W when overclocking.

Become a Patron!