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As this review goes live, RTX 4090 has launched at retail. Yesterday we presented our in-depth review of Nvidia's Founders Edition and today we are getting hands on with our first AIB card. Specifically, we are assessing the Inno3D RTX 4090 X3 OC, packing a triple-slot cooler, vapour chamber, and a small 30MHz factory overclock. How does it compare against Nvidia's design? That's what we find out today.
The Inno3D RTX 4090 is perhaps not the flashiest AIB card that is hitting shelves today, nor does it offer features like dual-BIOS or an unlocked power limit. Instead, the focus is on the card's cooler, which hopefully will offer decent improvements over the Founders Edition.
Inno3D also told us that this card is targeting Nvidia's baseline MSRP, so it should be available at $1599, or £1699 for those of us in the UK. If you just want a solid card without all the fancy bells and whistles that drive up the price, is this a viable contender for your 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. 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 Inno3D X3 OC we are reviewing today has tweaked that further, adding an extra 30MHz 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 Inno3D has not increased this for the X3 OC.
