SCORE
PRICE £1,416 (£1,699 inc VAT)
from store.nvidia.com
There’s nothing subtle about Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card. It’s a hulking lump of a pixel pusher, and while there are curves to distract from its size it still looks like a satirical plastic model created to skewer GPU makers for the ever-increasing size of their cards. But it’s no model: this is the vanguard for the RTX 40-series and our first taste of Nvidia’s Ada Lovelace architecture.
This is a vast GPU that packs in 170% more transistors than even the impossibly chunky GA102 chip that powered the RTX 3090 Ti. And, for the most part, it makes that card look well off the pace. That’s even before you get into the equal mix of majesty and black magic that lies behind the DLSS 3 revision designed purely for the Ada Lovelace architecture.
The RTX 4080 will land this side of Christmas – there were going to be 16GB and 12GB versions of the card, but Nvidia was forced into a Truss-like U-turn and withdrew the £949 12GB version due to it simply not living up to its 4080 billing – but it’s no bargain at £1,269. We can only hope that, when they land in 2023, the RTX 4070, 4060 and 4050 will be much cheaper.
The architecture
The RTX 4090 comes
