GeForce RTX 3090 vs GeForce RTX 4090

Intro

Compare that to the GeForce RTX 4090, which has a clock frequency of 2235 MHz and a GDDR6X memory speed of 1325 MHz. It also makes use of a 384-bit bus, and uses a 4 nm design. It is made up of 16384 SPUs, 512 TAUs, and 176 ROPs.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce RTX 3090		350 Watts
GeForce RTX 4090		450 Watts
	Difference: 100 Watts (29%)

Memory Bandwidth

The GeForce RTX 4090 should theoretically be a little bit faster than the GeForce RTX 3090 in general. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		1042432 MB/sec
GeForce RTX 3090		958668 MB/sec
	Difference: 83764 (9%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce RTX 4090 will be a lot (about 150%) more effective at AF than the GeForce RTX 3090. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		1144320 Mtexels/sec
GeForce RTX 3090		457560 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 686760 (150%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce RTX 4090 will be quite a bit (more or less 152%) faster with regards to full screen anti-aliasing than the GeForce RTX 3090, and will be able to handle higher screen resolutions without slowing down too much. (explain)

GeForce RTX 4090		393360 Mpixels/sec
GeForce RTX 3090		156240 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 237120 (152%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in one second. It is calculated by multiplying the card's bus width by its memory speed. If it uses DDR memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by 4 instead. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with AA, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum texture map elements (texels) that are processed per second. This figure is worked out by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics card could possibly record to the local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of ROPs by the clock speed of the card. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - aka Render Output Units) are responsible for outputting the pixels (image) to the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on many other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the memory bandwidth is, the lower the ability to reach the maximum fill rate.