GeForce RTX 3090 vs GeForce RTX 4090

Intro

Compare those specs to the GeForce RTX 4090, which makes use of a 4 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 2235 MHz. The GDDR6X memory works at a speed of 1325 MHz on this specific card. It features 16384 SPUs as well as 512 Texture Address Units and 176 Rasterization Operator Units.

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, in theory, should 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 should be quite a bit (approximately 150%) more effective at anisotropic filtering than the GeForce RTX 3090. (explain)

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

Pixel Rate

If using a high screen resolution is important to you, then the GeForce RTX 4090 is superior to the GeForce RTX 3090, by a large margin. (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: Bandwidth is the max amount of information (measured in MB per second) that can be transferred across the external memory interface within a second. The number is calculated by multiplying the bus width by its memory clock speed. If it uses DDR type memory, the result should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the faster the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum amount of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed in one second. This is worked out by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The higher the texel rate, the better the graphics card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in one second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of colour ROPs by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel rate also depends on quite a few other factors, especially the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to reach the max fill rate.