RTX 4090 performance testing reveals stunning results as the card produces up to 4x more frames with DLSS 3 vs native 4K in Cyberpunk 2077

Nvidia officially revealed the GeForce RTX 4090 on September 20, and it is a beast, at least on paper. The GPU packs 16,384 CUDA cores, a base and boost clock of 2.23 GHz and 2.52 GHz respectively, and comes with 24 GB of GDDR6X VRAM. Nvidia claims that the board is anywhere from 2x to 4x speedier than the RTX 3090 Ti. While we won’t have the final performance numbers of the RTX 4090 until independent third-party reviews are up, we can get an idea about the raw compute power and DLSS 3 performance of the GPU thanks to a new video by Digital Foundry.

Digital Foundry’s video, which is just a teaser of things to come, shows the RTX 4090 running Marvel’s Spider-Man at 8K/60 fps with Very High image settings, Very High Ray tracing, and DLSS set to balanced. We can also see a 4K/120 fps capture of Cyberpunk 2077, a game that is notoriously difficult to run with Ray tracing enabled, running on the Psycho RT option with other image quality settings set to higher presets. Mind you, the Psycho RT option in Cyberpunk 2077 is not the same as the RT Overdrive that Nvidia showed on stage at GDC. So, results will vary between the two options.

The video also teases a comparison between the RTX 4090 running Cyberpunk 2077 at native 4K, 4K with DLSS 2 Performance mode, and 4K with DLSS 3 Frame Generation. While we don’t have concrete frame rate data, the results are quite spectacular with the game producing up to 4x more fps with DLSS 3 Frame Generation than native 4K.

Finally, we also get our first look at the RTX 4090 vs RTX 3090 Ti DLSS performance battle. Once again, the RTX 4090 with DLSS 3 Frame Generation at 4K is up to 2.4x faster than the RTX 3090 Ti with DLSS 2 Performance mode at 4K.

All in all, the preliminary performance numbers of the RTX 4090 are looking fantastic in the limited footage we have from Digital Foundry. Combined with the new DLSS 3, the flagship Lovelace GPU has the potential to make high-refresh rate 4K gaming possible in the most demanding games on the market.

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