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Nvidia will give us our review unit of the RTX 4090 very soon so we are obviously very excited to get our hands on it and find out if it justifies being or not high price tag. In the meantime, Nvidia was kind enough to treat us to some test footage of Cyberpunk 2077 running on the new GPU, specifically to show off the new power of DLSS 3.
The demo was run at 1400p resolution and maximum graphics settings (with Ultra Ray Tracing enabled), and Nvidia helpfully showed some active GPU stats on-screen during the showcase, revealing some helpful facts about how well the RTX 4090 plays the game. performed.
The first – and possibly the most interesting – piece of information we got was that this RTX 4090 was running at boost clocks as high as 2.850MHz, which is actually 330Hz higher than the originally reported ‘official’ boost clock of 2.520MHz. Nvidia had previously mentioned that the GPU went over 3,000MHz when overclocked during internal testing, so this isn’t entirely shocking, but it’s good to see the card running at a strong overclock.
In terms of actual in-game performance, the RTX 4090 Cyberpunk 2077 ran at an average frame rate only shy of 60 fps when using native resolution and with DLSS 3 disabled. Enabling DLSS 3 (in the Quality preset) gave a huge performance jump, increasing the average frame rate to 171 fps and reducing power consumption by more than 110 W.
That’s a huge performance-per-Watt improvement, which is encouraging to see, given that the new RTX GPUs are fairly power-hungry components. It also goes beyond just framerates; Enabling Nvidia’s third-generation upscaling technology also lowered average latency by 29%, as well as the card’s maximum operating temperature, which was between 50C and 53C during the DLSS 3 demo.
Analysis: DLSS 3 is most useful for lower cards
DLSS 3 isn’t needed (or isn’t supported) for many games, and if you have an RTX 4090, you certainly won’t need it for most titles, given the sheer power of the GPU. It’s basically the lower specification GPUs like the suspiciously underpowered 12GB RTX 4080, and any future cheaper cards like the RTX 4070who benefit the most.
DLSS has made huge strides since its introduction, to the point where it is now possible to run demanding games at higher resolutions at lower specifications without sacrificing frame rates. It’s also practically a must-have for games with resource-intensive ray-tracing processes, like Cyberpunk 2077 (which is presumably why Nvidia chose that game to showcase DLSS 3).
We’re a little disappointed to see that DLSS 3 probably won’t come to older RTX cards; at least not soon. Some of the best GPUs, like the RTX 3070 and 3060 Ti, could be seriously boosted by third-generation DLSS, but it looks like Nvidia wants to keep it as a major RTX 4000 selling point for now.
Get with RTX 3000 and older cards cheaper and cheaperalthough the launch of the RTX 4090 could be the perfect time to score a good one graphics card deal – especially if you don’t plan on playing on 4K Ultra. If you’re still rocking a 1080p monitor, it might be a smart move to grab a 3000-series GPU once the 4000-series arrives and the price drops follow. black friday after all, it’s lurking…