The flagship GPU from the GeForce RTX 30 Series launch from 2020 versus the flagship GPU from the GeForce RTX 40 Series launch from 2022… today! It’s the GeForce RTX 4090 versus the GeForce RTX 3090 - in Founders Edition form. And in a massive 18-game head-to-head in 4K and 1440p covering standard rendering, DLSS, and ray-tracing. When it comes to 4K gaming, the RTX 4090 results are truly impressive. And kind of mind-blowing really.

As per our full review of the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition, we wrote “it’s the biggest generational leap we’ve ever seen” and “we’re talking triple-digit 4K frame rates in every game we tested”. So we’ve decided to lift the lid on our complete testing for both the GeForce RTX 4090 and the previous flagship GeForce RTX 3090 and put the results next to each other.

And then imagine that the bars on some charts are in fact two fighters entering the ring, ready to battle.

Related: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition Review

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This 18-game benchmark head-to-head covers a range of titles, from high-end AAA cinematic blockbusters to racing games, multiplayer titles, and even stuff with ray-tracing and DLSS. The latter is available in well over 200 games so the inclusion here is to present real-world use cases. That said, with DLSS we ensured that it was set to ‘Quality’ mode to maintain like-for-like visuals compared to native 4K. Likewise, we cranked the detail settings all the way up on account of both cards representing the most powerful entries in their RTX line-up.

As per above, there are major advances made with the new Ada architecture versus Ampere, with the shift to a new cutting-edge custom TSMC 4nm process through to more AI hardware, improved ray-tracing workloads, and several efficiency advances made. For our testing, both cards were paired with the following hardware:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900X

Motherboard: MSI MAG X670E Carbon WiFi

Memory: Corsair DOMINATOR PLATINUM RGB DDR5 DRAM 5200MHz

The Games Tested

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The following titles were tested in 1440p and 4K, With RT (ray-tracing) and DLSS enabled (using the Quality setting) as marked.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla

Borderlands 3

Control (RT + DLSS)

DOOM Eternal (RT+DLSS)

F1 22 (RT + DLSS)

Forza Horizon 5

Gears 5

Gears Tactics

God of War (DLSS)

Horizon Zero Dawn (DLSS)

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy (RT + DLSS)

Metro Exodus Enhanced (RT + DLSS)

Red Dead Redemption 2 (DLSS)

Rainbow Six Extraction (DLSS)

Shadow of the Tomb Raider

The Division 2

Total War: Warhammer III

Watch Dogs: Legion (RT + DLSS)

GeForce RTX 4090 vs. RTX 3090 - 1440p Performance

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• Across all 18 titles the GeForce RTX 4090 performed on average 47% faster than the GeForce RTX 3090, a 1.5X increase in 1440p performance gen on gen.
  
  
• On the high end of the spectrum The Division 2 saw 1.8X faster performance versus the RTX 3090. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Borderlands 3, and Total War: Warhammer III ran 1.7X faster.
  
  
• Naturally, with this much power there were some bottle-necks in 1440p, as seen with F1 2022, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Watch: Dogs Legion. For these titles the RTX 4090 barely broke a sweat (temps were more or less ~ 45-degrees with GPU usage at around 50% or so).
  
  
• Interestingly a number of titles ran faster on the RTX 4090 using less power than the RTX 3090, even when pushing a lot more frames. And cooler and quieter too. Even though the power draw can hit 450W, Ada is impressively efficient.

GeForce RTX 4090 vs. RTX 3090 - 4K Performance

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• Across all 18 titles the GeForce RTX 4090 performed on average 77% faster than the GeForce RTX 3090, a 1.8X increase in 4K performance gen on gen.
  
  
• On the high end of the spectrum Gears Tactics saw a whopping 2.2X increase in performance, with The Division 2 close behind with a 2.0X increase and Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 1.9X.
  
  
• As with the 1440p results a number of titles ran faster on the RTX 4090 using less power than the RTX 3090. Ada is, yeah, impressively efficient.
  
  
• The RTX 4090 is a 4K monster, delivering triple-digit results in all games tested.

GeForce RTX 4090 vs. RTX 3090 - 3D Mark Benchmarks

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• With Fire Strike (DirectX 11) we see a 2X improvement in 4K performance, 1.7X in 1440p, and 1.4X in 1080p. This highlights the diminishing returns for the RTX 4090 when playing in 1080p because of other hardware factors. It is indeed tailor-made for 4K.
  
  
• With Time Spy (DirectX 12) we see a 1.7X increase in performance in 4K for the RTX 4090 and 1.6X in 1440p.
  
  
• With Port Royal being a robust ray-tracing benchmark we see the RTX 4090's 2X increase in pure ray-tracing in action. A remarkable feat when you factor in that the RTX 3090 was the ray-tracing king until the RTX 4090 arrived.