NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Review: Ada Dominates PC Graphics
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Benchmarks
Final Fantasy Endwalker


As an older game, the Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker benchmark is somewhat CPU-bound at both resolutions. Even still, the GeForce RTX 4090 manages to pull well out in front of every other graphics card we tested, once again, roughly doubling the performance of the Radeon RX 6900 XT.
Assassin's Creed Valhalla Benchmarks


GeForce RTX 4090 Details @ 4K


Forza Horizon 5 Benchmarks
Forza Horizon 5 is the latest edition of the popular racing game franchise. The game features much larger maps than its predecessors, with more detailed models, and higher graphics fidelity in general. Forza 5 leverages the proprietary ForzaTech engine and DirectX 12...

GeForce RTX 4090 Details @ 4K


The GeForce RTX 4090 continued to crush the competition in Forza Horizon 5, roughly doubling the performance of the Radeon RX 6900 XT and GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 12GB.
Marvel's Guardians Of The Galaxy


GeForce RTX 4090 Details @ 4K



GeForce RTX 4090 Details @ 4K w/ RT


Enable ray-tracing and the GeForce RTX 4090 pulls well ahead of all of the cards at both resolutions. At 4K, the GeForce RTX 4090's minimum framerate is better than every other card's average number.
Far Cry 6 Benchmarks


GeForce RTX 4090 Details @ 4K


FarCry 6 doesn't reveal any particular surprises. The GeForce RTX 4090 once again beats all comers at both resolutions we tested, by a wide margins.

GeForce RTX 4090 Details @ 4K w/ RT


F1 2021 & F1 2022 Benchmarks
F1 2022 is Codemaster’s latest Formula One racing simulation, and like previous version of the game, it sports impressive visuals. This latest addition to the franchise supports DirectX 12 with ray tracing, and it incorporates support for a number of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) and NVIDIA technologies (like DLSS). We tested the games with its Ultra High graphics preset, with ray-tracing and TAA enabled at a couple of resolutions to see what the graphics cards could do.
F1 2021 / F1 2022


In the newer, more taxing F1 2022, the GeForce RTX 4090's performance is even more dominant. Here, NVIDIA's new flagship nearly triples the performance of the Radeon RX 6900 XT when running at 4K. Though, keep in mind, these tests were run with a beta build that's been updated to support DLSS 3. It's possible AMD still has some work to do to fully optimize its cards for this version of the game.
NVIDIA DLSS 3 And Latency Testing With The GeForce RTX 4090
We also tested F1 2022 and a couple of additional games -- namely A Plague Tale: Requiem, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Fortnite -- with the various DLSS 3 modes available. Please note, all of these games were also tested with beta builds, updated to support DLSS 3 with resolution scaling and AI Frame Generation.
DLSS resolution scaling in its various modes has a huge impact on performance in F1 2022, with even the best "Quality" mode offering big performance boost over native. Image quality remains good in this game with all modes, save for Ultra Performance, which introduces some aliasing and specular shimmering is some sections. Though, Ultra Performance is really targeted for 8K resolution on the GeForce RTX 4090. With AI Frame Generation also enabled, performance is cranked up another notch, with Balanced mode more than doubling the GeForce RTX 4090's performance at 4K.

The beta build of Flight Simulator we tested only works properly on Ada-based GeForces, hence the GeForce RTX 4090 appearing on its own here. This game is an interesting case, because it is essentially CPU bound, so increasing framerates with traditional rasterization isn't going to happen until we get faster processors. However, NVIDIA's AI Frame Generation technology doesn't rely on CPU performance. As such, effective frame rates increase dramatically, more than doubling performance of the native rendering at 4K.

A Plague Tale: Requiem falls somewhere in between F1 2002 and Flight Simulator. In this game, the GeForce RTX 4090 clearly outruns the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti with native rendering, though 1% low framerates are roughly flat with DLSS using only resolution scaling. Enable AI Frame Generation, however, and the GeForce RTX 4090's effective performance jumps significantly, both in terms of 1% low and average framerates.
We also snapped off a few screenshots in this game to try and illustrate how the various DLSS modes impacted image quality. As you can see from the slices above, an argument could be made that DLSS Quality and Balanced modes actually bring out more fine detail than even the native rendering. Some detail is lost in Performance mode (which is to be expected), but Ultra Performance mode introduces significant anomalies, mostly in the leaves at the top of the trees where light is shining through.


Finally, we did some DLSS and Latency testing with Fortnite. Please note while looking at these two charts, that the scales are completely different. Framerates are off to to the right, and latency at the various modes are to the left. As you can see, the GeForce RTX 4090 once again clearly outruns the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti with much better 1% low and average framerates. And the various DLSS modes only increase performance over native. Despite the additional processing going on with DLSS, however, the increased framerates also end up reducing overall latency. The GeForce RTX 4090 was not only faster here, it offered much better system latency as well.