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RTX 4090 review: Spend at least $1,599 for Nvidia’s biggest bargain in years

80 points by neogodless 4y ago

smoldesu 4y ago
Digital Foundry is citing 3-4x performance multipliers (DLSS3 enabled) over the 6900xt, pretty much the best card AMD has to offer (at ~$1,099 MSRP). On top of that, it's also considerably more power efficient than the 30-series, but that's probably a side-effect of the node bump and increase in silicon. Still though, as indifferent as I am towards Nvidia I think this is a good deal as well. There's plenty to balk at with that price-point, but there's also lots of (good) cards on the market right now. Nvidia deciding to release the 40-series in the current market seems almost downright experimental.
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  AMD is expected to announce the RDNA 3 cards on November 3. (I'm not sure when they're expected to be available for purchase.) Unless there's a need to buy immediately or to stick with nVidia, it might make sense to see the RDNA 3 cards' pricing, performance, and power requirements.
  - izacus 4y ago
    Is there any reason to believe AMD is actually going to miraculously change their performance?
    - CoastalCoder 4y ago
      I'm mostly interested in 4 details: cost, performance, energy usage, and open-source drivers. I think it's likely that some RDNA3 cards will be on that Pareto surface.
    - neogodless 4y ago
      This seems like a strange question. Nvidia just improved upon their own performance by about 60% this generation. Do we consider that miraculous? AMD is moving to chiplets and more advanced nodes at TSMC, and they've been executing well on CPU and GPU improvements. Who knows what advances they make, or how much more hardware they throw at the problem. They are likely to improve upon their own performance by at least 33%, but perhaps they'll also approach Nvidia's 60%. Certainly if they only reach 33%, pricing will be key - they will not be competing against the RTX 4090, but only against lower tier cards if that's the case.
- Thaxll 4y ago
  The problem is right there: DLSS3 enabled, most of the game don't or won't support that tech, and so AMD is better and cheaper with plain rasterization. The 6800xt was a better deal than the 3080.
  - mywittyname 4y ago
    DLSS was adopted quite rapidly. I suspect every newer game is going to launch with DLSS3 support, or will soon receive a patch for it. And it's the newer games that you're going to want DLSS for anyway, older games will perform just fine without it. NVIDIA also announced toolkits that allow moders to apply DLSS to older games that aren't receiving updates anymore.
TillE 4y ago
Those are some astounding numbers if the average power draw has not significantly changed. I'm looking forward to the 4070 or 4070 Ti.
- gtirloni 4y ago
  Agreed, the xx70 models have consistently been a great price/performance option.
- ZeroCool2u 4y ago
  NVIDIA has effectively changed the naming scheme for their cards this year. Now there are two 4080 cards, with wildly different specifications. Basically, one of them is actually a 4080 and the other is what they used to call a 4070. This is reflected in their name and price here[1]. [1]: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/40-series/rtx-4080/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/40-serie...
  - schnitzelstoat 4y ago
    > Now there are two 4080 cards, with wildly different specifications. This is going to be awful when buying pre-built machines. They'll just say it has a 4080 and stick the crappy one in.
- paulmd 4y ago
  People let a bunch of the AMD twitter bros work them into a froth over power efficiency. Everyone knew it was basically a 2-node leap (Samsung 8nm is a 10+ node, it's about on par with TSMC 10nm, so there's 2 generations of improvement there), the bullshit from the twitter gang was utterly unfounded since day 1. Everyone who wasn't in the tank was telling you god's own truth: NVIDIA is going to leap two nodes, it was always gonna be a huge leap, bigger than Pascal. They were drowned out by the AMD hypetrain crowd as usual who desperately wanted a flop and were trying to will it into existence. It does go to show just how far NVIDIA is ahead on architecture... they could fight RDNA2 to a standstill with basically a whole node of disadvantage, and they did the same thing with Turing vs RDNA1 where they were using TSMC 12FFN (which is literally 16FF with the "your mom-sized" reticle - there is no optical shrink in 12FFN) and managed to fight 7nm cards to a draw on both performance and efficiency.
AnotherGoodName 4y ago
Based on the size you plug the motherboard into this rather than the other way around. Picture with an itx motherboard for launghs: https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/xjl017/asus_really_puts_the_size_of_these_cards_into/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/xjl017/asus_really_p...
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  I'm surprised we're not starting to see motherboards+cases designed to let GPU connect to the back of the motherboard. I imagine that would be a big win for air-cooled systems.
  - Chiron1991 4y ago
    I think that would violate ATX standards, but there are already plenty of niche cases that mount the GPU in different places via riser cables.
    - CoastalCoder 4y ago
      > I think that would violate ATX standards That would make sense. But AFAIK the standards could be amended if there was enough commercial justification. So I'm just wondering if we're headed towards a day when that happens.
  - yoden 4y ago
    There are "sandwich style" SFF cases which mount the GPU parallel to the back of the motherboard, if that's what you mean. It's more for space than for airflow, but you can get good airflow too with the right design (e.g. standoffs/separation, exhaust fans).
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  I really don't understand why they don't just stuff the rest of the computer in there at this point.
- db48x 4y ago
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
I fear that they're pricing out their market. This might be a great card for a CAD or video rendering workstation, but AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k because it costs $1600 for just the graphics card.
- dotnet00 4y ago
  I don't think AAA studios have been doing that for a while. The top cards aren't so much faster than the mid-range of the generation as to require extra effort in the content pipeline. Usually the top card can just dial up the visual effects higher (eg using more ray tracing samples per frame).
- dncornholio 4y ago
  Why people have big GPU's is not because games look better (they don't). It's because they want the best fps and no micro-stutters. A game on max settings looks the same on different cards. The thing that really changes is the framerate. Game studio's bring in more demanding settings when people have the power to run them. So what will happen is even more raytracing and post processing effects that you can turn on or off.
- Hamuko 4y ago
  >AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k I've always thought that they start off making the best graphical version of the game and then just start cutting off bits and bobs to make the lower tier versions.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  > AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k They do this anyway for future proofing. The tools they use capture far more detail than can be used on modern hardware. So they down-sample for target hardware and keep the hi-res assets around for the eventual next-gen "remaster". Publishers have realized that AAA titles have long legs. GTAV and Skyrim have seen releases on several generations of hardware because people will keep buying them. So now the concept of a "remaster" release on future hardware is baked into development.
johnchristopher 4y ago
> higher resolutions that require lower native rendering resolutions, which thus run at higher frame rates. Nvidia and AMD needed two generations of their respective technologies to accurately upscale lower pixel counts; in particular, fine details like particles are now mostly preserved by DLSS and FSR. Often, the final resolved image can look better than the picture produced by native resolution and treated with temporal anti-aliasing. Am I correct in understanding that DLSS fundamentally modifies the original rendered picture/game ? Do designers/artists compensate for that ? Do they still have a "final product" in mind ?
- paulmd 4y ago
  Original DLSS 1.0 worked by "hallucinating" a full-res image from a lower-res source image. This didn't work all that great and seems to be abandoned at this point. DLSS 2.x is a fundamentally different approach, it is standard TAA where the sample weights are set by a ML model based on previous frames and motion vectors. DLSS3 takes this further and actually does interpolation (or, extrapolation?) of additional frame(s) based on the previous "concrete" frame and the motion vectors for objects inside the game.
  - ideamotor 4y ago
    I am shocked at how much motion blur is added by DLSS; I suppose by turning on AA. Is this something that will possibly be addressed?
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    DLSS3 is an absolute game changer for games that are incredibly CPU-bound, like MS Flight Simulator.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  DLSS doesn't alter the results that much, but there is a noticeable "sharpness" to DLSS-upscaled content when you look at screenshots side-by-side with native res. That's probably what they are eluding to by claiming "the final resolved image can look better" with DLSS. I doubt artists thought about this with the current generation of games. The tech is so new that it was shoe horned into a lot of games, and it has evolved a lot in just a few hardware generations. Going forward, I'm certain artists will give it more consideration, since it is clear now that this is the future of gaming.
wtcactus 4y ago
I think I'm getting old, but I can't for the life of me get excited about this 450W behemoth. For me, there's absolutely no game that needs this kind of performance, I can just go to settings, lower them slightly, and run it perfectly on a 3060 Ti. The only spec of this card that I appreciate, is the 24 GB memory, but that's for machine learning and, according to NVIDIA, that's not even for the target audience.
- toxik 4y ago
  At least in the past, nvidia’s consumer grade GPUs would fail eventually if you used them for ML. Not always but I’ve seen it happen multiple times.
  - gambiting 4y ago
    I know someone who has had multiple 3090s for a couple years now, using them exclusively for ML(he's a data scientist) and none of them have failed. So I'm not sure which models you have in mind when you say "consumer grade" - the 3090(and the 4090 by extension) were always meant as replacement for the Titan series, which wasn't exactly "consumer" level.
    - toxik 4y ago
      Ah did not know that. I thought they were marketed towards consumers.
  - wtcactus 4y ago
    I never had one fail, but I had to go through some big hurdles to use them at work (University research lab) properly. Namely, there are 2 big issues: - Virtualization: Getting vGPU functionality out of them (most of the time, there's no point in having a full 1080 Ti for only 1 job, we want to have it split on more than 1 VM). - Kubernetes workloads: I'm running a simple workload that uses the GPU (for testing for instance) and k8s wants it all for only one pod.
    - ftufek 4y ago
RobLach 4y ago
These must have been sitting in a warehouse for a bit because there's no way they'd be penny-pinching and not support PCIE Gen 5 nor DisplayPort 2.0 on a $1600 piece of hardware.
- RobLach 4y ago
  Which makes the release of the 3090 Ti earlier in the year pretty consumer hostile.
- gjsman-1000 4y ago
  PCIe Gen 5? Please, they've already announced PCIe Gen 7, NVIDIA is so behind. /s But seriously, unless you need PCIe Gen 5 or have a 240hz monitor, it's not that huge of a deal. Yes, it's a $1600 card, but what are you going to do? Buy AMD (which presumably won't have quite as good performance), or wait until next year?
  - RobLach 4y ago
    It's possible you'll need Gen 5 over the lifespan of this card as storage takes up more and more lanes. That this card takes 2x as many as necessary to save a fraction of a dollar doesn't make much sense unless these things were far enough in the production timeline... which means these were being produced for a while now. Same for DisplayPort 2.0. These benchmarks show games exceeding 120fps at 4K already. Displays that support those higher rates and resolutions will be common in 5-6 years. It's more of a question of "why not?" rather than "does it need it" at this price point.
mirages 4y ago
How do you get this into a vertical PC and not have the connectors being damage by the weight over time ? Even if you screw very hard the wall part, the inner zone is still floating on its own weight
- heyitsguay 4y ago
  Probably similar to the 3090Ti - it comes with a little leash that connects to the card and ties off on the top of your case!
- hu3 4y ago
  Great question! There are GPU support brackets for these behemoths. Also known as ANTI-SAG brackets.
- thg 4y ago
  You use a graphics card holder, like https://www.newegg.com/jonsbo-model-vc3/p/1DW-0090-00006?Item=9SIAY3SG9N1512&Description=GPU%20holder&cm_re=GPU_holder-_-9SIAY3SG9N1512-_-Product&cm_sp=SP-_-979079-_-0-_-2-_-9SIAY3SG9N1512-_-GPU%20holder-_-gpu|holder-_-1 https://www.newegg.com/jonsbo-model-vc3/p/1DW-0090-00006?Ite... (No affiliation, I just clicked on the first search result)
- ClassyJacket 4y ago
  I think we're well overdue for a redesign from the current standard ATX layout. The graphics card is now the centrepiece, and almost always the only PCI-E card in use. It's time to lay it parallel to the motherboard, or at least give it more support in some way.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  The first PCs had huge expansion cards, and those were mounted inside the case with clips like so: http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/s100/h/hzinside.jpg http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/s100/h/hzinside.jpg We could bring that back.
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avrionov 4y ago
It is a relative bargain, but I missed the time when I can build entire PC for $1,599 and play most games well.
- neogodless 4y ago
  > and play most games well But you still can build the entire PC for $1600 and play most games well. The Radeon RX 6650 XT is dipping below $300 and will run 1080p with great image quality settings. Or spend $425 on a Radeon RX 6750 XT and play most games at 1440p with excellent image quality.
  - avrionov 4y ago
    I should take a look. I never owned Radeon.
mattgreenrocks 4y ago
Probably my age showing, but the value proposition of PC gaming seems to have fallen steeply in the past few years compared to consoles. The prospect of playing Serious Multiplayer Games has almost fallen off my radar completely, and that was one of the primary draws for me in the past. Nowadays, I don't want to fiddle with Windows (which insists on forcing updates when I do power my PC up to play with friends), mess with hardware, or anything like that. I have a big Steam library that I don't want to give up, but I could see being all in on future versions of Steam Deck.
- sylens 4y ago
  Very much in the same boat. I like the Steam Deck for the fact that it provides suspend/resume functionality to my PC games, which is useful with my limited time now that I'm older and have a kid.
- webstrand 4y ago
  Steam on Linux work great too, if you don't want to give up your PC. All of the games in my library (that I've still got interest in) work well, if not flawlessly.
  - pdntspa 4y ago
    With my steam library, about 1/5 works "Great with Steam", and 3/5 shows up with the "Verified and Playable" filter, which includes everything labelled "Great With Steam".
- antisthenes 4y ago
  It hasn't, because you can still play 99.9% of games on a 1070, a 5-6 year old card that you can get used for $200 now. Just because NVidia went bonkers with their flagship pricing during COVID isn't a reason to throw out the best gaming platform out with the bathwater. > I could see being all in on future versions of Steam Deck. Steam Deck is just a computer. You're still gaming on a PC.
  - pdntspa 4y ago
andrewmcwatters 4y ago
I don’t think it’s a bargain, but based on price to CUDA core counts alone, it actually is fairly priced. It’s just that their product line has a more or less linear CUDA core to price best line of fit.[1] There’s a dip specifically at the RTX 3080 Ti, where you’re getting more cores for the money than elsewhere on the best line of fit. Not sure what trade offs there are there except less VRAM and in one instance I read that cooling wasn’t as good. [1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MHTVDAyU7i8oXYAlmGPEGNs8rUpukT_eXlizQfXZ2JI/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MHTVDAyU7i8oXYAlmGPE...
- pixelpoet 4y ago
  It's important to note that the definition of CUDA "cores" changed with Ampere due to their adding dual-issue, which is not always possible, but they count it as a flat doubling of "cores", where "cores" previously meant ALUs / vector lane units. There's also been quite a bit of inflation since the days of the 1660 Super...
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    Thanks for that, I didn't know!
- BonoboIO 4y ago
  Is very cuda core as powerful as very other cuda core? So 10x 4090 cuda cores are as powerful as 10x 2060 cores? A graph that plots price per core and power usage per core would be awesome. Google Sheets is so amazing, it just works and I can watch how somebody edits the document and collaboration is dimensions ahead of every service I know.
  - andrewmcwatters 4y ago
    There does seem to be a close association when comparing GPU benchmark scores.[1] [1]: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html
capableweb 4y ago
Seems the cards in the comparison is 4090, 3080ti, 3080 and 6800XT. Why is there no 3090ti in there, which should be the top of the line card from the previous "generation"? Current generations top should be compared with previous generations top rather than third-to-top, otherwise it seems a bit disingenuous. Are there any better comparisons out there?
- googletron 4y ago
  I totally agree with this.
- neogodless 4y ago
  https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=RTX%204090&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9vC9NBL8zo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9vC9NBL8zo and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQklDR8nv8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQklDR8nv8U both include the RTX 3090 Ti and RX 6950 XT. See 13 game average at https://youtu.be/aQklDR8nv8U?t=888 https://youtu.be/aQklDR8nv8U?t=888
  - capableweb 4y ago
    Sorry, should have been clearer. I'm looking for articles with text and comparisons, not videos.
    - neogodless 4y ago
      Hardware Unboxed (linked above) also has a web site (called Tech Spot). https://www.techspot.com/review/2544-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090/ https://www.techspot.com/review/2544-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090... 13-game average (4K): https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/2544/bench/Average_4K.png https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/2544/bench/Average... > The GeForce RTX 4090 is on average 59% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti and 71% faster than the 6950 XT at 4K gaming.
      - capableweb 4y ago
pier25 4y ago
Honestly if you don't intend on playing AAA games at 4K/+100fps with ray tracing you don't need this. The Steam survey shows the GTX1060 is still the most popular card so even the most recent games need to perform adequately with that in mind. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw... I still use a GTX1070 for playing at 1080p or 4K at 60fps for older or non-demanding games and it's still absolutely fine.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  I agree. If we hold to the historic 200 USD GPU price point, developers should still be mostly targeting the GTX 16 series.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > Honestly if you don't intend on playing AAA games at 4K/+100fps with ray tracing you don't need this. On the other hand, if you're doing other things with your GPU than just gaming, this might be a very well-worth card, depending on how much AI/ML/video encoding/3d rendering/physics simulations/X you do. Personally I'm waiting for some benchmarks related to CUDA and particularly Stable Diffusion to come out before I decide. And I don't game that much anymore, maybe some hours per month at maximum. But I'm using my GPU a lot for video encoding and 3D rendering, so still interested in GPU development.
  - pier25 4y ago
    Sure, although I would imagine your use case is niche compared to gaming.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      You're saying all other use cases besides gaming together is niche compared to gaming itself? Not sure about that, a lot of NVIDIA cards are used in both the creative and engineering industries. And when they buy cards, they usually buy a lot of cards, not just one per device, as gamers do. If you observe NVIDIA movements and actions, you'll see that they are starting to focus a lot more on B2B than they ever did before. Almost like their B2C is not the main focus anymore, just a good PR piece for them.
nikhizzle 4y ago
Can anyone speak to how fast this card for inference on diffusion models?
atty 4y ago
I see a big mix of positive and negative in the comments, I’m gonna take a slightly different tact, and say I’m extremely bullish on the GPU market in the near-to-mid term on the consumer side. Obviously, a coming recession and relaxing of sales due to pandemic/lockdown pull ahead will probably dampen sales, but having 3 vendors taking 3 separate approaches to their designs is great for competition and consumer choice. We have Nvidia at the high end with monolithic chips probably delivering the highest performance in most/all areas, especially gaming. AMD is going with a chiplet architecture that should allow them to stay in the same ballpark of (non-raytracing) performance at a lower price. And finally we have Intel coming in at the low end with cards that seem like (once all the driver issues are sorted out) are going to be adequate for gaming, maybe even offer best in class price/performance in certain cases, and that seem to be also targeting productivity as well. They were the first out of the gate with AV1 hardware support, as well what looks like some relatively impressive matrix math units, similar to Nvidias tensor cores. Overall looking very promising for the next 5-10 years, and Im hoping any potential recession doesn’t cause Intel or AMD to take their foot off the pedal, or in the worst case (more likely for Intel), even scrap the product lines.
- sylens 4y ago
  I'm very encouraged by Intel's entry into this market. The fact that they seemed to target the area once occupied by the xx50 and xx60 cards is great
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > …I’m gonna take a slightly different tact, and say I’m extremely bullish on the GPU market in the near-to-mid term on the consumer side. Count me in as bearish, at least for aftermarket discrete GPUs. Desktops' share continues to slowly deflate as a percentage of PC shipments. Fewer and fewer consumers upgrade their built-in GPU, whether discrete or integrated. The GPU "middle class" is disappearing between "whatever came with my computer" and behemoths like the RTX 4090.
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dschuetz 4y ago
I don't know if that's a bargain after the shortage and pricing disaster in the recent years. Looks like I am going to skip another 10 years until I buy anything with Nvidia on it.
HelloNurse 4y ago
Definitely a big bargain: > When a standalone GPU is as large as a modern video gaming console—it's nearly identical in total volume to the Xbox Series S and more than double the size of a Nintendo Switch—it's hard not to laugh incredulously at the thing.
TheRealPomax 4y ago
Just because it's a bargain doesn't mean it's a good deal.
Arrath 4y ago
Watching Der8auer's review[1], the performance for power curve is awfully wonky. I would happily tune this card down to 70% or even 60% of the power target for a very minimal performance loss, totally acceptable to me for the efficiency gain. I wonder what allowance 3rd parties have to detune these cards, and perhaps produce a 4090 with a more modest cooling solution suited to a ~300W power level, maybe making a 2 or 2.5 slot size card, rather than the current monster cards we're seeing. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60yFji_GKak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60yFji_GKak
glonq 4y ago
If I had more time and dedication, I would foster a social media campaign to discourage people from buying the new generation of expensive-ass GPU's. To send a message to NVidia that they need to reconsider more consumer-friendly RTX4xxx pricing. Maybe #novidia or #novidya as a hashtag.

80 points by neogodless 4y ago

Digital Foundry is citing 3-4x performance multipliers (DLSS3 enabled) over the 6900xt, pretty much the best card AMD has to offer (at ~$1,099 MSRP). On top of that, it's also considerably more power efficient than the 30-series, but that's probably a side-effect of the node bump and increase in silicon. Still though, as indifferent as I am towards Nvidia I think this is a good deal as well. There's plenty to balk at with that price-point, but there's also lots of (good) cards on the market right now. Nvidia deciding to release the 40-series in the current market seems almost downright experimental.

CoastalCoder 4y ago
AMD is expected to announce the RDNA 3 cards on November 3. (I'm not sure when they're expected to be available for purchase.) Unless there's a need to buy immediately or to stick with nVidia, it might make sense to see the RDNA 3 cards' pricing, performance, and power requirements.
- izacus 4y ago
  Is there any reason to believe AMD is actually going to miraculously change their performance?
  - CoastalCoder 4y ago
    I'm mostly interested in 4 details: cost, performance, energy usage, and open-source drivers. I think it's likely that some RDNA3 cards will be on that Pareto surface.
  - neogodless 4y ago
    This seems like a strange question. Nvidia just improved upon their own performance by about 60% this generation. Do we consider that miraculous? AMD is moving to chiplets and more advanced nodes at TSMC, and they've been executing well on CPU and GPU improvements. Who knows what advances they make, or how much more hardware they throw at the problem. They are likely to improve upon their own performance by at least 33%, but perhaps they'll also approach Nvidia's 60%. Certainly if they only reach 33%, pricing will be key - they will not be competing against the RTX 4090, but only against lower tier cards if that's the case.
Thaxll 4y ago
The problem is right there: DLSS3 enabled, most of the game don't or won't support that tech, and so AMD is better and cheaper with plain rasterization. The 6800xt was a better deal than the 3080.
- mywittyname 4y ago
  DLSS was adopted quite rapidly. I suspect every newer game is going to launch with DLSS3 support, or will soon receive a patch for it. And it's the newer games that you're going to want DLSS for anyway, older games will perform just fine without it. NVIDIA also announced toolkits that allow moders to apply DLSS to older games that aren't receiving updates anymore.

TillE 4y ago

Those are some astounding numbers if the average power draw has not significantly changed. I'm looking forward to the 4070 or 4070 Ti.

gtirloni 4y ago
Agreed, the xx70 models have consistently been a great price/performance option.
ZeroCool2u 4y ago
NVIDIA has effectively changed the naming scheme for their cards this year. Now there are two 4080 cards, with wildly different specifications. Basically, one of them is actually a 4080 and the other is what they used to call a 4070. This is reflected in their name and price here[1]. [1]: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/40-series/rtx-4080/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/40-serie...
- schnitzelstoat 4y ago
  > Now there are two 4080 cards, with wildly different specifications. This is going to be awful when buying pre-built machines. They'll just say it has a 4080 and stick the crappy one in.
paulmd 4y ago
People let a bunch of the AMD twitter bros work them into a froth over power efficiency. Everyone knew it was basically a 2-node leap (Samsung 8nm is a 10+ node, it's about on par with TSMC 10nm, so there's 2 generations of improvement there), the bullshit from the twitter gang was utterly unfounded since day 1. Everyone who wasn't in the tank was telling you god's own truth: NVIDIA is going to leap two nodes, it was always gonna be a huge leap, bigger than Pascal. They were drowned out by the AMD hypetrain crowd as usual who desperately wanted a flop and were trying to will it into existence. It does go to show just how far NVIDIA is ahead on architecture... they could fight RDNA2 to a standstill with basically a whole node of disadvantage, and they did the same thing with Turing vs RDNA1 where they were using TSMC 12FFN (which is literally 16FF with the "your mom-sized" reticle - there is no optical shrink in 12FFN) and managed to fight 7nm cards to a draw on both performance and efficiency.

AnotherGoodName 4y ago

Based on the size you plug the motherboard into this rather than the other way around. Picture with an itx motherboard for launghs: https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/xjl017/asus_really_puts_the_size_of_these_cards_into/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/xjl017/asus_really_p...

CoastalCoder 4y ago
I'm surprised we're not starting to see motherboards+cases designed to let GPU connect to the back of the motherboard. I imagine that would be a big win for air-cooled systems.
- Chiron1991 4y ago
  I think that would violate ATX standards, but there are already plenty of niche cases that mount the GPU in different places via riser cables.
  - CoastalCoder 4y ago
    > I think that would violate ATX standards That would make sense. But AFAIK the standards could be amended if there was enough commercial justification. So I'm just wondering if we're headed towards a day when that happens.
- yoden 4y ago
  There are "sandwich style" SFF cases which mount the GPU parallel to the back of the motherboard, if that's what you mean. It's more for space than for airflow, but you can get good airflow too with the right design (e.g. standoffs/separation, exhaust fans).
nsxwolf 4y ago
I really don't understand why they don't just stuff the rest of the computer in there at this point.
db48x 4y ago

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

I fear that they're pricing out their market. This might be a great card for a CAD or video rendering workstation, but AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k because it costs $1600 for just the graphics card.

dotnet00 4y ago
I don't think AAA studios have been doing that for a while. The top cards aren't so much faster than the mid-range of the generation as to require extra effort in the content pipeline. Usually the top card can just dial up the visual effects higher (eg using more ray tracing samples per frame).
dncornholio 4y ago
Why people have big GPU's is not because games look better (they don't). It's because they want the best fps and no micro-stutters. A game on max settings looks the same on different cards. The thing that really changes is the framerate. Game studio's bring in more demanding settings when people have the power to run them. So what will happen is even more raytracing and post processing effects that you can turn on or off.
Hamuko 4y ago
>AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k I've always thought that they start off making the best graphical version of the game and then just start cutting off bits and bobs to make the lower tier versions.
mywittyname 4y ago
> AAA game studios aren't going to be able to afford to spend hours lovingly drawing intricate details if only 0.1% of players can play their games in 4k They do this anyway for future proofing. The tools they use capture far more detail than can be used on modern hardware. So they down-sample for target hardware and keep the hi-res assets around for the eventual next-gen "remaster". Publishers have realized that AAA titles have long legs. GTAV and Skyrim have seen releases on several generations of hardware because people will keep buying them. So now the concept of a "remaster" release on future hardware is baked into development.

johnchristopher 4y ago

> higher resolutions that require lower native rendering resolutions, which thus run at higher frame rates. Nvidia and AMD needed two generations of their respective technologies to accurately upscale lower pixel counts; in particular, fine details like particles are now mostly preserved by DLSS and FSR. Often, the final resolved image can look better than the picture produced by native resolution and treated with temporal anti-aliasing. Am I correct in understanding that DLSS fundamentally modifies the original rendered picture/game ? Do designers/artists compensate for that ? Do they still have a "final product" in mind ?

paulmd 4y ago
Original DLSS 1.0 worked by "hallucinating" a full-res image from a lower-res source image. This didn't work all that great and seems to be abandoned at this point. DLSS 2.x is a fundamentally different approach, it is standard TAA where the sample weights are set by a ML model based on previous frames and motion vectors. DLSS3 takes this further and actually does interpolation (or, extrapolation?) of additional frame(s) based on the previous "concrete" frame and the motion vectors for objects inside the game.
- ideamotor 4y ago
  I am shocked at how much motion blur is added by DLSS; I suppose by turning on AA. Is this something that will possibly be addressed?
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  DLSS3 is an absolute game changer for games that are incredibly CPU-bound, like MS Flight Simulator.
mywittyname 4y ago
DLSS doesn't alter the results that much, but there is a noticeable "sharpness" to DLSS-upscaled content when you look at screenshots side-by-side with native res. That's probably what they are eluding to by claiming "the final resolved image can look better" with DLSS. I doubt artists thought about this with the current generation of games. The tech is so new that it was shoe horned into a lot of games, and it has evolved a lot in just a few hardware generations. Going forward, I'm certain artists will give it more consideration, since it is clear now that this is the future of gaming.

wtcactus 4y ago

I think I'm getting old, but I can't for the life of me get excited about this 450W behemoth. For me, there's absolutely no game that needs this kind of performance, I can just go to settings, lower them slightly, and run it perfectly on a 3060 Ti. The only spec of this card that I appreciate, is the 24 GB memory, but that's for machine learning and, according to NVIDIA, that's not even for the target audience.

toxik 4y ago
At least in the past, nvidia’s consumer grade GPUs would fail eventually if you used them for ML. Not always but I’ve seen it happen multiple times.
- gambiting 4y ago
  I know someone who has had multiple 3090s for a couple years now, using them exclusively for ML(he's a data scientist) and none of them have failed. So I'm not sure which models you have in mind when you say "consumer grade" - the 3090(and the 4090 by extension) were always meant as replacement for the Titan series, which wasn't exactly "consumer" level.
  - toxik 4y ago
    Ah did not know that. I thought they were marketed towards consumers.
- wtcactus 4y ago
  I never had one fail, but I had to go through some big hurdles to use them at work (University research lab) properly. Namely, there are 2 big issues: - Virtualization: Getting vGPU functionality out of them (most of the time, there's no point in having a full 1080 Ti for only 1 job, we want to have it split on more than 1 VM). - Kubernetes workloads: I'm running a simple workload that uses the GPU (for testing for instance) and k8s wants it all for only one pod.
  - ftufek 4y ago

RobLach 4y ago

These must have been sitting in a warehouse for a bit because there's no way they'd be penny-pinching and not support PCIE Gen 5 nor DisplayPort 2.0 on a $1600 piece of hardware.

RobLach 4y ago
Which makes the release of the 3090 Ti earlier in the year pretty consumer hostile.
gjsman-1000 4y ago
PCIe Gen 5? Please, they've already announced PCIe Gen 7, NVIDIA is so behind. /s But seriously, unless you need PCIe Gen 5 or have a 240hz monitor, it's not that huge of a deal. Yes, it's a $1600 card, but what are you going to do? Buy AMD (which presumably won't have quite as good performance), or wait until next year?
- RobLach 4y ago
  It's possible you'll need Gen 5 over the lifespan of this card as storage takes up more and more lanes. That this card takes 2x as many as necessary to save a fraction of a dollar doesn't make much sense unless these things were far enough in the production timeline... which means these were being produced for a while now. Same for DisplayPort 2.0. These benchmarks show games exceeding 120fps at 4K already. Displays that support those higher rates and resolutions will be common in 5-6 years. It's more of a question of "why not?" rather than "does it need it" at this price point.

mirages 4y ago

How do you get this into a vertical PC and not have the connectors being damage by the weight over time ? Even if you screw very hard the wall part, the inner zone is still floating on its own weight

heyitsguay 4y ago
Probably similar to the 3090Ti - it comes with a little leash that connects to the card and ties off on the top of your case!
hu3 4y ago
Great question! There are GPU support brackets for these behemoths. Also known as ANTI-SAG brackets.
thg 4y ago
You use a graphics card holder, like https://www.newegg.com/jonsbo-model-vc3/p/1DW-0090-00006?Item=9SIAY3SG9N1512&Description=GPU%20holder&cm_re=GPU_holder-_-9SIAY3SG9N1512-_-Product&cm_sp=SP-_-979079-_-0-_-2-_-9SIAY3SG9N1512-_-GPU%20holder-_-gpu|holder-_-1 https://www.newegg.com/jonsbo-model-vc3/p/1DW-0090-00006?Ite... (No affiliation, I just clicked on the first search result)
ClassyJacket 4y ago
I think we're well overdue for a redesign from the current standard ATX layout. The graphics card is now the centrepiece, and almost always the only PCI-E card in use. It's time to lay it parallel to the motherboard, or at least give it more support in some way.
selfhoster11 4y ago
The first PCs had huge expansion cards, and those were mounted inside the case with clips like so: http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/s100/h/hzinside.jpg http://dunfield.classiccmp.org/s100/h/hzinside.jpg We could bring that back.

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avrionov 4y ago

It is a relative bargain, but I missed the time when I can build entire PC for $1,599 and play most games well.

neogodless 4y ago
> and play most games well But you still can build the entire PC for $1600 and play most games well. The Radeon RX 6650 XT is dipping below $300 and will run 1080p with great image quality settings. Or spend $425 on a Radeon RX 6750 XT and play most games at 1440p with excellent image quality.
- avrionov 4y ago
  I should take a look. I never owned Radeon.

mattgreenrocks 4y ago

Probably my age showing, but the value proposition of PC gaming seems to have fallen steeply in the past few years compared to consoles. The prospect of playing Serious Multiplayer Games has almost fallen off my radar completely, and that was one of the primary draws for me in the past. Nowadays, I don't want to fiddle with Windows (which insists on forcing updates when I do power my PC up to play with friends), mess with hardware, or anything like that. I have a big Steam library that I don't want to give up, but I could see being all in on future versions of Steam Deck.

sylens 4y ago
Very much in the same boat. I like the Steam Deck for the fact that it provides suspend/resume functionality to my PC games, which is useful with my limited time now that I'm older and have a kid.
webstrand 4y ago
Steam on Linux work great too, if you don't want to give up your PC. All of the games in my library (that I've still got interest in) work well, if not flawlessly.
- pdntspa 4y ago
  With my steam library, about 1/5 works "Great with Steam", and 3/5 shows up with the "Verified and Playable" filter, which includes everything labelled "Great With Steam".
antisthenes 4y ago
It hasn't, because you can still play 99.9% of games on a 1070, a 5-6 year old card that you can get used for $200 now. Just because NVidia went bonkers with their flagship pricing during COVID isn't a reason to throw out the best gaming platform out with the bathwater. > I could see being all in on future versions of Steam Deck. Steam Deck is just a computer. You're still gaming on a PC.
- pdntspa 4y ago

andrewmcwatters 4y ago

I don’t think it’s a bargain, but based on price to CUDA core counts alone, it actually is fairly priced. It’s just that their product line has a more or less linear CUDA core to price best line of fit.[1] There’s a dip specifically at the RTX 3080 Ti, where you’re getting more cores for the money than elsewhere on the best line of fit. Not sure what trade offs there are there except less VRAM and in one instance I read that cooling wasn’t as good. [1]: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MHTVDAyU7i8oXYAlmGPEGNs8rUpukT_eXlizQfXZ2JI/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1MHTVDAyU7i8oXYAlmGPE...

pixelpoet 4y ago
It's important to note that the definition of CUDA "cores" changed with Ampere due to their adding dual-issue, which is not always possible, but they count it as a flat doubling of "cores", where "cores" previously meant ALUs / vector lane units. There's also been quite a bit of inflation since the days of the 1660 Super...
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  Thanks for that, I didn't know!
BonoboIO 4y ago
Is very cuda core as powerful as very other cuda core? So 10x 4090 cuda cores are as powerful as 10x 2060 cores? A graph that plots price per core and power usage per core would be awesome. Google Sheets is so amazing, it just works and I can watch how somebody edits the document and collaboration is dimensions ahead of every service I know.
- andrewmcwatters 4y ago
  There does seem to be a close association when comparing GPU benchmark scores.[1] [1]: https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html https://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

capableweb 4y ago

Seems the cards in the comparison is 4090, 3080ti, 3080 and 6800XT. Why is there no 3090ti in there, which should be the top of the line card from the previous "generation"? Current generations top should be compared with previous generations top rather than third-to-top, otherwise it seems a bit disingenuous. Are there any better comparisons out there?

googletron 4y ago
I totally agree with this.
neogodless 4y ago
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=RTX%204090&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9vC9NBL8zo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9vC9NBL8zo and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQklDR8nv8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQklDR8nv8U both include the RTX 3090 Ti and RX 6950 XT. See 13 game average at https://youtu.be/aQklDR8nv8U?t=888 https://youtu.be/aQklDR8nv8U?t=888
- capableweb 4y ago
  Sorry, should have been clearer. I'm looking for articles with text and comparisons, not videos.
  - neogodless 4y ago
    Hardware Unboxed (linked above) also has a web site (called Tech Spot). https://www.techspot.com/review/2544-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090/ https://www.techspot.com/review/2544-nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090... 13-game average (4K): https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/2544/bench/Average_4K.png https://static.techspot.com/articles-info/2544/bench/Average... > The GeForce RTX 4090 is on average 59% faster than the RTX 3090 Ti and 71% faster than the 6950 XT at 4K gaming.
    - capableweb 4y ago

pier25 4y ago

Honestly if you don't intend on playing AAA games at 4K/+100fps with ray tracing you don't need this. The Steam survey shows the GTX1060 is still the most popular card so even the most recent games need to perform adequately with that in mind. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw... I still use a GTX1070 for playing at 1080p or 4K at 60fps for older or non-demanding games and it's still absolutely fine.

andrewmcwatters 4y ago
I agree. If we hold to the historic 200 USD GPU price point, developers should still be mostly targeting the GTX 16 series.
capableweb 4y ago
> Honestly if you don't intend on playing AAA games at 4K/+100fps with ray tracing you don't need this. On the other hand, if you're doing other things with your GPU than just gaming, this might be a very well-worth card, depending on how much AI/ML/video encoding/3d rendering/physics simulations/X you do. Personally I'm waiting for some benchmarks related to CUDA and particularly Stable Diffusion to come out before I decide. And I don't game that much anymore, maybe some hours per month at maximum. But I'm using my GPU a lot for video encoding and 3D rendering, so still interested in GPU development.
- pier25 4y ago
  Sure, although I would imagine your use case is niche compared to gaming.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    You're saying all other use cases besides gaming together is niche compared to gaming itself? Not sure about that, a lot of NVIDIA cards are used in both the creative and engineering industries. And when they buy cards, they usually buy a lot of cards, not just one per device, as gamers do. If you observe NVIDIA movements and actions, you'll see that they are starting to focus a lot more on B2B than they ever did before. Almost like their B2C is not the main focus anymore, just a good PR piece for them.

nikhizzle 4y ago

Can anyone speak to how fast this card for inference on diffusion models?

atty 4y ago

I see a big mix of positive and negative in the comments, I’m gonna take a slightly different tact, and say I’m extremely bullish on the GPU market in the near-to-mid term on the consumer side. Obviously, a coming recession and relaxing of sales due to pandemic/lockdown pull ahead will probably dampen sales, but having 3 vendors taking 3 separate approaches to their designs is great for competition and consumer choice. We have Nvidia at the high end with monolithic chips probably delivering the highest performance in most/all areas, especially gaming. AMD is going with a chiplet architecture that should allow them to stay in the same ballpark of (non-raytracing) performance at a lower price. And finally we have Intel coming in at the low end with cards that seem like (once all the driver issues are sorted out) are going to be adequate for gaming, maybe even offer best in class price/performance in certain cases, and that seem to be also targeting productivity as well. They were the first out of the gate with AV1 hardware support, as well what looks like some relatively impressive matrix math units, similar to Nvidias tensor cores. Overall looking very promising for the next 5-10 years, and Im hoping any potential recession doesn’t cause Intel or AMD to take their foot off the pedal, or in the worst case (more likely for Intel), even scrap the product lines.

sylens 4y ago
I'm very encouraged by Intel's entry into this market. The fact that they seemed to target the area once occupied by the xx50 and xx60 cards is great
CharlesW 4y ago
> …I’m gonna take a slightly different tact, and say I’m extremely bullish on the GPU market in the near-to-mid term on the consumer side. Count me in as bearish, at least for aftermarket discrete GPUs. Desktops' share continues to slowly deflate as a percentage of PC shipments. Fewer and fewer consumers upgrade their built-in GPU, whether discrete or integrated. The GPU "middle class" is disappearing between "whatever came with my computer" and behemoths like the RTX 4090.

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dschuetz 4y ago

I don't know if that's a bargain after the shortage and pricing disaster in the recent years. Looks like I am going to skip another 10 years until I buy anything with Nvidia on it.

HelloNurse 4y ago

Definitely a big bargain: > When a standalone GPU is as large as a modern video gaming console—it's nearly identical in total volume to the Xbox Series S and more than double the size of a Nintendo Switch—it's hard not to laugh incredulously at the thing.

TheRealPomax 4y ago

Just because it's a bargain doesn't mean it's a good deal.

Arrath 4y ago

Watching Der8auer's review[1], the performance for power curve is awfully wonky. I would happily tune this card down to 70% or even 60% of the power target for a very minimal performance loss, totally acceptable to me for the efficiency gain. I wonder what allowance 3rd parties have to detune these cards, and perhaps produce a 4090 with a more modest cooling solution suited to a ~300W power level, maybe making a 2 or 2.5 slot size card, rather than the current monster cards we're seeing. [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60yFji_GKak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60yFji_GKak

glonq 4y ago

If I had more time and dedication, I would foster a social media campaign to discourage people from buying the new generation of expensive-ass GPU's. To send a message to NVidia that they need to reconsider more consumer-friendly RTX4xxx pricing. Maybe #novidia or #novidya as a hashtag.