13 ms·

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 perform

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
    Just set the required/requested gpu number to 0 and k8s will let you use same gpu with multiple pods. You'll need to make sure to not overload gpu mem, otherwise you'll get oom errors. You can use k8s patch functionality to add custom resources, essentially use that to represent gpu mem and include the amount of gpu the pod uses in its definition, that way you don't go over the limit.
- breakds 4y ago
  I have a bunch of 3090s in the garage for machine learning almost 24x7. The garage has no AC at all. None of them have failed yet.
  - lupire 4y ago
    What have your machines learned so far?
    - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
      Whether or not something is a hotdog, and the most optimal way to order ground beef.
mywittyname 4y ago
Depends on what you're playing and the experience you want. 4k@60fps or 2k@144fps is a struggle with a lot of newer games with any of the RTX 3000 cards. And ray tracing brings even the mighty 3090 to its knees. Granted, ray tracing is optional (I can't even distinguish between RT and non-RT in games like CP:2077), and DLSS is a game-changer for 4k gaming. But there are plenty of games that I've been playing would be served better by a 4080 over my 3080.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > I can't even distinguish between RT and non-RT in games like CP:2077 Mostly because fake reflections in triangle-based rendering is convincing enough unless you're looking for it or have just gotten good at spotting it. It's like bad kerning. If you don't know what to look for, you probably don't notice it or pay it any mind. But once you do, you see it EVERYWHERE. [0] But I see artifacts of fake reflections in games everywhere. The problem is that most games rely on screen-space reflections which don't work if the reflected object isn't on the screen. So imagine being over water, looking over mountains in the distance, and you see the mountains reflected in the water. But as the camera pans down and the peaks go off screen, suddenly the mountain peaks get cut off in the reflection. The only way to render a mirror accurately in triangle-based rendering is to effectively use a technique similar to Portal, but then your transform engine has to would twice as hard, since it has to project the scene twice. Even then, you're limited to flat mirrors without taking shortcuts. Curved objects can't be reflective in triangle-based rendering at all. They fake it well enough by using environment mapping of textures, but then they won't accurately reflect things around them. [0] Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1015/ https://xkcd.com/1015/
- lupire 4y ago
  IMO photorealistic immersive rendering just makes the limited unrealistic behaviors more jarring. It feels more like broken reality than a realistic fantasy. It's great for a movie displaying on a wall, not for a game on a desktop monitor. If your 4k pixel count is based on 3-5 screen driving/flight simulator on big screens, then sure that's great to have
bl_valance 4y ago
This is why I think they created RTX, they knew hardware was already good enough for most players playing at 1440p or even 4k ( I run AAA games non-rtx at high 144fps ). It's the same thing with iphones, it's been diminishing returns for a couple of generations already that they are now focusing on creating new software features to justify better cameras, soc, displays...
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  Yup. This is my take. I build a new machine about once every 4 years for gaming/development, and I just don't really see all that much difference between the capabilities of the machine I built two generations ago (now ~9 years old) and the one I specced out last year. I can still load up modern AAA titles on the 9 year old machine and they run just fine at 1080p 60fps with some minor tweaks to the graphics. Turns out the GTX 970 from 2014 is still more than capable. Basically - these top end cards are a complete waste of cash for the average consumer. Hard to even claim you're future-proofing the machine with it - you're just plain wasting money.
  - dvngnt_ 4y ago
    depends, 1440p is a good sweet spot between 1080p and 2160p. also vr can be heavy like if you doing flat to vr mods like cyberpunk
KMnO4 4y ago
The xx90 isn’t made for gaming. Before the 30 series, everyone knew RTX Titan was not a gaming card, but rather for compute/professional work. Nvidia rebranded their Titan cards as 3090/4090 and people lap that up for some reason.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  I will never understand people that bought a 3090 for gaming. It was literally double the price of a 3080, but was at most 20% faster, and usually only 10-15% faster. nVidia's claim that "It's for 4K gaming!" was marketing bullshit. With a such a small performance premium over the 3080, I'd argue that if a 3080 can't handle a game in 4K, the 3090 probably can't either.
  - aplummer 4y ago
    It just can do 4k. I’m one of these people, my only monitor is a Pro Display so I need every last % because less than 4k is unplayable on it.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Because nVidia knows that a huge part of their gaming market wants to buy the highest specs to show off to their friends, not for game performance. The "1%" who have unlimited budget for consumer purchases like this, are millions of people.
    - dispat0r 4y ago
      Also, you couldn't buy a 3080 at launch, it was never in stock. Now, the real 4080 16 GB is too close to the 4090 in price to be worth it. For the moment, it is the best to wait for AMD and hope it will be good.
      - brokenmachine 4y ago
        Many are sick of waiting.
  - 4y ago
sylens 4y ago
It has definitely made me question how often I want to upgrade my PC or if I even want to going forward. Feel like there is a limit to how much I want to spend to play video games and this is starting to get pretty far away from it
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
> I think I'm getting old, but I can't for the life of me get excited about this 450W behemoth. Then don't buy it? These are flagship cards. It's like the $100,000 Corvette in Chevy's lineup. It's fun to watch the reviews and see on the showroom floor, but most people aren't in that enthusiast market segment. They're going to the dealership for the $40,000 Camaro or the $30,000 Colorado truck because those get the job done for them at a reasonable price. If you're an enthusiast and this is your thing, you save up the money and buy the flagship. It's a small audience, but the product is there for those who want it. If you're a casual gamer, you get something like a 3060 and it works great as long as you're not maxing out settings and trying to play everything at 4K. I honestly don't understand all of the criticism for these flagship parts. When auto makers release a ridiculous flagship car, everyone cheers it on and understands the purpose. When hardware makers release a flagship part, it seems everyone wants to criticize it for existing.
- selfhoster11 4y ago
  Compared to past cards, these behemoths aren't the equivalent of a top-end car. They are the equivalent of an oil tanker: slow, wasteful, and while yes, you might sometimes need to harness the power offered by one of these, as a private individual you definitely want something whose fuel efficiency is not measured in hundreds of tons of fuel per day. Besides all that, releasing "consumer" cards with such overly inefficient power consumption is just being tone-deaf at a time where half of the Western world is facing rapidly rising electricity bills.
  - paulmd 4y ago
    where are people getting this idea that the cards are "inefficient fuel tankers"? https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/power-gaming.png https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-e... https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/energy-efficiency.png https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-e... in contrast to the breathless rumors, those power numbers look incredibly reasonable... it's less than the 3090 pulled last gen, and it's 1.7x the perf/w of a 3080 or 2x the efficiency of a 3090. 3090 was always known to be pushed a little far, but, there is an easy 70% uplift in efficiency here, and none of the power-creep stuff ended up actually happening. 4090 Ti will eventually happen, and will pull about the same as 3090 Ti. Which, if it gets 1.7-2x the perf/w, sounds fine.
dirtyid 4y ago
Pretty bored with the resolution / FPS race. Path tracing was a huge leap, but I'd rather see artists / render tech to fully exploit image quality at 1080p than 4k. I waiting for AI's to start hallucinating game graphics to to look as good as a DVD or even VHS.
skohan 4y ago
I'm actually looking forward to when the pendulum swings back towards efficiency. I recently built a mini ITX build around a 2070S, which is basically silent and takes up barely any space. Smaller, cooler and quieter is more appealing to me by a long shot.
izacus 4y ago
With all the complaining on this website, it seems like HN should probably be renamed to Old Fart News. I'm sorry you lost your sense of excitement and wonder, but this 4090 really looks quite great.
- foobarian 4y ago
  That's a little harsh. How about Medium Fart News? The GP may not be excited about a 4090 but at least they have a 30x0. My Nvidia is from 2011 :-)
sschueller 4y ago
If you do any work in blender or CAD you would. I haven't played a game in years but I wish I had one of these cards.

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
  Just set the required/requested gpu number to 0 and k8s will let you use same gpu with multiple pods. You'll need to make sure to not overload gpu mem, otherwise you'll get oom errors. You can use k8s patch functionality to add custom resources, essentially use that to represent gpu mem and include the amount of gpu the pod uses in its definition, that way you don't go over the limit.
breakds 4y ago
I have a bunch of 3090s in the garage for machine learning almost 24x7. The garage has no AC at all. None of them have failed yet.
- lupire 4y ago
  What have your machines learned so far?
  - wing-_-nuts 4y ago
    Whether or not something is a hotdog, and the most optimal way to order ground beef.

mywittyname 4y ago

Depends on what you're playing and the experience you want. 4k@60fps or 2k@144fps is a struggle with a lot of newer games with any of the RTX 3000 cards. And ray tracing brings even the mighty 3090 to its knees. Granted, ray tracing is optional (I can't even distinguish between RT and non-RT in games like CP:2077), and DLSS is a game-changer for 4k gaming. But there are plenty of games that I've been playing would be served better by a 4080 over my 3080.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> I can't even distinguish between RT and non-RT in games like CP:2077 Mostly because fake reflections in triangle-based rendering is convincing enough unless you're looking for it or have just gotten good at spotting it. It's like bad kerning. If you don't know what to look for, you probably don't notice it or pay it any mind. But once you do, you see it EVERYWHERE. [0] But I see artifacts of fake reflections in games everywhere. The problem is that most games rely on screen-space reflections which don't work if the reflected object isn't on the screen. So imagine being over water, looking over mountains in the distance, and you see the mountains reflected in the water. But as the camera pans down and the peaks go off screen, suddenly the mountain peaks get cut off in the reflection. The only way to render a mirror accurately in triangle-based rendering is to effectively use a technique similar to Portal, but then your transform engine has to would twice as hard, since it has to project the scene twice. Even then, you're limited to flat mirrors without taking shortcuts. Curved objects can't be reflective in triangle-based rendering at all. They fake it well enough by using environment mapping of textures, but then they won't accurately reflect things around them. [0] Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1015/ https://xkcd.com/1015/
lupire 4y ago
IMO photorealistic immersive rendering just makes the limited unrealistic behaviors more jarring. It feels more like broken reality than a realistic fantasy. It's great for a movie displaying on a wall, not for a game on a desktop monitor. If your 4k pixel count is based on 3-5 screen driving/flight simulator on big screens, then sure that's great to have

bl_valance 4y ago

This is why I think they created RTX, they knew hardware was already good enough for most players playing at 1440p or even 4k ( I run AAA games non-rtx at high 144fps ). It's the same thing with iphones, it's been diminishing returns for a couple of generations already that they are now focusing on creating new software features to justify better cameras, soc, displays...

horsawlarway 4y ago
Yup. This is my take. I build a new machine about once every 4 years for gaming/development, and I just don't really see all that much difference between the capabilities of the machine I built two generations ago (now ~9 years old) and the one I specced out last year. I can still load up modern AAA titles on the 9 year old machine and they run just fine at 1080p 60fps with some minor tweaks to the graphics. Turns out the GTX 970 from 2014 is still more than capable. Basically - these top end cards are a complete waste of cash for the average consumer. Hard to even claim you're future-proofing the machine with it - you're just plain wasting money.
- dvngnt_ 4y ago
  depends, 1440p is a good sweet spot between 1080p and 2160p. also vr can be heavy like if you doing flat to vr mods like cyberpunk

KMnO4 4y ago

The xx90 isn’t made for gaming. Before the 30 series, everyone knew RTX Titan was not a gaming card, but rather for compute/professional work. Nvidia rebranded their Titan cards as 3090/4090 and people lap that up for some reason.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
I will never understand people that bought a 3090 for gaming. It was literally double the price of a 3080, but was at most 20% faster, and usually only 10-15% faster. nVidia's claim that "It's for 4K gaming!" was marketing bullshit. With a such a small performance premium over the 3080, I'd argue that if a 3080 can't handle a game in 4K, the 3090 probably can't either.
- aplummer 4y ago
  It just can do 4k. I’m one of these people, my only monitor is a Pro Display so I need every last % because less than 4k is unplayable on it.
- lupire 4y ago
  Because nVidia knows that a huge part of their gaming market wants to buy the highest specs to show off to their friends, not for game performance. The "1%" who have unlimited budget for consumer purchases like this, are millions of people.
  - dispat0r 4y ago
    Also, you couldn't buy a 3080 at launch, it was never in stock. Now, the real 4080 16 GB is too close to the 4090 in price to be worth it. For the moment, it is the best to wait for AMD and hope it will be good.
    - brokenmachine 4y ago
      Many are sick of waiting.
- 4y ago

sylens 4y ago

It has definitely made me question how often I want to upgrade my PC or if I even want to going forward. Feel like there is a limit to how much I want to spend to play video games and this is starting to get pretty far away from it

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

> I think I'm getting old, but I can't for the life of me get excited about this 450W behemoth. Then don't buy it? These are flagship cards. It's like the $100,000 Corvette in Chevy's lineup. It's fun to watch the reviews and see on the showroom floor, but most people aren't in that enthusiast market segment. They're going to the dealership for the $40,000 Camaro or the $30,000 Colorado truck because those get the job done for them at a reasonable price. If you're an enthusiast and this is your thing, you save up the money and buy the flagship. It's a small audience, but the product is there for those who want it. If you're a casual gamer, you get something like a 3060 and it works great as long as you're not maxing out settings and trying to play everything at 4K. I honestly don't understand all of the criticism for these flagship parts. When auto makers release a ridiculous flagship car, everyone cheers it on and understands the purpose. When hardware makers release a flagship part, it seems everyone wants to criticize it for existing.

selfhoster11 4y ago
Compared to past cards, these behemoths aren't the equivalent of a top-end car. They are the equivalent of an oil tanker: slow, wasteful, and while yes, you might sometimes need to harness the power offered by one of these, as a private individual you definitely want something whose fuel efficiency is not measured in hundreds of tons of fuel per day. Besides all that, releasing "consumer" cards with such overly inefficient power consumption is just being tone-deaf at a time where half of the Western world is facing rapidly rising electricity bills.
- paulmd 4y ago
  where are people getting this idea that the cards are "inefficient fuel tankers"? https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/power-gaming.png https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-e... https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-edition/images/energy-efficiency.png https://tpucdn.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090-founders-e... in contrast to the breathless rumors, those power numbers look incredibly reasonable... it's less than the 3090 pulled last gen, and it's 1.7x the perf/w of a 3080 or 2x the efficiency of a 3090. 3090 was always known to be pushed a little far, but, there is an easy 70% uplift in efficiency here, and none of the power-creep stuff ended up actually happening. 4090 Ti will eventually happen, and will pull about the same as 3090 Ti. Which, if it gets 1.7-2x the perf/w, sounds fine.

dirtyid 4y ago

Pretty bored with the resolution / FPS race. Path tracing was a huge leap, but I'd rather see artists / render tech to fully exploit image quality at 1080p than 4k. I waiting for AI's to start hallucinating game graphics to to look as good as a DVD or even VHS.

skohan 4y ago

I'm actually looking forward to when the pendulum swings back towards efficiency. I recently built a mini ITX build around a 2070S, which is basically silent and takes up barely any space. Smaller, cooler and quieter is more appealing to me by a long shot.

izacus 4y ago

With all the complaining on this website, it seems like HN should probably be renamed to Old Fart News. I'm sorry you lost your sense of excitement and wonder, but this 4090 really looks quite great.

foobarian 4y ago
That's a little harsh. How about Medium Fart News? The GP may not be excited about a 4090 but at least they have a 30x0. My Nvidia is from 2011 :-)

sschueller 4y ago

If you do any work in blender or CAD you would. I haven't played a game in years but I wish I had one of these cards.