Default GPU Frequency
With both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs, the GPU frequency is dynamic. NVIDIA has GPU Boost, and AMD has its Game Clock and Boost Clock quoted frequencies. Typically, GPUs today can exceed the “Boost Clock” dynamically. We need to find out what the GPU frequency is while gaming. To do this we will record the GPU clock frequency over time while playing a game. We use Cyberpunk 2077 for this with a very long manual run-through at “Ultra” settings recording GPU-Z sensor data.
In this first graph, we have Cyberpunk 2077 running at 4K and “Ultra” settings, which is a playable setting on the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition. This setting does not bottleneck the video card, and the GPU frequency is allowed to run up to the full performance while gaming.
In this scenario, you can see that it starts off at 2760MHz, but after about a minute it drops down to 2745MHz and stays consistently there the entire time while playing. This is a very high GPU frequency, exceeding the rated Boost Clock of 2520MHz by 9% without doing anything. This is NVIDIA GPU Boost at work, dynamically utilizing all the power and thermal headroom it has to raise the clock speed, and with the RTX 4090 Founders Edition you get a pretty substantial GPU Boost while gaming when you are not bottlenecking the GPU. The fact that it remains a straight line, and is consistent, is important for a smooth gaming experience.
By contrast to the above graph, we wanted to show you this graph, where the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition is being a bit bottlenecked by running “Ultra Ray Tracing” at 4K in Cyberpunk 2077. The GPU is no longer able to maintain the full 2745MHz consistently. Instead, it fluctuates, as low as 2685MHz up to 2745MHz.
It’s still not a horrible result, but we just wanted to show you what to watch out for that will clue you into the game settings being a bottleneck for the GPU, even if it sometimes does feel “good enough.” Ultimately, you can get more out of the GPU frequency on the RTX 4090 FE if you keep the GPU in a nice sweet spot, and that means higher performance overall while gaming for the entire gaming session, but if you push it too hard, the clock speed will suffer.
Discussion (19 replies)
Join Discussion →They definitely made a good cooker for the card.
Yup, running cool with 450W of power draw. That's an improvement on the previous FE coolers for sure!
SWEET glad you got a review sample!!
Just finished my read through. This is actually VERY nice.
Nice review. Too rich for my blood, and too hungry for my PSU. But still.....
Crazy the FE edition actually has a good cooler this time around.
I'm still happy with my factory overclocked 3090 Ti w/ AIO that has just a bit more OC headroom to boot but if it wasn't for that I'd be sorely tempted. I can wait and see what the 4090 Ti, or whatever succeeds this, brings to the table.
Impressive card and review though. Thanks, @Brent_Justice!
Damn. That's impressive. I might be going from RDNA2 to Ada.
What's hilarious is, many gamers that were waiting for the 40 series reviews, and a much lower Ampere price reduction before pulling the plug on the 3090/3090Tis, etc., after today's 4000 series revealing, most (if not all) of them are running out to buy any Ampere that they could find now. ?
Which is, sadly, exactly as Nvidia intended (if true).
Buuuuut...some of those early reduction GPU's prices has jacked back up or those said GPUs are no longer in stock! You snooze... well, you know the rest. ?
I saw a Zotac 3090 for around $900 yesterday on Amazon Early Access.
Now that they are for sale, the Asus ROG strix is 2699€ over here.
Zotac? Yeah, but no.
And retailers and AIBs, Newegg, B&H, GIGABYTE, ASUS, etc., have already started scalping their products again. ??
Yeah, I'm not a fan either but I've heard from some that have had good experiences with them.
They put out some of the highest-performance models, including some XOC stuff with 1000W power limits (read as unlimited).