NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition Review

The FPS Review may receive a commission if you purchase something after clicking a link in this article.

Power and Temp

To test the power and temperature we perform a manual run-through in Cyberpunk 2077 at “Ultra” settings for real-world in-game data.  We use GPU-Z sensor data to record the results.  We report on the GPU-Z sensor data for “Board Power” and “GPU Chip Power” when available for our Wattage data.  For temperature data, we report the GPU (Edge Temp of the GPU or Package Temp) as well as Hot Spot (Junction Temperature) when available for our temperature data.

3 vs. 4 PCIe 8-pin Power

The GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition video card comes with a power adapter that allows 3x or up to 4x 8-pin PCIe Power Connectors to be connected. NVIDIA states that the requirement is only 3x 8-pin PCIe Power Connectors and that the 4th one is there to allow up to 600W of power for increased overclocking potential. We wanted to test the GPU clock speed between 3x and 4x PCIe 8-pin Power Connectors to make sure this claim is true and see if there are any differences between 3x or 4x PCIe 8-pin Power Connectors on the Founders Edition video card.

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition 3 vs 4 PCIe 8-pin Power GPU Frequency Comparison Graph
Sensors3x PCIe 8-pin Power4x PCIe 8-pin Power
Board Power Draw431.6W435.6W
GPU Chip Power Draw354.3W357W
GPU Temperature66.9c68.3c
GPU Hot Spot78.8c77.7c
MVDDC Power Draw70.5W70.4W
PWR_SRC Power Draw79.5W79.6W
GPU Voltage1.0500V1.0500V

From the graph we can see that the GPU clock speed lines up exactly between 3x or 4x PCIe 8-pin Power Connectors, there is no difference in default settings. It has the same minimums and maximums, and pretty much lines up. We can further see from the power table that the Board Power, GPU Chip Power, Temperature, MVDDC Power, and PWR_SRC are all similar between 3x or 4x PCIe 8-pin Power Connectors on the Founders Edition, they are all within marginal errors. This means that there are indeed no drawbacks to running just 3x PCIe 8-pin Power Connectors on the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition, the 4th one is not required for normal operation.

Power

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition Power Graph

Testing power draw on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition resulted in some interesting data. First and foremost, we could not max out the TDP of the video card just playing games. We did have all 4 of the PCIe 8-pin Power Connectors plugged in during these power tests. We tried various games and graphics settings trying to push the GPU as hard as possible, and we could not get it to ever reach 100% TDP or 450W, the maximum was 96.8% TDP according to GPUz. The closest we could come to was in Metro Exodus Enhanced at 4K pushing the Extreme Ultra Quality Ray Tracing quality setting.

In this setting, the card hit 444.8W Board Power as the maximum, which was only just about a couple of Watts higher than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE. The GPU Chip Power was higher though at 375.6W versus the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE at 346.4W. This is different than the GeForce RTX 3090 FE, which we could max out the TDP with. That said, these values are not exceeding 450W, and in fact the power efficiency of the GeForce RTX 4090 FE seems to be very good, it’s no more power-hungry than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE, yet performs so much faster in gameplay performance.

Power Draw Comparisons by Game Settings and Resolution

Game SettingsBoard PowerGPU Chip PowerMVDDC PowerPWR_SRCGPU Temp
Cyberpunk 2077
1440p
343.8W290.1W49.2W58W61.1c
Cyberpunk 2077
1440p Ultra Ray Tracing
393.2W324.1W63.5W72.5W65.6c
Cyberpunk 2077
4K
382.7W319.6W58W67W64c
Cyberpunk 2077
4K Ultra Ray Tracing
432.1W352.9W72.4W81.5W68.5c
Cyberpunk 2077
4K Psycho Ray Tracing
435.6W357W70.4W79.6W68.3c
Dying Light 2
4K Ultra Ray Tracing
430.3W356.1W72.7W81.9W67.6c
Metro Exodus Enhanced
4K Extreme Ultra Ray Tracing
444.8W375.6W68.3W79.8W63.8c

As we mentioned above, the power draw of the video card varies by the resolution and game quality settings you are demanding of the GeForce RTX 4090 FE video card. We put this table together above to show you how the Board Power and GPU Chip Power and MVDDC Power (memory) and PWR_SRC power and GPU Temp vary by the resolution and game settings. Note that all 4 PCIe 8-pin Power Connectors are plugged in for all these tests.

As you can see, the highest Board Power Draw and GPU Chip Power Draw was in Metro Exodus Enhanced pushing 4K and Extreme Ultra Ray Tracing. The Board Power was 444.8W and the GPU Chip Power was 375.6W. However, this wasn’t the actual highest GPU temp of the card at near 64c, and also not the highest MVDDC Power either. Running Cyberpunk 2077 at 4K and “Ultra” or “Psycho” Ray Tracing actually resulted in the highest GPU temps at 68c and the highest MVDDC Power, but the Board Power and GPU Chip Power were just a little lower than Metro Exodus Enhanced, but still in second place for the highest.

When you drop down to resolutions like 4K without Ray Tracing, or 1440p without Ray Tracing, or even with Ray Tracing, the video card doesn’t get taxed as much. The actual Board Power can drop down to under 400W for example at 1440p with Ray Tracing in Cyberpunk 2077. The temperature also drops by a few degrees as well. This really shows that the power demand and temperature are going to depend on how hard you are pushing the GPU, and that seems to really only be 4K with Ray Tracing, otherwise, you may never actually be hitting the full TDP of the video card.

Temperature

NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition Temperature Graph

Speaking of temperatures, wow are they impressive on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition video card. This beefy cooler is doing its job alright. The GeForce RTX 4090 FE is actually the coolest running GPU on this graph. It only reached 68.5c maximum GPU Temperature and 78.1c Hot Spot. This is cooler than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti and Radeon RX 6900 XT. What’s more, it did this at only 45% and 41% fan speeds, meaning the video card ran very quietly. For comparison, the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE ran at 60% fan speed on both fans and the GeForce RTX 3090 FE ran at 70% on both fans.

GPU-Z Sensor Data

In the above GPUz screenshots, you can see the full sensor results at various game settings on the GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition.

Join the discussion in our forums...

Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

Recent News