Power and Temperature
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.
By default, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition pulled 434.9W board power, and 354W GPU chip power. This puts it under the power draw of the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti which has a board power of 455W and GPU chip power of 356.1W. The GeForce RTX 4090 FE, at stock settings, uses 4% less board power, so it is quite a power-efficient video card when not overclocked. The GeForce RTX 4090 FE does use 25% more power than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, which sits at 348W board power.
When we overclocked the GeForce RTX 4090 FE board power rose to 489.9W, an increase of 8% board power or 34.9W of board power. This is exactly in line with the performance increase we received, so the power increase vs performance increase is nearly a 1:1 ratio. At 490W the GeForce RTX 4090 FE uses 41% more power than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.
At stock settings, the GeForce RTX 4090 FE has a GPU temp of 67.9c and a Hot Spot of 78c. This again runs cooler than the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti which is at 75.8c GPU and 84.5c GPU. The Radeon RX 7900 XTX has a cooler GPU temp of 66c, but the Hot Spot on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX runs much hotter at 88c and is the highest on our graph.
Granted, the fans are running at 100%, but when overclocked the GeForce RTX 4090 FE is running at 62.9c GPU and 73.1c Hot Spot. These temperatures are the lowest on the graph, so we can see that the cooler configuration is not holding back overclocking potential.
The memory temperature on the GeForce RTX 4090 FE at stock is 80c and overclocked with 100% fans it was 72c. The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti FE memory was at 88c.
GPU-Z Sensor Data
The first screenshot of GPU-Z above is at Default, and the second screenshot of GPU-Z is at Overclocked.