Vampires are a horror genre staple so it’s quite shocking we haven’t really had an amazing game release featuring them as the central villain in quite some time. So when Arkane, the makers of amazing games like Prey and Dishonored, announced Redfall in June of 2021, it captured my bloodlust. Xbox’s current weak place in the market is begging for a great release which puts a ton of extra pressure for Redfall to exceed expectations.

The excitement for Redfall’s hero-based looter-shooter gameplay centering around vampires has such a high ceiling because of this atmosphere. Microsoft needs a win. It’s Arkane, so we know they have a history of hitting it out of the park with combat, stealth, and a great story. But after delays, the announcement that consoles would be locked to 30fps at launch, and after a quiet launch week, some concern set in.

The press embargo was set right before tomorrow’s release at 8:01 PM ET today. A red flag went up instantly. This is a review-in-progress as we were provided a key close to release and have not had time to complete the entire story but have completed the majority of its major missions. In fact, a 69.4GB patch dropped this morning adding DLC.

After playing, I understand the fear of reviewers about gameplay spoiling major elements of the latter half of the game. For FPS fans, Redfall provides some great gameplay elements to sink your teeth and time into, but it also lacks direction and its vision is muddied with formulaic systems and some glaring issues. Let’s take a deeper look at Redfall in our review of the PC version for Steam. Thank you to Nvidia and to Arkane for providing a review copy for our coverage!

Characters

Redfall has you choose one of four main characters which is one of the biggest draws for me upon release. Going in with friends to experience a 4-player massacre of vampires and their minions could be a real blast. Central to Redfall is its first person and hero shooter design. The four playable characters at launch are cryptozoologist inventor, Devinder Crousley; telekinetic student, Layla Ellison; combat engineer, Remi de la Rosa; and special forces sniper, veteran Jacob Boyer. Redfall has more character releases planned later.

Each character has a trio of upgradable special powers, two are useable for limited times, and an “ultimate” that recharges more slowly over time. Each power has its own unique spin on combat and abilities to play with. Vampires invade the area known as Redfall, and after some opening events, there is no physical way to escape from the area. You and the town’s citizens are fish trapped in a bucket being saved for feeding time.

The opening sequence is pretty great and sets the tone well. The massive cascade of frozen water serves as an ominous foreshadowing of the immense power our enemies hold. Our characters had previous run-ins with the main antagonists that provided them with their abilities.

I really disliked that Bungie made us go to their website to read “grimoire” cards to understand the lore. The same thing is done here with Redfall – most of the backstory ends up by being briefly told in side conversations, and if you want more, you need to read one of the many, many notes strewn across the world or by gathering 100 items that provide more exposition from a central character. It is hard to describe how grandiose the game can be and yet so small at the same time before you actually jump in to play.

Disappointingly, Redfall at times can feel paper thin, and I believe it could have been truly great with more time in the coffin until it was ready to withstand the heat of the sun and its place in the current landscape. Gamers will notice.

We want the deep world-building and narrative that Arkane is known for, and if more time was needed for a sophisticated presentation, I would have begged for it. Without going into later story spoilers, Redfall’s premise is that a biotech corporation known as Aevum was working with a scientist seeking immortality, an experiment went wrong and the vampire hoard was unleashed. Almost immediately, many of the town’s residents became cultists who wanted this same immortality and began to worship and defend the vampires with the promise that once they die they would be reincarnated as all-powerful beings.

A once idyllic island town is now the center for survivors, and you are someone luckily granted special powers that you have right off the bat. Conceptually, its a great setting for this game and it was very interesting to explore. With vampire nests to destroy, bosses to defeat, safehouses to set free, and so much loot to gather for upgrades – the base systems are there for a great time.

But while Redfall’s premise does an amazing job of setting up some great missions, the presentation feels extremely dated. So much so I am not sure that most players will stay long enough to experience the latter half of the game which begins to feel incredible at times.

Let’s take a deeper look at the gameplay.

Gameplay

After the opening sequence, your first mission is to approach a surrounded firehouse with survivors inside. Cultists are standing outside, literally, not banging on the walls or trying to break in – they are standing there in groups just waiting to pick survivors off. This is the same immersion-breaking feeling most of the encounters have in the game. Something feels like it was missed or changed in development.

Most gamers won’t care about small details as they may just care about the overall story and the gunplay. Well, after first picking off the cultists, you meet your first set of survivors for your new home base. There is little to no backstory for the characters without reading interactable letters, and they sort of just fall into place as expert base builders with a doctor, a gun expert, a clergywoman, and more. Redfall is shockingly light on explanations and barebones in so many other similar places that lowered our expectations for the rest of the game.

This base is never attacked and is literally just a place you come back to get supplies, make occasional small talk, and interact with a missions table to get photo cutscenes between your custom character and the survivors. I believe the reason for this is because of only having four characters and it may have been easier to just replace their skin for the cutscenes. I understand that the visuals needed to be presented, but with such barebones characters it would have made me care more about them if they actually talked to you.

Between missions, they will talk to each other and then later you get in-game conversations with dynamic character movements and interactions that I really enjoyed especially near the end of the first half of the game. If this was more fleshed out, I would have cared much more about these characters and saving them.

However, none of it matters as once a major defeat occurs, in order to progress the story you have to leave the main island and can never return. I’d prefer to go back and experience those levels again when I want to and have fun in the sandbox that was created, but its completely shut off.

The second area feels more like the real main game in almost every way. Characters are more vocal, the area feels more dense and packed with hidden items and more enemies to fight. The story is finally fleshed out and its vast world is begging to be explored. Only in the second half is where Redfall shines and becomes extremely fun.

Gunplay

We suggest not playing the healer characters during single-player as they won’t offer much utility. Some of the abilities become extremely powerful with later unlocks like Jacob’s raven damaging anyone in its path. However, the AI needs some serious work and I often found myself ignoring gun perks and upgrades as a necessity to improve my experience.

None of it is truly fundamental to the experience and most hero’s abilities would help multiplayer sessions. However, story progression is not shared due to the nature of the game’s design but the loot and levels you gain are.

Flawed AI is one of the biggest issues we ran into. It’s bad. I mean really bad especially for the poor cultists who get the short straw. They funnel in the same path, get stuck on rocks, have clunky animations, and have no real cognition or ability to flank and outsmart you while at the same time having god-aim. It’s a bad combo especially when being sniped at from a distance.

I am not sure any patches can address this, but with Jacob at launch, AI is broken and basically stuck in easy mode. Even on higher difficulties and with later invisibility unlocks, I could cycle between walking directly into a large group of enemies, grabbing the quest item, and then going invisible again, and they would just go on their way. The same could be said about shooting from a specific area – the AI just funnels directly to you and poses no real challenge ala Deathloop.

Other characters have similar “cheese” but I would recommend increasing the difficulty of the game for a better challenge. The shooting experience is still fantastic – from sniper rifles to UV lasers that petrify the enemy vampires – it is a blast to play.

In some well-designed areas like the vampire nests, it reminded us of entering the Elder Scroll’s Oblivion Gates. These moments however are few and far between if you love to fully explore the world. Some missions are surprisingly good but getting there is such a slog that some may never progress to experience them. The moment-to-moment gameplay constantly clashes badly with each other. It is tiring especially when combined with performance issues.

Speaking of vampire nests, these are some of the best gameplay areas in Redfall. They pack strong vampires in large numbers that can overwhelm you quickly even with Jacob’s invisibility and it requires careful planning. Conversely, there is little punishment for dying as progress does not reset and there are typically no timers, so if you can go in gun blazing.

Vampire nests reached another level that let me see the vision for Redfall which makes it hurt to see it ignored for the rest of the gameplay. The tone, the atmosphere, and with your back against the wall fighting off vampire hoards is such an amazing concept!

In one mission, you go to investigate a boat and as soon as the quest item is picked up it triggers an angry mob that immediately surrounds your only exits with deadly red mist, a mini-boss, and a mob of bloodthirsty vampires. You can see this all unfold beneath you from the boat’s windows. Your only option is to bite back and fight your way out. The game is filled with these bursts of incredible and stunning moments with fantastic and engaging gunplay that is then mixed with poor performance, bad lip-syncing, and horrible AI.

I am really reminded of Destiny 1’s live service launch which was obviously a victim of a large form of rewrite and rebuild. Perhaps Redfall had a similar fate but we will never know. Arkane has promised gamers that this will be their most supported game yet and we really hope so. The core gameplay is incredible but it reminds us of Cyberpunk 2077’s promise of a better future when all we need now is the vampire killing fun we have been salivating for.

The loot, the loot, the loot, the loot, the loot

Let’s talk loot. Vampire bosses keep repeating “the blood, the blood, the blood, the blood” but all I care about is if they will give me fun weapons to kill them with. Loot and gameplay can keep a game alive for a long time especially if there are fun quests or some great special weapons or “exotics” to chase. A community can grow quickly when secrets are found or the best load-outs to defeat bosses are found.

Redfall’s weapons scale with your level and just pump out higher numbers of damage. Pistols, shotguns, automatic rifles, UV lasers, stake launchers, snipers, and flare guns round out a fun and worthwhile experience. Unfortunately, as the game fleshes out you see how exploration is broken by other reward types. So build-crafting with the right perks and skill point selections doesn’t make much of a difference now.

Pistols are often one-shot minions, flare guns burn and stun lock vampires, and stake launchers massively chunk any boss or special vampire. It’s all amazing fun and the combo load-outs you run can really allow for great gameplay loops. Although the cultists are really bad enemies, they serve little to no threat until much later when their level just means their incredible accuracy can health-chunk you within a second or two if you get careless. I died a lot early being overrun in confined space by the fast vampire attacks as they surrounded me. Some enemy abilities can also one-shot you. This would not be much of an issue in multiplayer but it felt bad in single-player mode.

That said, you don’t have to worry about dying in a mission because no progress is lost and you have so much junk loot currency that you will likely never spend. You do not lose any progress from dying, any damage or defeated enemies stay dead, and your mission status is retained. Most of the world’s junk loot like bleach, toilet paper, water bottles, etc. that you pick up gets converted into a currency for purchases back at the home base.

Things like med kits, better guns, and lock picks can be purchased with converted drop currency. However, most of the rewire/hack kits just lead to more junk loot or heals, which enemies drop, and are strewn literally everywhere. Most of the lock picks do the same.

There was no master sword moment or a huge loot drop that I was super excited for. This is because they aren’t necessary because vampire nests and a later world event granted me the best loot in the game. Most of your old loot is junked as you move on to the next mission anyway.

The combos are fun though as you need to either stake, petrify, or burn vampires. You can mix using a UV gun to petrify groups of vampires and then shotgun them one by one to dispatch a large group easily. If you take too long as Jacob, you can just go invisible with no real danger. I did this for the first big boss and didn’t even lose 50% health because a large power weapon pumps out such large chunks of damage the boss gets health gated and frozen before they can even react. I broke the game rather easily. Balancing needs to occur and much more AI work is needed. There was a huge patch today that hopefully addresses some of these woes.

PC Performance

I am beginning to call DLSS 3 a godsend but it should not be necessary just to enjoy a major release. The industry has lately given PC gamers the short end of the stick, but that is a topic for another day. We started our playthrough with our Ryzen 7800x3D build with an RTX 4070 Ti and 32 GB of DDR5-6000mhz RAM on our TeamGroup 2TB NVMe drive. Ours is far beyond a typical system, but from the onset we had massive crashes, stuttering, bugs, and large frame dips. Microstutters and texture problems also occurred.

The latest Nvidia driver helped and DLSS 3 almost doubled our performance. This still did not address some areas of town where we would dip into the low teens. Entering the menu could often cause the game to crash. Glitches like this ruined some major moments of our playthrough but with patches this may be resolved soon.

DLSS looks incredible and is a must-have feature. It nearly doubled performance on the RTX 4090 which was already performing great except for the 1% lows. The same could be said for our RTX 4080 and 4070 Ti. The newly released RTX 4070 also performs well but the game really needs some serious performance improvements.

There was a large 69.4GB patch today so we redid our benchmarks. Here are our numbers using maxed/Epic settings:

Testbed 1:

Intel 13900KF/RTX 4090 FE/2x16GB DDR5 6400/Win 11 – 3840 x 2160

TAA high/No DLSS – 124.3 av /  42.1 1% low

Quality DLSS 3 – 178.0 av / 72.7 1% low

DLSS 3 in particular allows for stunning gameplay and steady framerates with comparable image quality to native. Unfortunately, Redfall is sadly locked at 30FPS for the console launch with 60 FPS mode coming soon but now we can understand why: It just needs more time in development.

Testbed 2:
Post-Day 1 Patch with AMD Ryzen 7800x3D, 2x16GB DDR6 6000, TeamGroup 2TB NVMe, Win 11.
3840×2160, Epic Preset DLSS comparison:

Conclusion – try if you have Game Pass

We can not recommend Redfall at launch. I was very excited for Arcane Austin’s Redfall, despite the console war chatter, the state of Xbox, and red flags coming out from the game development cycle. I still loved my time with it, and in many moments I was having a good deal of fun, but most of the time the world proved to be empty or uninteresting.

I would not have continued as far as I progressed if I did not enjoy some of the big set pieces so much. I believe anyone with Game Pass should play it, even at 30fps on console. However, it’s a messy mix of RPG, looter shooter, and a multiplayer game that lacks a cohesive and consistent presentation. Couple this with terrible AI and a plethora of bugs and there are very high highs and very, very low lows. 

Redfall can technically be played solo, but we recommend the experience with friends as it is much better. It is also not going to be the major release to start the Xbox renaissance that we so desperately need. This review score is going to be low, but I am still rooting for it. There is something there at the core that is clawing at the surface to come out and be enjoyed. It is your choice if you want to power through the mud to get to the meat of it.

If you can withstand some glitches, read the story in text form with barebones character development, and have friends to play with then you will have a decent time. That said, the world is already so empty that traversing its many roads with no vehicles or large enemy population it can feel lonely walking large swaths of areas as a solo player. At times, I grew so frustrated with the experience I found myself begging for a story, begging for those cool moments, and I often felt unrewarded and angry.

Redfall releases later today on Xbox Series consoles, PC, Game Pass, and is Steam Deck verified.

The $999 Hellhound RX 7900 XTX arrived at BTR for evaluation last week from PowerColor. We have been comparing it against Nvidia’s new $1199 RTX 4080 Founders Edition (FE) and $1599 RTX 4090 FE plus five additional top cards. We focus on raw performance by benchmarking 42 PC and 10 VR games, GPGPU, workstation, SPEC, and synthetic benchmarks.

We will also compare the performance of these three new competing cards with the RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT reference editions and their competitors, the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3080 FE.

Features & Specifications

Although launched at reference $999 XTX pricing, the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX has its factory Game Clock set 30MHz higher than the reference version’s 2300MHz. According to PowerColor specifications, the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX can boost its Game Clock to 2330MHz (2270MHz Silent) with the OC BIOS. The Game Clock is the expected GPU clock while running average high-load gaming scenarios with a regular non-overclocked total graphics usage situation. However, the GPU Boost Clock can reach as high as 2525MHz – 25MHz higher than reference – by using the OC BIOS and we will test this.

Here are the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX features.

Additional Information from PowerColor

• The Hellhound has 2 modes, OC and Silent with a BIOS switch on the side of the card. Even on performance mode it’s said to be considerably quieter than reference board and the silent mode is indeed very quiet.
• The 14 layer high TG PCB board has 12+3+2+2+1 Phase VRM design. Hellhounds are over-spec’d in order to deliver the best stability and overclocking headroom. By having high quality VRMs, it will run cooler and last longer.
• DrMos and high-polymer Caps are used without compromise.
• The cooler features three 9-blade ball bearing fans with 8 heat pipes (8X6?) across a high density heatsink with a copper base. The PCB is shorter than the cooler.
• It uses mute fan technology and the fans stop under 60C.
• The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX includes card stands for supporting it so as to not put extra strain on the PCIe slot.

The RX 7900 XTX is AMD’s brand new RDNA 3 flagship card, and the Hellhound represents one of the best choices for a mildly factory overclocked $999 card by virtue of its high-quality components and carefully selected GPUs coupled with good support and great warranty service.

The Test Bed

We benchmark using FCAT VR and FrameView on Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 with Intel’s Core i9-13900KF, and 32GB of T-Force Delta RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS Prime-A Wi-Fi Z790 motherboard with fast SSD storage. All games and benchmarks are patched to their latest versions, and we use recent drivers.

First, let’s take a closer look at the new PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX.

A Closer Look at the PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX

Although the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX advertises itself as a premium 24GB card which features ray tracing, Radeon Boost, and Anti-Lag, the cover of the box uses almost no text in favor of stylized imagery.

The back of the box touts key features which include ray tracing, Anti-Lag, DisplayPort 2.1, RDNA 3, FidelityFX, Infinity Cache, streaming aids, and Boost, as well as states its 800W power and system requirements. There is no mention of VR Ready Premium. Also highlighted are PowerColor’s custom cooling solution, Dual-BIOSes, fan improvements, and output LEDs. The default LED color is an eye-pleasing amethyst.

We open the box and note there are parts for a card stand.

The complete package contents except for the anti-static bag are pictured above together with the card holder parts. Above the stand is fully assembled. Although the Hellhound is relatively heavy, it is not 4090-heavy, and we didn’t feel a need for it.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a large tri-fan card in a three slot design which is quite handsome with PowerColor’s neutral colors and even more striking with the LED on.

Turning it over we see a sturdy backplate featuring the Hellhound logo which also lights up with amethyst being the default color.

Looking at either long edge, we see the entire PCB is covered by heatpipes and heatsink fins. Additional power is provided by the PSU’s 2 x 8-pin Molex cables to the card connectors. There is also a switch to choose between the default overclock (OC) BIOS and the Silent BIOS. We didn’t bother using the Silent BIOS as the card is really quiet anyway, but it is good to have in case a flash goes bad.

The card should perhaps be locked down with two thumbscrews instead of one because it is heavy or the stand can be used.

The Hellhound’s IO panel connectors include 3 DisplayPorts and 1 HDMI connection.

Below is the other end which is very plain.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX looks great inside a case.

The specifications look good and the card itself looks solid. Now let’s check out its performance after we look over our test configuration and more on the next page.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-13900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)
• ASUS Prime-A Z790 LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z790 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz / 100% SteamVR Render Resolution
• Hellhound RX 7900 XTX, 24GB, factory clocks, supplied by PowerColor
• RTX 4080 16GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 4090 24 GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, 16GB, factory clocks
• RX 6800 XT Reference 16GB, factory clocks, supplied by AMD
• RTX 3080 Ti 12GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 3080 10 GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• 2 x 2TB T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440 (5,000/4,400MB/s) PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSDs (one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
• T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C external SSD (2,000x2000B/s), supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan & 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz
• LG C1 48″ 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 526.98 drivers for the RTX 4090/4080 and 527.27 for the RTX 3080/3080 Ti. Adrenalin 22.11.2 for the RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT, and press drivers for the RTX 7900 XTX.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
• High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• VR charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom; higher is better)
• Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 recent clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards using separate but identical NVMe SSDs.
• Latest DirectX
• SteamVR latest beta

Games

Vulkan

• Sniper Elite
• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade
• Rainbow Six: Siege

DX12

• A Plague Tale: Requiem
• Spiderman: Remastered
• F1 2022
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Elden Ring
• God of War
• Dying Light 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• DEATHLOOP
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Hitman 3
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legions
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Overwatch 2
• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Grand Theft Auto V

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Kayak Mirage
• Moss: Book II
• No Man’s Sky
• Project CARS 2
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Synthetic

• Time Spy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
• Geekbench
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperfect 2020
• FCAT VR benching tool
• OpenVR Benchmark tool

Adrenalin Control Panel settings

Here are the Adrenalin Control Panel settings.

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Overclocking, temperatures and noise

We spent little time overclocking the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX for this review as we encountered some unexpected results that require further investigation. The card is very quiet and its fans never spin up even under a heavy load so as to be irritating or even noticeable. It’s quieter than the Gigabyte 6900 XT or the RTX 3080 Ti.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is factory clocked 30MHz higher than the reference version at 2330MHz using the OC BIOS. According to its specifications, the Hellhound boost can clock up to 2565MHz out of the box. From our benching, we generally see it boosting even higher and it generally settles in above 2750MHz with peaks above 2780MHz.

The Hellhound temperatures stay in the low to mid-60s C with the fans quietly running well below 50% even using the OC BIOS under a full gaming load. It is an exceptionally well-cooled and quiet card.

Let’s head to the performance charts to compare the performance of the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX with six other cards.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX vs. the RTX 4080 FE and 5 other cards benchmarked with 42 games

Here are the performance results of 42 games and 3 synthetic tests. The highest settings are used and are listed on the charts. The benches were run at 2560×1440 and 3840×2160. Click on each chart to open in a pop-up for best viewing. Gaming results show average framerates in bold text, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font which represent a game’s average 1% lows (99th percentiles).

The first set of charts show the seven main competing cards. Column two represents the $999 Hellhound RX 7900 XTX performance in between the $1599 RTX 4090 FE in column one and the RTX 4080 FE, its $1199 primary competitor, in the third column. The RTX 3080 Ti results are in the fourth column next to Gigabyte RX 6900 XT OC version performance results in the fifth column, followed up by the RTX 3080 in the sixth and the RX 6800 XT in the seventh column.

“Wins” between the RX 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080 are denoted by yellow text. If there is a tie, both values are in yellow.

Playing with the RX 7900 XTX, Elden Ring locked up the PC even after verifying files and reinstalling Adrenaline drivers and it appears a driver issue prevented ray traced Guardians of the Galaxy running on the RX 6800 XT.

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX and the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are cards that are primarily suited for 4K and high-FPS 1440P gaming and they stand out from the other four cards. The RX 7900 XTX trades blows with the RTX 4080 in rasterized games – they are equivalent cards if ray tracing is not considered.

Although RX 7900 XTX ray tracing has greatly improved over the RX 6900 XT and RX 6800 XT, it now appears to perform similarly to the RTX 3080 and RTX 3080 Ti but far behind the RTX 4080. FSR 2.0, although still not on the same image quality level as Nvidia’s DLSS 2, will almost double framerates for a very minor IQ hit and will make most of the games quite playable at Ultra/4K in this 52 game benching suite. Gamers who are not so impressed with ray tracing or who are not picky about image quality perfection may well prefer to save $200 on a $1000 Hellhound RX 7900 XTX over buying a $1200 RTX 4080.

Let’s look at synthetic benches.

Synthetic benches

We hold synthetic benches to be meaningless for predicting real world gaming performance versus competing cards with different architectures although they have other practical uses like overclocking and ranking. The RX 7900 XTX performs better in the synthetic tests than in gaming.

Let’s see how the Hellhound performs in ten popular VR (Virtual Reality) games next.

10 VR Games

For this review, we benchmarked the Valve Index using FCAT VR and set the SteamVR render resolution to 100% (2016×2240) which uses a factor of 1.4X (the native resolution is 1440×1600) to compensate for lens distortion and to increase clarity. We are going to compare the performance of the RX 7900 XTX with the RX 4080 and versus the RX 4090 at each game’s Ultra/Highest settings.

Unfortunately, FCAT VR still doesn’t work with MS Flight Simulator 2020 or with Star Wars Squadrons. Here are the ten VR games we tested.

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Kayak Mirage
• Moss: Book II
• No Man’s Sky
• Project CARS 2
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Synthetic

• Time Spy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, measuring just one important performance metric, faster is better.

Let’s individually look at our 10 sim-heavy VR games’ performance using FCAT VR.

First up, Assetto Corsa: Competizione.

Assetto Corsa: Competizione (ACC)

BTR’s sim/racing editor, Sean Kaldahl created the replay benchmark run that we use for both the pancake game and the VR game. It is run at night with 20 cars, lots of geometry, and the lighting effects of the headlights, tail lights, and everything around the track looks spectacular.

Just like with Project CARS, you can save a replay after a race. Fortunately, the CPU usage is the same between a race and its replay so it is a reasonably accurate benchmark using the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps. iRacing may be more accurate or realistic, but Assetto Corsa: Competizione has some appeal because it feels more real than many other racing sims. It delivers the sensation of handling a highly-tuned racing machine driven to its edge.

Here are the ACC FCAT VR frametimes using VR Ultra using the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX, the RTX 4080 FE, and the RTX 4090 FE.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RX 7900 XTX managed 85.77 unconstrained FPS with 6339 (50%) synthesized frames with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 118.42 unconstrained FPS with 207 (2%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 164.03 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic frame but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The ACC racing experience is best with the RTX 4090 although the RTX 4080 delivers a nearly constant 90 FPS on the Epic VR preset unlike the RX 7900 XTX which requires one-half of its frames to be synthesized.

Next, we check out Elite Dangerous.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Ultra Preset and we set the Field of View to its maximum.

Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The RX 7900 XTX managed 185.21 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames with no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 230.98 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized frame and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 brings 296.16 unconstrained FPS together with 2 synthetic frames but with 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

Although the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX has the lowest performance, the experience playing Elite Dangerous at Ultra settings is not perceptibly different on any tested video card. However, the RTX 4090 has a lot more performance headroom to increase the render resolution or to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2.

Let’s look at our newest VR sim, F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 156.57 unconstrained FPS with 6 synthesized but no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 achieved 200.24 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 254.72 unconstrained FPS together with 3 synthetic frames plus with 3 dropped frames and 3 Warp misses.

The experience playing F1 2022 using the Ultra preset is not very different on any of these video cards but the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 have considerably more performance headroom than the RX 7900 XTX to use 120Hz/144Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Kayak VR: Mirage

The outstanding near-photorealistic visual fidelity really sets Kayak VR: Mirage apart from other simulators. It boasts a wide range of locales with day/night/sunset options offering tropical, icy, desert, and even stormy scenarios with trips to Costa Rica, Antarctica, Norway, and Australia and occasional interactions with wildlife. It can be played as a relaxing sim or as a strenuous workout with competitive time trials which offer asynchronous multiplayer and ranking on global leaderboards.

We benchmark at 100% resolution with the highest “Cinematic” in-game settings but do not use DLSS or FSR.

Here is the frametime plot for Kayak VR: Mirage.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 198.98 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 257.16 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 got 329.35 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic frame and 1 dropped frame plus 1 Warp miss.

Kayak VR: Mirage looks fantastic at 100% resolution with maximum settings and would be well-suited for play on the Reverb G2 with any of our test cards.

Next, we look at Moss: Book II.

Moss: Book II

Moss: Book II is an amazing VR experience with much better graphics than the original game. It’s a 3rd person puzzle adventure game played seated that offers a direct physical interaction between you (the Reader) and your avatar, Quill, a mouse that bring real depth to the story. Extreme attention has been paid to the tiniest details with overall great art composition and outstanding lighting that make this game a must-play for gamers of all ages.

Moss II boasts very good visuals and we use the in-game highest settings.

Here are the frametimes plots of our four cards.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 189.29 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 308.44 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 436.34 unconstrained FPS no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

Unfortunately, the experience playing Moss II on the Valve Index using the RX 7900 XTX is marred by visual issues including artifacting and shimmering.

Next, we will check out another demanding VR game, No Man’s Sky.

No Man’s Sky (NMS)

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival single and multiplayer game that emphasizes survival, exploration, fighting, and trading. It is set in a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion unique planets using its own custom game engine.

The player takes the role of a Traveller in an uncharted universe by starting on a random planet with a damaged spacecraft equipped with only a jetpack-equipped exosuit and a versatile multi-tool that can also be used for defense. The player is encouraged to find resources to repair his spacecraft allowing for intra- and inter-planetary travel, and to interact with other players.

Here is the No Man’s Sky frametime plot. We set the settings to Maximum which is a step over Ultra including setting the anisotropic filtering to 16X and upgrading to FXAA. We did not use any upscaling method.

Here are the FCAT-VR details of our comparative runs.

The RX 7900 XTX brought 108.17 unconstrained FPS with 3536 (50%) synthesized frames but no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 159.10 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 achieved 201.96 unconstrained FPS together with 17 synthetic frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

RX 7900 XTX gamers may want to lower some individual settings to remain above 90 FPS. The RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 have enough performance headroom to increase the refresh rate, render resolution, or to perhaps use a higher resolution headset.

Let’s continue with another VR game, Project CARS 2, that we still like better than its successor even though it is no longer available for online play.

Project CARS 2 (PC2)

There is still a sense of immersion that comes from playing Project CARS 2 in VR using a wheel and pedals. It uses its in-house Madness engine, and the physics implementation is outstanding.

Project CARS 2 offers many performance options and settings.

We used maximum settings including for Motion Blur but picked SMAA Ultra instead of MSAA.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 194.77 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized nor dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 got 200.88 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames nor dropped frames and no Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 achieved 253.50 unconstrained FPS together with 3 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

The experience playing Project CARS 2 using maximum settings is similar for all three video cards.

Next we will check out a classic VR game, Skyrim VR.

Skyrim VR

Skyrim VR is an older game that is no longer supported by Bethesda, but fortunately the modding community has adopted it. It is not as demanding as many of the newer VR ports so its performance is still very good on maxed-out settings using its Creation engine.

We benchmarked vanilla Skyrim using its highest settings plus we increased the in-game Supersample option to maximum.

Here are the frametime results.

Here are the details of our comparative runs as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 7900 XTX provided 218.2 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 achieved 239.08 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 337.76 unconstrained FPS together with 2 synthetic frame and with 2 dropped frames plus 1 Warp miss.

All cards deliver an identical vanilla Skyrim VR experience with a ton of extra performance headroom to add mods and, in addition, to raise the render resolution using the two faster cards.

Next we check out Sniper Elite VR.

Sniper Elite VR

Sniper Elite VR’s visuals are decent with good texture work that is well-realized. The building architecture and panoramas look good, explosions are convincing and the weapons convey a sense of weight, although not achieving realism. It is primarily an arcade style sniping game featuring its signature X-Ray kill cam, but it offers multiple ways to achieve goals including with explosives and by using three other main weapon choices besides your rifle.

We benchmarked using the Highest settings.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the details:

The RX 6900 XT delivered 197.98 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 223.33 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 brought 318.03 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

All three cards deliver a similar playing experience on High with the RTX cards offering more performance headroom. We recommend that any performance headroom be used for increasing the SteamVR render resolution.

Last up, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinner is the last of BTR’s 10 VR game benching suite. It is a first person survival horror adventure RPG with a strong emphasis on crafting. Its visuals using the Unreal 4 engine are very good and it makes good use of physics for interactions.

We benchmarked Saints and Sinners using its High preset and we left the Pixel Density at 100%. Here is the frametime chart.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 7900 XTX delivered 198.93 unconstrained FPS with no synthetic nor dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 got 260.94 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frames and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 366.41 unconstrained FPS together with 6 synthetic frames and with 4 dropped frames and 4 Warp misses.

The RX 7900 XTX experience was marred by artifacting and shimmering.

Let’s check out synthetic VR tests and unconstrained framerates.

Unconstrained Framerates & Synthetic VR Benchmarks

The following chart summarizes the overall Unconstrained Framerates (the performance headroom) of our three cards using our 10 VR test games. In addition, we added recent RTX 3080 Ti and 6900 XT results for comparison. The preset is listed on the chart and higher is better. In addition, we present three synthetic VR benchmarks.

Although synthetic VR benches (except for OpenVR benchmark) predicted good VR performance, we were disappointed with our 7900 XTX VR experience, unlike with pancake games. In at least two games, we experienced distracting visual artifacting and texture shimmering. The 7900 series may benefit from some attention to VR from the Radeon driver team as in many cases it even falls behind the RX 6900 XT.

At AMD’s press event in Las Vegas, the presenters noted that AMD drivers continue to improve for the entire life of the architecture – generally with an up to 10% performance gain – often compared to “fine wine” aging well. However, for VR enthusiasts today, the RX 7900 XTX is disappointing and it performs well behind the RTX 4080 not logging a single performance win.

We next look at creative, pro, GPGPU, and workstation apps.

Creative, Pro & Workstation Apps

Let’s look at non-gaming applications next to see if the RX 7900 XTX is a good upgrade from the other video cards that we tested starting with Blender.

Blender 3.3.0 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

We benchmarked three Blender 3.3.0 benchmarks which measure GPU performance by timing how long it takes to render production files. We tested seven of our comparison cards using CUDA, Optix, and OpenCL.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in samples per minute.

The RX 7900 XTX sits well ahead of the RX 6800 XT and 6900 XT but well behind the GeForce cards.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64 v6.80

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days. CPU results are also shown for comparison with both the RTX 3070 and GTX 2080 Ti GPGPU benchmarks.

Here are the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX AIDA64 GPGPU results compared with an overclocked i9-13900KF.

Here is the chart summary of the AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks with seven of our competing cards side-by-side.

The RX 7900 XTX is a fast GPGPU card and it compares favorably with the competing cards being weaker in some areas and stronger in others. So let’s look at Sandra 2020 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. Sandra 2020 R10 is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

We ran Sandra’s intensive GPGPU benchmarks and charted the results summarizing them.

In Sandra GPGPU benchmarks, since the architectures are different, each card exhibits different characteristics with different strengths and weaknesses. However, we see some very solid solid improvement of the RX 7900 XTX over the RX 6900 XT and the RX 6800 XT.

SPECworkstation3 (3.0.4) Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except for vendors of computer-related products and/or services.

The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads. We only tested the GPU-related workstation performance as checked in the image above.

Here are our SPECworkstation 3.0.4 raw scores for the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX. RTX 4080 raw scores are displayed below the XTX results for a detailed performance comparison.

Here are our RTX 4080 SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores:

Here are the Hellhound XTX SPECworkstation3 results summarized in a chart along with six competing cards. Higher is better.

Using SPEC benchmarks, since the architectures are different, the cards each exhibit different characteristics with different strengths and weaknesses.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has released a new 2020 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark recently that features updated viewsets, new models, support for both 2K and 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management.

We benchmarked at 4K and here are the summary results for the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 Hellhound RX 7900 XTX benchmarks summarized in a chart together with six other cards.

Again we see different architectures with different strengths and weaknesses. After seeing these benches, some creative users may upgrade their existing systems with a new card based on the performance increases and the associated increases in productivity that they require.

The question to buy a new video card should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as their budget. Time is money depending on how these apps are used. However, the target demographic for the reference and Hellhound RX 7900 XTXs are primarily gaming for gamers.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

The Conclusion

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX improves significantly over the last generation RX 6900 XT, easily exceeds RX 6800 XT performance, and it trades blows with the $200 more expensive RTX 4080 FE in rasterized games although overall it is slightly slower using our 42-game benching suite. The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX beats all of the last generation cards including the RTX 3080 Ti although it still struggles with ray traced games compared with RTX cards.

For Radeon gamers, the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a good alternative to GeForce Ada Lovelace cards for the vast majority of modern PC games that use rasterization. The RX 7900 XTX offers 24GB of GDDR6 to the 16GB of GDDR6X that the RTX 4080s are equipped with, but that 8GB of vRAM shouldn’t make any practical difference to game performance in the near future.

At its suggested price of $999, the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX costs about $200 less than the RTX 4080 FE and offers a good value for Radeon gamers. Unlike with the RTX 4080 which increased from $700 for the RTX 3080 to $1200, the RX 7900 XTX is priced the same $999 as AMD’s last generation RX 6900 XT. For Radeon buyers, what makes the Hellhound XTX particularly attractive is that there is no price premium for this mildly overclocked PowerColor card.

The only real issue that we see with Radeon 7000 series cards is that AMD’s FSR solution is still inferior to Nvidia’s DLSS AI upscaling that delivers similar performance but with better image quality. On the flip side, there are still relatively few ray traced games released every year in comparison to thousands of rasterized games where the RTX 7900 XTX trades blows with the much more expensive RTX 4080.

One major issue although affecting relatively few gamers is poor VR RX 7900 XTX performance compared with the RTX 4080. It’s going to need some attention from AMD’s driver team before we can recommend the RX 7900 XTX for the best VR gaming.

We recommend the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX as a great choice out of multiple good choices, especially for any AMD PC gamer looking for good looks with LED lighting, an exceptional cooler, great performance for 2560×1440 or 4K, PowerColor’s excellent support, and overall better value compared with the slower RX 7900 XTX reference version.

Let’s sum it up:

Hellhound RX 7900 XTX Pros

• The PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is much faster than the last generation RX 6900 XT by virtue of new RDNA 3 architecture. It trades blows in the majority of rasterized games with the RTX 4080 FE for significantly less money ($200 less)
• The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX has excellent cooling with very little noise and has a very good power delivery and a 3-fan custom cooling design that is very quiet when overclocked even using the OC mode
• Dual-BIOS give the user a choice of quiet with less overclocking, or a bit louder with more power-unlimited and higher overclocks
• FidelityFX 2.0 allows for upscaling and improved sharpness with almost no performance penalty, and there is a low latency mode for competitive gamers
• LED lighting and a neutral color allow the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX to fit into any color scheme
• 24GB vRAM compared with 16GB for the RTX 4080

Hellhound XTX Cons

• Cost. It’s still very expensive at $999
• VR performance is subpar
• Weaker ray tracing performance than the RTX 4080

The Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a good Radeon card choice for those who game at 2560×1440 or at 4K and want the best that AMD has to offer. It represents a good gaming alternative to the RTX 4080 albeit with weaker ray tracing performance. It is offered especially for those who prefer AMD cards and FreeSync2 enabled displays which are generally less expensive than Gsync displays. And if a gamer is looking for something extra above the reference version, the PowerColor Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a very well-made and good-looking card that will overclock better.

We are giving the Hellhound RX 7900 XTX BTR’s Recommended Award.

The Verdict:

• PowerColor’s Hellhound RX 7900 XTX is a solidly-built handsome card with higher clocks out of the box than the same-priced reference version. It trades blows with the RTX 4080 in rasterized games. I t is a kick ass RX 7900 XTX.

Stay tuned, there is much more coming from BTR. We will soon return to VR with a mega performance evaluation to test the role of the CPU for VR performance. And we’ll retest the RX 7900 XTX using higher resolution headsets after AMD’s driver team has a chance to address it’s VR issues. We also plan to test Intel ARC video cards in VR.

Happy Gaming!

BTR received a $1199 RTX 4080 Founders Edition (FE) from Nvidia but are late because we got a bad case of COVID-19 after the AMD Event in Las Vegas over two weeks ago. This Part 1 RTX 4080 review is a 10-VR game performance analysis versus the RTX 3080 Ti, the RTX 4090, and the RX 6900 XT using the Valve Index. Although the RTX 4080 is not a workstation card, we have included workstation SPEC benches and selected popular creative and synthetic apps. Next week, Part 2 will feature the performance of more than 40 games and we will include DLSS 3.0 results.

We will focus on raw VR performance to consider whether the new RTX 4080 Founders Edition at $1199 delivers a good value as a compelling upgrade from the last generation Ampere RTX 3080 Ti which also launched at $1199. We will also compare performance with Nvidia’s current flagship, the $1599 RTX 4090, and the former AMD flagship, the RX 6900 XT, which launched at $999. In addition to gaming, VR, and SPECworkstation3 GPU results, we have added creative results using Geekbench, the Blender 3.3.0 benchmark, and complete Sandra 2020 and AIDA64 GPGPU benchmark results plus some pro applications including Blender rendering and OTOY OctaneRender.

We benchmark using FCAT VR and Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 with Intel’s Core i9-13900K that we just upgraded from i9-12900K, and 32GB of T-FORCE DELTA RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS Prime-A Wi-Fi Z790 motherboard. All games and benchmarks are patched to their latest versions, and we use GeForce Game Ready 526.98 drivers for GeForce cards and Adrenalin 22.11.1 for the RX 6900 XT.

Let’s first take a quick look at the RTX 4080 Founders Edition before we go to the test configuration

The RTX 4080 FE

The RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are externally physically identical twin cards. Refer to the RTX 4090 unboxing as the features and sizes are the same.

The primary differences lie inside in the RTX 4080’s cut down GPU chip capabilities with about 40% fewer CUDA cores and its lesser power draw requirements. Nvidia recommends a 850W minimum PSU for the 450W TDP RTX 4090 and includes a 4X Molex cable adapter while the 320W TDP RTX 4080 only needs a 750W minimum PSU and a 3X Molex cable adapter is included in that box.

Newer PSUs may offer the new PCIe Gen5 single cable connector instead of using a bulky quad or tri cable adapter. Nvidia advises that the adapter should be firmly inserted into the card before installing it in the PC as an improperly seated connection may cause overheating and melting of the connector.

Both the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 Founders Edition cards are beautifully designed using a very unique industrial style, and they are each much larger than the RTX 3080 Ti which is itself an imposing card. However, these new 40×0 FE cards tend not to heat up like the smaller last gen cards and they are also much quieter under full load. Either card looks great installed inside a case.

Disassembly appears to be difficult and should give pause to any enthusiast who may have custom watercooling in mind. In fact, we think that watercooling is a waste for the RTX 4080 Founders Edition as it doesn’t have any thermal issues.

Let’s check out our test configuration.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-13900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)
• ASUS Prime-A Z790 LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z790 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz / 100% SteamVR Render Resolution
• RTX 4080 16GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD 16GB, factory clocks
• RTX 3090 24GB Founders Edition, factory clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 4090 24GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• 2 x T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440; 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSDs (one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
• T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C external SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan & 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz
• LG C1 48″ 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce 526.98 drivers for Nvidia cards, and Adrenalin 22.11.1 for the RX 6900 XT.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
• High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used except for five DLSS games tested using the Quality preset.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• VR charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom; higher is better)
• Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards using separate identical NVMe SSDs.
• Latest DirectX
• SteamVR latest beta

Games

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• Kayak Mirage
• Moss: Book II
• No Man’s Sky
• Project CARS 2
• Skyrim
• Sniper Elite
• The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

Synthetic

• Time Spy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
• Geekbench
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperfect 2020
• Octanebench
• FCAT VR benching tool
• OpenVR Benchmark tool

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Unfortunately, we also did not have time to check out overclocking, but temperatures and noise levels are much lower than the RTX 3090 or RTX 3080 Ti FEs. We plan to follow up with a 40-plus pancake gaming review including DLSS 3.

Let’s check out performance using 10 VR games plus Workstation and creative benches.

First, we look at VR performance.

10 VR Games

For this review, we benchmarked the Valve Index using FCAT VR and set the SteamVR render resolution to 100% (2016×2240) which uses a factor of 1.4X (the native resolution is 1440×1600) to compensate for lens distortion and to increase clarity. The Index is still considered one of the best overall headsets due to its outstanding tracking and solid feature set, and we are going to compare the performance of the RX 4080 versus the RX 4090, the RX 3080 Ti, and against the RX 6900 XT at each game’s Ultra/Highest settings.

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, measuring just one important performance metric, faster is better.

We had planned to include Star Wars: Squadrons and MS Flight Simulator 2020, but neither game records properly with FCAT VR. So let’s individually look at our 10 sim-heavy VR games’ performance using FCAT VR.

First up, Assetto Corsa: Competizione.

Assetto Corsa: Competizione (ACC)

BTR’s sim/racing editor, Sean Kaldahl created the replay benchmark run that we use for both the pancake game and the VR game. It is run at night with 20 cars, lots of geometry, and the lighting effects of the headlights, tail lights, and everything around the track looks spectacular.

Just like with Project CARS, you can save a replay after a race. Fortunately, the CPU usage is the same between a race and its replay so it is a reasonably accurate benchmark using the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.

iRacing may be more accurate or realistic, but Assetto Corsa: Competizione has some appeal because it feels more real than many other racing sims. It delivers the sensation of handling a highly-tuned racing machine driven to its edge.

Here are the ACC FCAT VR frametimes using VR Ultra using the RTX 3080 Ti, the RTX 4080, and the RTX 4090. Unfortunately, the latest ACC patch made it impossible to bench the RTX 6900 XT.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 91.83 unconstrained FPS with 4649 (36%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 delivered 118.42 unconstrained FPS with 207 (2%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 164.03 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic frame but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The ACC racing experience is best with the RTX 4090 although the RTX 4080 delivers a nearly constant 90 FPS on the Epic VR preset unlike the RTX 3080 Ti which requires more than one-third of its frames to be synthesized. Only the RTX 4090 has the performance headroom to increase the render resolution to above 100% or use the Index’ faster refresh rate (120Hz/144Hz) or even to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2.

Next, we check out Elite Dangerous.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Ultra Preset and we set the Field of View to its maximum. The RX 6900 XT wouldn’t run with the latest driver according to the error message.

Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 182.93 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames plus 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 delivered 230.98 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized frame and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 brings 296.16 unconstrained FPS together with 2 synthetic frames but with 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

The experience playing Elite Dangerous at Ultra settings is not perceptibly different on any tested video card but the RTX 4090 has a lot more performance headroom to increase the render resolution or to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2.

Let’s look at our newest VR sim, F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 6900 XT delivered 132.21 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 152.67 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 achieved 200.24 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 254.72 unconstrained FPS together with 3 synthetic frames plus with 3 dropped frames and 3 Warp misses.

The experience playing F1 2022 using the Ultra preset is not very different on any of these video cards but the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 have considerably more performance headroom to use 120Hz/144Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Kayak VR: Mirage

The outstanding near-photorealistic visual fidelity really sets Kayak VR: Mirage apart from other simulators. It boasts a wide range of locales with day/night/sunset options offering tropical, icy, desert, and even stormy scenarios with trips to Costa Rica, Antarctica, Norway, and Australia and occasional interactions with wildlife. It can be played as a relaxing sim or as a strenous workout with competitive time trials which offer asynchronous multiplayer and ranking on global leaderboards.

We benchmark at 100% resolution with the highest “Cinematic” in-game settings but do not use DLSS or FSR.

Here is the frametime plot for Kayak VR: Mirage.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RX 6900 XT delivered 189.78 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 201.89 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frame plus 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 delivered 257.16 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 got 329.35 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic frame and 1 dropped frame plus 1 Warp miss.

Kayak VR: Mirage looks fantastic at 100% resolution with maximum settings and would be well-suited for play on the Reverb G2 with any of our test cards.

Next, we look at Moss: Book II.

Moss: Book II

Moss: Book II is an amazing VR experience with much better graphics than the original game. It’s a 3rd person puzzle adventure game played seated that offers a direct physical interaction between you (the Reader) and your avatar, Quill, a mouse that bring real depth to the story. Extreme attention has been paid to the tiniest details with overall great art composition and outstanding lighting that make this game a must-play for gamers of all ages.

Moss II boasts very good visuals and we use the in-game highest settings.

Here are the frametimes plots of our four cards.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RX 6900 XT delivered 260.40 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 242.83 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 308.44 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic and 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 436.34 unconstrained FPS no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing Moss II on the Valve Index is identical between cards. It is not demanding so it can be played on a high resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2 and supersampling may also be used.

Next, we will check out another demanding VR game, No Man’s Sky.

No Man’s Sky (NMS)

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival single and multiplayer game that emphasizes survival, exploration, fighting, and trading. It is set in a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion unique planets using its own custom game engine.

The player takes the role of a Traveller in an uncharted universe by starting on a random planet with a damaged spacecraft equipped with only a jetpack-equipped exosuit and a versatile multi-tool that can also be used for defense. The player is encouraged to find resources to repair his spacecraft allowing for intra- and inter-planetary travel, and to interact with other players.

Here is the No Man’s Sky Frametime plot. We set the settings to Maximum which is a step over Ultra including setting the anisotropic filtering to 16X and upgrading to FXAA+TAA. Since DLSS is available for RTX cards and the Quality setting improves performance without impacting image quality, we used it. Updated: We did not use any upscaling method.

Here are the FCAT-VR details of our comparative runs.

The RX 6900 XT brought 104.13 unconstrained FPS with 1601 (23%) synthesized frames plus 9 dropped frames and 9 Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 119.88 unconstrained FPS with 14 synthetic frames and with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 delivered 159.10 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames but no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 achieved 201.96 unconstrained FPS together with 17 synthetic frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing No Man’s Sky using the highest settings is not very different using the three GeForce video cards but RX 6900 XT gamers may want to lower some individual settings to remain above 90 FPS. The RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 have enough performance headroom to increase the refresh rate, render resolution, or to perhaps use a higher resolution headset.

Let’s continue with another VR game, Project CARS 2, that we still like better than its successor even though it is no longer available for online play.

Project CARS 2 (PC2)

There is still a sense of immersion that comes from playing Project CARS 2 in VR using a wheel and pedals. It uses its in-house Madness engine, and the physics implementation is outstanding.

Project CARS 2 offers many performance options and settings and we prefer playing with SMAA Ultra rather than to use MSAA.

We used maximum settings including for Motion Blur.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RX 6900 XT delivered 163.67 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized and 1 dropped frames plus 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 142.16 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 got 200.88 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames nor dropped frames and no Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 achieved 253.50 unconstrained FPS together with 3 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 2 Warp misses.

The experience playing Project CARS 2 using maximum settings is similar for all four video cards but the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 have far more performance headroom to increase the frequency to 120Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Next we will check out a classic VR game, Skyrim VR.

Skyrim VR

Skyrim VR is an older game that is no longer supported by Bethesda, but fortunately the modding community has adopted it. It is not as demanding as many of the newer VR ports so its performance is still very good on maxed-out settings using its Creation engine.

We benchmarked vanilla Skyrim using its highest settings plus we increased the in-game Supersample option to maximum.

Here are the frametime results.

Here are the details of our comparative runs as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 6900 XT provided 162.13 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 194.63 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 achieved 239.08 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthetic frames plus 2 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 337.76 unconstrained FPS together with 2 synthetic frame and with 2 dropped frames plus 1 Warp miss.

All cards deliver an identical vanilla Skyrim VR experience with a ton of extra performance headroom to add mods and, in addition, to raise the render resolution using the two faster cards.

Next we check out Sniper Elite VR.

Sniper Elite VR

Sniper Elite VR’s visuals are decent with good texture work that is well-realized. The building architecture and panoramas look good, explosions are convincing and the weapons convey a sense of weight, although not achieving realism. It is primarily an arcade style sniping game featuring its signature X-Ray kill cam, but it offers multiple ways to achieve goals including with explosives and by using three other main weapon choices besides your rifle.

We benchmarked using the Highest settings.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the details:

The RX 6900 XT delivered 222.93 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 3080 Ti got 239.07 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4080 delivered 223.33 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized or dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 brought 318.03 unconstrained FPS together with 1 synthetic and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

All four cards deliver a similar playing experience on High with the faster two cards offering more performance headroom. We recommend that any performance headroom be used for increasing the SteamVR render resolution. Since the RTX 4080 only matches the RX 6900 XT and is behind the RTX 3080 Ti, we suspect it may be a driver issue.

Last up, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners

The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinner is the last of BTR’s 10 VR game benching suite. It is a first person survival horror adventure RPG with a strong emphasis on crafting. Its visuals using the Unreal 4 engine are very good and it makes good use of physics for interactions.

We benchmarked Saints and Sinners using its High preset and we left the Pixel Density at 100%. Here is the frametime chart.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RX 6900 XT delivered 240.00 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frames and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 3080 Ti managed 222.18 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frames and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4080 got 260.94 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthetic frames and 1 dropped frames and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 achieved 366.41 unconstrained FPS together with 6 synthetic frames and with 4 dropped frames and 4 Warp misses.

Playing The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners using the in-game Ultra preset and 100% Pixel Density is similar for all 4 cards but there is significantly more performance headroom for the RTX 4090 and to a lesser extent the RTX 4080 for increasing the render resolution or using a higher resolution headset.

Let’s check out synthetic VR tests and unconstrained framerates.

Unconstrained Framerates & Synthetic VR Benchmarks

The following chart summarizes the overall Unconstrained Framerates (the performance headroom) of our two cards using our 10 VR test games. The preset is listed on the chart and higher is better. In addition, we present three synthetic VR benchmarks.

The RX 4080 FE averages close to one-third higher unconstrained frames for many VR benchmarks and sits in between the RTX 3080 Ti and the RTX 4090 FE in this important performance metric. However, unconstrained framerates are just one metric that has to be taken together with the frametime plots to have real meaning.

It is clear that the RTX 4090 and the RTX 4080 are ready for higher resolution headsets than the Valve Index. In many cases, either card may be able to use the higher refresh rates of 120Hz/144Hz for fast-paced and/or sim racing games.

Creative, Pro & Workstation Apps

Let’s look at Creative applications next to see if the RTX 4080 is a good upgrade from the RTX 3080 Ti or RX 6900 XT. We test starting with Geekbench.

GeekBench

GeekBench is an excellent CPU/GPU benchmarking program which runs a series of tests and times how long a GPU (in this case) takes to complete its tasks. It benchmarks OpenCL, Vulkan, and CUDA performance

OpenCL, Vulkan, and CUDA Performance

The RTX 4080 OpenCL, Vulkan, and CUDA performance are charted below.

Next we test the summary charts below show the overall comparative performance scores.

Again, the RTX 4090 performance is outstanding.

Next up, Blender benchmark.

Blender 3.3.0 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in samples per minute.

Blender’s benchmark performance is highest using the RTX 4090, and often the amount of time saved is substantial over using the next fastest card, the RTX 4080.

Next, we look at the OctaneBench.

OTOY Octane Bench

OctaneBench allows you to benchmark your GPU using OctaneRender. The hardware and software requirements to run OctaneBench are the same as for OctaneRender Standalone.

We run OctaneBenc 2020.1.5 for Windows and here are the RTX 4080’s complete results and overall score of 946.30

Here is the summary comparing the three cards that can run this render benchmark.

The RTX 4090 is a beast of a card when used for rendering and the RTX 4080 sits in between, above the RTX 3080 Ti.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days.

Here is the chart summary of the AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks with the RTX 4090, the RTX 4080, the RTX 3080 Ti, and the RX 6900 XT side-by-side.

Generally the RTX 4090 is faster at almost all of AIDA64’s GPGPU benchmarks than the other cards with the RTX 4080 in second place. So let’s look at Sandra 2020 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. 20/21-R16a is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

With the above in mind, we ran Sandra’s intensive GPGPU benchmarks and charted the results summarizing them. The performance results of the RTX 4080 and RTX 4090 are compared with the performance results of the RTX 3080 Ti, and the RX 6900 XT.

Second only to the RTX 4090, the RTX 4080 is faster than the RTX 3080 Ti and it distinguishes itself in every area – Processing, Cryptography, Financial and Scientific Analysis, Image Processing, and Bandwidth.

Next up, SPEC benchmarks.

SPECworkstation3.1 Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation 3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except for vendors of computer-related products and/or services.

The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation 3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads. We only tested the GPU-related workstation performance as checked in the image above.

Here are our RTX 4080 raw SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores:

Below are the SPECworkstation 3.1 RTX 4090 results summarized in a chart along with the three competing cards, the RTX 4090, the RTX 3080 Ti, and the RTX 6900 XT. Higher is better since we are comparing scores.

The RTX 4090 is not a workstation card, yet it uses brute force to win most of the benches against the other cards with the RTX 4080 in second place.

Finally, we benchmark using SPECviewperfect GPU benches.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has released a 2020-22 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark that features updated viewsets, new models, support for up to 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management. We use the highest available 3800×2120 display resolution for high end cards.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 GPU RTX 4080 benchmarks summarized in a chart together with our three competing cards.

Although we see three architectures with different strengths and weaknesses, the RTX 4090 is a beast in SPEC benchmarks followed by the RTX 4080 in a solid second place.

After seeing the totality of the benches, creative users may choose to upgrade their existing systems with a new RTX 4080 or 4090 based on the performance increases and the associated increases in productivity that they require. The question to buy a RTX 4080 should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as budget. Time is money to a professional depending on how these apps are used.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Final Thoughts

Besides suffering with COVID-19, this has been an enjoyable exploration evaluating the new Ada Lovelace RTX 4080 FE versus the RTX 4090 FE, the RTX 3080 TI FE, and Gigabyte RTX 6900 XT Gaming OC. The RTX 4080 performed brilliantly performance-wise, blowing away its other two former flagship competitors and slotting in almost one-third slower than the RTX 4090.

The RTX 4080 at $1199 is a decent upgrade from the $1199 RTX 3080 Ti although it is not as impressive as upgrading from a RTX 3090 ($1499) to a RTX 4090 ($1599). If a VR enthusiast wants the very fastest card, then the RTX 4090 is the best choice for high resolution VR headsets and for creative/workstation apps. For $400 less, the RTX 4080 is a solid choice and it will provide a performance uplift over the RTX 3080 Ti, but not as dramatically as the RTX 4090.

In the last Ampere generation, the $699 RTX 3080 provided the best value, but almost unbelievably, the RTX 4090 provides the best performance bang for buck in Nvidia’s new Ada Lovelace lineup so far. We also notice that there is plenty of performance room for a possible future RTX 4080 Ti to slot in between the RTX 4080 and the RTX 4090.

We are very impressed with the RTX 4080 raw performance after testing it over the past few days in VR. It currently stands as the second fastest video card in the world and would be a solid choice for a high resolution VR headset.

The Founders Edition of the RTX 4080 is well-built, solid, good-looking, and it stays cool and quiet even when overclocked – the big card does not get hot like the RTX 3090 and under load it is quieter than the RTX 3080 Ti FE. The RTX 4080 Founders Edition offers a big performance improvement over the previous $1199 RTX 3080 FE for VR and pro apps although it doesn’t give as great a value as when the RTX 3080 FE launched for $699 two years ago.

However, we cannot give any final verdict now as there is a lot more RTX 4080 benchmarking results on the way next week. We will more extensively test the RTX 4080, RTX 4090, RTX 3080 Ti, and RX 6900 XT using 40-plus pancake games including testing DLSS 3 to determine overall value. Future reviews will hopefully test AMD’s upcoming 7000 series cards and we also plan to test the role of the CPU for VR performance. Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

BTR recently received a RTX 4090 Founders Edition (FE) from Nvidia and we have been testing it for the past ten days by using 45 pancake and VR games plus GPGPU benchmarks. In addition, although the RTX 4090 is not a workstation card, we have added workstation SPEC benches and selected popular creative and synthetic apps. Although this new flagship Ada Lovelace card arrives with multiple new features including DLSS 3, this review will focus on testing raw performance, not upscaling.

The RTX 4090 is touted as a beast in every way by Nvidia as the fastest video card for gaming with up to 4X the performance of the Ampere flagship or up to 2X the performance without using DLSS 3. The RTX 4090 boasts 83 Shader-TFLOPS, 191 RT-TFLOPS, and 1.3 Tensor petaFLOPS. It achieves over 1 TB/s memory bandwidth using 24 GB of GDDR6X memory. Its 72 MB L2 cache offers a 12X improvement over the RTX 3090 Ti.

We will focus on RTX 4090 raw performance as well as consider whether the new RTX 4090 Founders Edition at $1599 delivers a good value as a compelling upgrade from the RTX 3090 which launched at $1499 two years ago. We will also compare performance with the RX 6900 XT. In addition to gaming, VR, and SPECworkstation3 GPU results, we have added creative results using Geekbench, the Blender 3.3.0 benchmark, and complete Sandra 2020 and AIDA64 GPGPU benchmark results plus some pro applications including Blender rendering and OTOY OctaneRender.

We benchmark using Windows 11 Pro Edition 2H22 at 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160 using Intel’s Core i9-12900K and 32GB of T-FORCE DELTA RGB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 2x16GB memory on an ASUS ROG Maximus Apex motherboard. All games and benchmarks are the latest versions, and we use the latest GeForce Game Ready press drivers for games and for testing pro apps, and Adrenalin 22.10.1 for the RX 6900 XT benching.

Let’s first take a quick look at the RTX 4090 Founders Edition before we go to the test configuration

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition Unboxing

Just like as with all RTX 3000 Founders Edition cards, the RTX 4090 comes in a similar “shoebox” style where the card inside lays flat at an slight incline for display. However, the RTX 4090 box is much thicker and probably close to 50% larger.

The system requirements, contents, and warranty information are printed on the bottom of each box. The RTX 4090 requires an 850W power supply unit – 100W more than the RTX 3090 – and the case must have space for a 304mm (L) x 137mm (W) x 61mm (H) three-slot card. However, it easily fits in our Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower. The extra thick packing of the box protects the card. Inside the box and beneath the card are warnings, a quick start guide, and warranty information, plus the PCIe Gen5 power cable adapter to quad PCIe 8-pin cables that will be required to connect the RTX 4090 to most PSUs.

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition exudes a premium and solid feel from its industrial design. It is a very heavy 3-slot card and we use two thumbscrews to lock it down, taking care not to damage our PCIe slot.

The power connector adapter requires three or four molex cables from the PSU to operate; the fourth cable is for overclocking. Newer PSUs may offer the new PCIe Gen5 single cable connector instead of a bulky quad cable.

Turning the card over, we see a similar design of the Ada Lovelace FEs to the Ampere cards with a fan also on the other side.

The IO panel has a very large air vent and four connectors. The connectors are similar to the Founders Edition of the RTX 3090. Three DisplayPort 1.4 connectors are included, and the HDMI 2.1 connector allows for 4K/120Hz or 8K/60Hz over a single HDMI cable.

The other end offers a removable plate for enthusiasts to use a support bracket.

The RTX 4090 Founders Edition is a beautiful card with a very unique industrial style, and it’s larger than the RTX 3090 which is itself an imposing card. However, the larger Ada Lovelace card tends not to heat up like the RTX 3090 and it is also much quieter under full load. It looks great installed inside a case.

Disassembly appears to be very difficult and should give pause to any enthusiast who may have custom watercooling in mind. In fact, we think that watercooling is a waste for the Founders Edition as it doesn’t have any thermal issues.

Let’s check out our test configuration.

Test Configuration

Test Configuration – Hardware

• Intel Core i9-12900KF (HyperThreading and Turbo boost at stock settings)..
• ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Apex LGA1700 motherboard (Intel Z690 chipset, latest BIOS, PCIe 5.0, DDR5)
• T-Force Delta RGB PC5-51200 6400MHz DDR5 CL40 2x16GB kit, supplied by TeamGroup
• Valve Index, 90Hz
• Gigabyte RX 6900 XT GAMING OC, GV-R69XTGAMING OC-16GD 16GB, factory clocks
• RTX 3090 24GB Founders Edition, factory clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• RTX 4090 24GB Founders Edition, stock clocks, supplied by Nvidia
• 2 x T-Force Cardea Ceramic C440; 2TB PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe SSD (one for AMD/one for Nvidia)
• T-Force M200 4TB USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C Portable SSD, supplied by TeamGroup
• Super Flower LedEx, 1200W Platinum 80+ power supply unit
• MSI MAG Series CORELIQUID 360R (AIO) 360mm liquid CPU cooler
• Corsair 5000D ATX mid-tower (plus 1 x 140mm fan; 2 x 120mm Noctua fans)
• BenQ EW3270U 32? 4K HDR 60Hz FreeSync monitor
• LG C1 48″ 4K OLED HDR 120Hz display/TV

Test Configuration – Software

• GeForce press drivers for the RTX 3090 and RTX 4090, and Adrenalin 22.10.1 for the RX 6900 XT.
• High Quality, prefer maximum performance, single display, set in the Nvidia control panel.
• High Quality textures, all optimizations off in the Adrenalin control panel
• VSync is off in the control panel and disabled for each game
• AA enabled as noted in games; all in-game settings are Ultra Preset or highest with 16xAF always applied – no upscaling is used except for five DLSS games tested using the Quality preset.
• Highest quality sound (stereo) used in all games
• All games have been patched to their latest versions
• Gaming results show average frame rates in bold including minimum frame rates shown on the chart next to the averages in a smaller italics font where higher is better. The minimums are expressed by 1% lows (99th-percentile) in FPS
• Windows 11 Pro edition; 22H2 clean install for GeForce and Radeon cards on separate identical NVMe SSDs. DX11 titles are run under the DX11 render path. DX12 titles are run under DX12, and seven games use the Vulkan API.
• Latest DirectX

Games

Vulkan

• Sniper Elite
• DOOM Eternal
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Ghost Recon: Breakpoint
• Wolfenstein Youngblood
• World War Z
• Strange Brigade

DX12

• Spiderman: Remastered
• F1 2022
• Ghostwire: Tokyo
• Elden Ring
• God of War
• Dying Light 2
• Forza Horizon 5
• Call of Duty: Vanguard
• Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
• Far Cry 6
• DEATHLOOP
• Chernobylite
• Resident Evil Village
• Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition
• Hitman 3
• Godfall
• DiRT 5
• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Cyberpunk 2077
• Watch Dogs: Legions
• Horizon Zero Dawn
• Death Stranding
• Borderlands 3
• Tom Clancy’s The Division 2
• Civilization VI – Gathering Storm Expansion
• Battlefield V
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider

DX11

• Overwatch 2
• Total War: Warhammer III
• Days Gone
• Crysis Remastered
• Destiny 2 Shadowkeep
• Total War: Three Kingdoms
• Grand Theft Auto V

VR Games

• Assetto Corsa: Competizione
• Elite Dangerous
• F1 2022
• No Man’s Sky
• ProjectCARS 2

Synthetic

• TimeSpy & Time Spy Extreme (DX12)
• 3DMark FireStrike – Ultra & Extreme
• Superposition
• VRMark Blue Room
• AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks
• Blender 3.3.0 benchmark
• Geekbench
• Sandra 2020 GPGPU Benchmarks
• SPECworkstation3
• SPECviewperfect 2020
• Octanebench
• FrameView benching tool
• OCAT benching tool

NVIDIA Control Panel settings

Here are the NVIDIA Control Panel settings.

Unfortunately, we did not have time to check out overclocking, but temperatures and noise levels are lower than the RTX 3090 FE. We plan to follow this review up with a VR review, an overclocking review, and a DLSS 3 review.

Let’s check out performance using 41 pancake and 5 VR games plus Workstation and creative benches on the next page.

Performance summary charts & graphs

Main Performance Gaming Summary Charts

Here are the summary charts of 41 games and 6 synthetic tests. The highest settings are always chosen, ray tracing is enabled for all games that offer it, and the settings are listed on the chart. The benches were run at 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160 as it is pointless to test at 1920×1080 with such a powerful card. In fact, we see CPU bottlenecking at 1440P for certain games.

Three cards are compared and they are listed in order starting with the RTX 4090, the RX 6900 XT, and the RTX 3090. We do not have a RX 6950 XT or a RTX 3090 Ti and no other cards are in this class.

All results, except for synthetic scores, show average framerates, and higher is better. Minimum framerates are next to the averages in italics and in a slightly smaller font. Minimum framerates are expressed by the 99th-percentile (1% lows) and higher is better.

The RTX 4090 offers an overall 160% to 180% improvement over the RTX 3090’s baseline performance (at 100%) depending on the resolution and individual game, and in several examples it offers nearly a 200% improvement!

All of the games that we tested ran well on the RTX 4090. Although some games show less of a performance increase than others due to being CPU bound even at 1440P, it is a blowout and the RTX 4090 FE wins every game benchmark over the RTX 3090 and RX 6900 XT – it crushes the former Ampere and RDNA2 flagships. This is achieved with no upscaling whatsoever!

The RTX 4090 is the first single-GPU card that is truly suitable for 4K/60+ FPS using ultra/maxed-out ray traced settings for most modern demanding games without any upscaling, and it’s probably even solid for 4K/120 FPS using Quality DLSS which has equivalent or better visuals than the native image.

Next we look at five RTX/DLSS enabled games, each using maximum ray traced settings and the highest Quality DLSS.

RTX/DLSS Benchmarks

The RTX 4090 FE maintains its performance dominance over the RTX 3090 FE and pulls even further away when Quality DLSS is enabled.

Using Quality DLSS, we can see that the RTX 4090 will take advantage of an LG C1 4K/120Hz panel using the most demanding ray traced modern games. From testing DLSS 2 exhaustively, we note that the Quality setting at 4K is visually equal to or better than the native image.

We only had a little time to check out DLSS 3 which upscales far better than DLSS 2 and looks just as good. We believe that DLSS 3 will prove especially advantageous for the less powerful upcoming Ada Lovelace cards and will devote an upcoming review to it.

Next, we look at VR performance.

VR Games

For this review we benchmarked the Valve Index and set the SteamVR render resolution to 150% (2758×2740) which is considered ideal, if overkill, to compensate for lens distortion, and it’s well above our usual benchmarking render resolution at 100%. This higher render resolution gives the visuals exceptional clarity. The Index is still considered one of the best overall headsets due to its outstanding tracking and solid feature set, and we are going to compare the performance of the RX 4090 versus the RX 3090 at each game’s Ultra/Highest settings.

IMPORTANT: BTR’s charts use frametimes in ms where lower is better, but we also compare “unconstrained framerates” which shows what a video card could deliver (headroom) if it wasn’t locked to either 90 FPS or to 45 FPS by the HMD. In the case of unconstrained FPS, measuring just one important performance metric, faster is better.

Let’s individually look at our 5 sim-heavy VR games’ performance using FCAT VR. All of these games were benchmarked at 150% SteamVR resolution as we compare the stock-clocked RTX 4090 FE with the stock RTX 3090 FE using the Valve Index and FCAT VR.

First up, Assetto Corsa Competizione.

Assetto Corsa: Competizione (ACC)

BTR’s sim/racing editor, Sean Kaldahl created the replay benchmark run that we use for both the pancake game and the VR game. It is run at night with 20 cars, lots of geometry, and the lighting effects of the headlights, tail lights, and everything around the track looks spectacular.

Just like with Project CARS, you can save a replay after a race. Fortunately, the CPU usage is the same between a race and its replay so it is a reasonably accurate benchmark using the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps.

iRacing may be more accurate or realistic, but Assetto Corsa: Competizione has some appeal because it feels more real than many other racing sims. It delivers the sensation of handling a highly-tuned racing machine driven to its edge. We test the VR Ultra preset.

VR Ultra

Here are the ACC FCAT VR frametimes using VR Ultra.

Here are the details are reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3090 delivered 46.26 unconstrained FPS with 7884 (62%) synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 78.63 unconstrained FPS together with 6346 (50%) synthetic frames but with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The ACC racing experience is better with the RTX 4090. However, the only way that the RTX 4090 can play on VR Epic is to lower the SteamVR render resolution to 100% as it is best to have no synthesized frames.

Next, we check out Elite Dangerous next.

Elite Dangerous (ED)

Elite Dangerous is a popular space sim built using the COBRA engine. It is hard to find a repeatable benchmark outside of the training missions.

A player will probably spend a lot of time piloting his space cruiser while completing a multitude of tasks as well as visiting space stations and orbiting a multitude of different planets. Elite Dangerous is also co-op and multiplayer with a dedicated following of players.

We picked the Ultra Preset and we set the Field of View to its maximum. Here are the frametimes.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR:

The RTX 3090 delivered 137.33 unconstrained FPS with 1 synthesized frames with 1 dropped frame and 1 Warp miss.

The RTX 4090 delivered 236.17 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing Elite Dangerous at Ultra settings is not perceptibly different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has a lot more performance headroom to increase the render resolution or to use a higher resolution headset like the Reverb G2 or the Vive Pro 2.

Let’s look at our newest VR sim, F1 2022.

F1 2022

Codemasters has captured the entire Formula 1 2021 season racing in F1 2022, and the VR immersion is good. The graphics are customizeable and solid, handling and physics are good, the AI is acceptable, the scenery is outstanding, and the experience ticks many of the necessary boxes for a racing sim.

Here is the frametime plot for F1 2022.

Here are the details as reported by FCAT-VR.

The RTX 3090 delivered 117.16 unconstrained FPS with 2 synthesized frames but no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 192.66 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing F1 2022 using the Ultra preset is not very different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has more performance headroom to increase the framerate to 120Hz or to use a higher resolution headset.

Next we check out No Man’s Sky.

No Man’s Sky (NMS)

No Man’s Sky is an action-adventure survival single and multiplayer game that emphasizes survival, exploration, fighting, and trading. It is set in a procedurally generated deterministic open universe, which includes over 18 quintillion unique planets using its own custom game engine.

The player takes the role of a Traveller in an uncharted universe by starting on a random planet with a damaged spacecraft equipped with only a jetpack-equipped exosuit and a versatile multi-tool that can also be used for defense. The player is encouraged to find resources to repair his spacecraft allowing for intra- and inter-planetary travel, and to interact with other players.

Here is the No Man’s Sky Frametime plot. We set the settings to Maximum which is a step over Ultra including setting the anisotropic filtering to 16X and upgrading to FXAA+TAA. Since DLSS is available for RTX cards and the Quality setting improves performance without impacting image quality, we used it.

Here are the FCAT-VR details of our comparative runs.

The RTX 3090 delivered 109.88 unconstrained FPS with 198 (3%) synthesized frames but no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 183.68 unconstrained FPS together with 4 synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing No Man’s Sky using the highest settings is not very different on either video card but the RTX 4090 has far more performance headroom.

Let’s continue with another VR game, ProjectCARS 2, that we still like better than its successor even though it is no longer available for online play.

Project CARS 2 (PC2)

There is a real sense of immersion that comes from playing Project CARS 2 in VR using a wheel and pedals. It uses its in-house Madness engine, and the physics implementation is outstanding. We are disappointed with Project CARS 3, and will continue to use the older game instead for VR benching.

Project CARS 2 offers many performance options and settings and we prefer playing with SMAA Ultra rather than to use MSAA.

We used maximum settings including for Motion Blur.

Here is the frametime plot.

Here are the FCAT-VR details.

The RTX 3090 delivered 113.60 unconstrained FPS with no synthesized frames and no dropped frames or Warp misses.

The RTX 4090 delivered 209.53 unconstrained FPS together with no synthetic frames and with no dropped frames nor Warp misses.

The experience playing Project CARS 2 using maximum settings is similar for both video cards but the RTX 4090 has far more performance headroom to increase the framerate to 120Hz or to use a higher resolution headset like the Vive Pro 2 or Reverb G2.

Amazing. Although all of these maxed out VR benchmarks were run at SteamVR’s 150% render resolution (2758×2740), the RTRX 4090 only broke a sweat playing ACC.

Unconstrained Framerates

The following chart summarizes the overall Unconstrained Framerates (the performance headroom) of our two cards using our 5 VR test games. The preset is listed on the chart and higher is better.

The RX 4090 FE delivers far higher unconstrained frames for all VR benchmarks over the RTX 3090 FE in this important performance metric. However, unconstrained framerates are just one metric that has to be taken together with the frametime plots to have any meaning. It is clear that the RTX 4090 is ready for higher resolution headsets than the Valve Index. We’ll follow up this review with an expanded VR review using the Reverb G2 and Vive Pro.

Creative, Pro & Workstation Apps

Let’s look at Creative applications next to see if the RTX 4090 is a good upgrade from the RTX 3090 or RX 6900 XT. We test starting with Geekbench.

GeekBench

GeekBench is an excellent CPU/GPU benchmarking program which runs a series of tests and times how long a GPU (in this case) takes to complete its tasks. It benchmarks OpenCL, Vulcan, and CUDA performance

OpenCL, Vulcan, and CUDA Performance

RTX 6900 XT

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RTX 6900 XT using Vulcan.

The 6900 XT does not run CUDA, so we move on to RTX 3090 performance.

RX 3090

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RX 3090 using Vulcan.

Finally, RTX 3090 CUDA performance.

We move on to RTX 4090 performance

RX 4090

First, OpenCL performance.

Next we test the RX 4090 using Vulcan.

Finally, RTX 4090 CUDA performance.

The summary charts below show the comparative performance scores.

Again, the RTX 4090 performance is outstanding.

Next up, Blender benchmark.

Blender 3.3.0 Benchmark

Blender is a very popular open source 3D content creation suite. It supports every aspect of 3D development with a complete range of tools for professional 3D creation.

For the following chart, higher is better as the benchmark renders a scene multiple times and gives the results in samples per minute.

Blender’s benchmark performance is highest using the RTX4090, and often the amount of time saved is substantial over using the next fastest card, the RTX 3090.

Next, we look at the OctaneBench.

OTOY Octane Bench

OctaneBench allows you to benchmark your GPU using OctaneRender. The hardware and software requirements to run OctaneBench are the same as for OctaneRender Standalone.

We run OctaneBenc 2020.1.5 for Windows and here are the RTX 3090’s complete results and overall score of 671.17

We compare the score and results for the RTX 4090 – almost double the RTX 3090 score with 1261.64

Here is the summary chart comparing the RTX 4090 with the RTX 3090 overall scores.

The RTX 4090 is a beast of a card when used for rendering.

Next, we move on to AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks.

AIDA64

AIDA64 is an important industry tool for benchmarkers. Its GPGPU benchmarks measure performance and give scores to compare against other popular video cards.

AIDA64’s benchmark code methods are written in Assembly language, and they are well-optimized for every popular AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and VIA processor by utilizing the appropriate instruction set extensions. We use the Engineer’s full version of AIDA64 courtesy of FinalWire. AIDA64 is free to to try and use for 30 days. CPU results are also shown for comparison with the RTX 4090 GPGPU benchmarks.

Here is the chart summary of the AIDA64 GPGPU benchmarks with the RTX 4090, the RTX 3090 and the RX 6900 XT side-by-side.

Generally the RTX 3090 is faster at almost all of AIDA64’s GPGPU benchmarks than the other cards. So let’s look at Sandra 2020 next.

SiSoft Sandra 2020

To see where the CPU, GPU, and motherboard performance results differ, there is no better tool than SiSoft’s Sandra 2020. SiSoftware SANDRA (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is a excellent information & diagnostic utility in a complete package. It is able to provide all the information about your hardware, software, and other devices for diagnosis and for benchmarking. Sandra is derived from a Greek name that implies “defender” or “helper”.

There are several versions of Sandra, including a free version of Sandra Lite that anyone can download and use. 20/21-R16a is the latest version, and we are using the full engineer suite courtesy of SiSoft. Sandra 2020 features continuous multiple monthly incremental improvements over earlier versions of Sandra. It will benchmark and analyze all of the important PC subsystems and even rank your PC while giving recommendations for improvement.

With the above in mind, we ran Sandra’s intensive GPGPU benchmarks and charted the results summarizing them. The performance results of the RTX 4090 are compared with the performance results of the RTX 3080, and the RX 6900 XT.

In Sandra GPGPU benchmarks, the RTX 4090 is much faster than the RTX 3090 and it distinguishes itself in every area – Processing, Cryptography, Financial and Scientific Analysis, Image Processing, and Bandwidth.

Next up, SPEC benchmarks.

SPECworkstation3.1 Benchmarks

All the SPECworkstation 3 benchmarks are based on professional applications, most of which are in the CAD/CAM or media and entertainment fields. All of these benchmarks are free except for vendors of computer-related products and/or services.

The most comprehensive workstation benchmark is SPECworkstation 3. It’s a free-standing benchmark which does not require ancillary software. It measures GPU, CPU, storage and all other major aspects of workstation performance based on actual applications and representative workloads. We only tested the GPU-related workstation performance as checked in the image above.

Here are our raw SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RX 6900 XT:

Here are our raw SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RTX 3090:

Finally, here are our SPECworkstation 3.1 raw scores for the RTX 4090:

Below are the SPECworkstation 3.1 RTX 4090 results summarized in a chart along with the two competing cards, the RTX 3090, and the RTX 6900 XT. Higher is better since we are comparing scores.

The RTX 4090 is not a workstation card, yet it uses brute force to win most of the benches against the other two cards. The Radeon scores unbelievably high in snx-03, however, and we have no explanation for this result.

Finally, we benchmark using SPECviewperfect GPU benches.

SPECviewperf 2020 GPU Benches

The SPEC Graphics Performance Characterization Group (SPECgpc) has released a 2020-22 version of its SPECviewperf benchmark that features updated viewsets, new models, support for up to 4K display resolutions, and improved set-up and results management. We use the highest available 3800×2120 display resolution for highend cards.

Here are SPECviewperf 2020 GPU RTX 4090 benchmarks summarized in a chart together with our two competing cards.

Although we see different architectures with different strengths and weaknesses, the RTX 4090 is a beast in these SPEC benchmarks.

The RTX 4090 doesn’t offer any certifications for professional applications and it is not expected. It is likely that in workstation specific benchmarks, there will be cases where a Quadro board will outperform the RTX 4090 GeForce card. This is why professionals pay much more for Quadro than for any GeForce with otherwise equivalent raw performance.

After seeing the totality of the benches, many creative users will probably upgrade their existing systems with a new RTX 4090 series card based on the performance increases and the associated increases in productivity that they require. The question to buy the RTX 4090 or the RTX 3090 should be based on the workflow and requirements of each user as well as budget. Time is money to a professional depending on how these apps are used. Hopefully the benchmarks that we ran may help you decide.

Let’s head to our conclusion.

Final Thoughts

This has been a very enjoyable exploration evaluating the new Ada Lovelace RTX 4090 FE versus the RTX 3090 FE and Gigabyte RTX 6900 XT Gaming OC. The RTX 4090 performed brilliantly performance-wise. It totally blows away its other competitors as it is much faster. The RTX 4090 at $1599 is the upgrade from the $1499 RTX 3090 since the RTX 4090 gives at least a 160% (1.6X) improvement over its baseline performance. If a gaming enthusiast wants the very fastest card – just as the RTX 3090 was for the past two years (until the up to 10% faster RTX 3090 Ti was released), and doesn’t mind the $100 price increase – then the RTX 4090 is the only choice for intensive gaming and high resolution VR headsets.

The RTX 4090 is the flagship gaming card that can also run intensive creative apps very well, especially by virtue of its huge 24GB framebuffer. But it is still not a Quadro. These cards cost a lot more and are optimized specifically for workstations and also for professional and creative apps.

For RTX 3090 gamers who paid $1499 and who have disposable cash for their hobby, the RTX 4090 Founders Edition which costs $1599 is the card to maximize their upgrade. And for high-end gamers who also use creative apps, this card may become a very good value. Hobbies are very expensive to maintain, and the expense of PC gaming pales in comparison to what golfers, skiers, audiophiles, and many other hobbyists pay for their entertainment.

We cannot call the $1600 RTX 4090 a “good value” generally for gamers as it is a halo card although it provides more than 1.6X the performance of a RTX 3090. Of course, a RTX 3090 can be currently found at many etailers for under $1000 and a RTX 6900 XT for less than $700. Value is in the eye of the beholder, and the RTX 4090 delivers on its raw performance promises.

In addition, DLSS 3 brings a great future value to the new 4000 series as it has already received support from many of the world’s leading game developers, with more than 35 games and applications announcing support including game engines, including Unity, Unreal, and Frostbite Engine. If a game already uses DLSS 2 Super Resolution, upgrading to DLSS 3 is a relatively simple process that will make both Super Resolution and Frame Generation available. DLSS 3 leverages the same integration points as DLSS 2 (color buffer, depth buffer, engine motion vectors, and output buffers) and Nvidia Reflex, making upgrades from these existing SDKs easy for devs using the DLSS 3 Streamline plugin.

We will follow up with a DLSS 3 review since what we have experienced so far is extremely promising especially for upcoming less powerful Ada Lovelace cards.

Conclusion

We are very impressed with the RTX 4090 raw performance after spending more than 100 hours testing it over the past few days. It offers exceptional performance at Ultra 4K and and it even supports smooth playable gaming at 4K/120Hz using Quality DLSS and may be used for 8K gaming. It currently stands alone as the fastest video card in the world.

The Founders Edition of the RTX 4090 is well-built, solid, good-looking, and it stays cool and quiet even when overclocked – the card does not get hot like the RTX 3090 and it is much quieter under load. The RTX 4090 Founders Edition offers a big performance improvement over any previous Founders Editions in every metric.

Pros

• The RTX 4090 is the fastest video card in the world
• The RTX 4090 at $100 more than the RTX 3090 launched at is at least a 1.6X+ jump in raw performance
• The RTX 4090 offers an overall 160% to 180% improvement over the RTX 3090’s baseline performance (at 100%) depending on the resolution and individual game, and in several examples it offers nearly a 200% improvement!
• 24GB of fast vRAM and a fast core allow for 4K/120Hz gaming and it’s also very useful for intensive creative apps
• Ray tracing is a game changer in every way and DLSS 2 is pure magic. DLSS 3 looks to be even more of a game changer
• Ada Lovelace improves over Ampere with AI/deep learning and ray tracing to improve visuals while also increasing performance with DLSS 2 and especially with DLSS 3
• The RTX 4090 Founders Edition design cooling is quiet and efficient; the GPU in a well-ventilated case stays much cooler and quieter than the RTX 3090
• The industrial design is eye-catching and it is solidly built

Con

• Price. At $1600, the RTX 4090 is not a good value for gaming except as a multi-purpose halo card or for bragging rights

The Verdict:

If you are a gamer who also uses creative apps where saving time is important, you may do yourself a favor by upgrading to a RTX 4090. For high-end gamers with disposable income, the RTX 4090 is a true 4K/120Hz video card for most modern games and it offers the highest performance as an upgrade from a RTX 3090 delivering from 160% to nearly 200% improvement in raw performance power.

Stay tuned, there is a lot more on the way from BTR. Next up, we will more extensively test the RTX 4090, RTX 3080, and RX 6900 XT in VR using the Vive Pro 2 and Reverb G2 with an ETA of early next week. We also plan to follow up with an RTX 4090 overclocking review and a DLSS 3 deep dive. Stay tuned to BTR!

Happy Gaming!

UPDATE: I shared my data with John Peddie Research and they posted their own take on the RTX 4090 focusing on averages and easy-to-read charts including their famous Pmark overall comparison.

Today, to kick-off GTC 22, NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang delivered the highly anticipated GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast. Today is only the second time that a GeForce video card was launched at a GTC, the last time was the Titan X in 2015, Gamers will be particularly interested in the first 20 minutes of the presentation while creators and developers will want to watch it all.

Here is a short summary of the highlights from the event beginning with the unveiling of the GeForce RTX 40 Series of GPUs led by its new flagship, the RTX 4090 GPU, with up to 4x the performance of its predecessor particularly regarding ray tracing. All of the following image sources are from the presentation.

Based on the new Ada Lovelace architecture, the GeForce RTX 40 Series delivers a generational leap in performance and efficiency offering improved real-time ray tracing and AI-based neural rendering. The first three new GPUs include the 76-billion transistor flagship GeForce RTX 4090, available October 12 starting at $1599, and two GeForce RTX 4080s which will be available in November, starting at $899 (12GB) and $1199 (16GB). The RTX 4090 costs $100 more than the RTX 3090 launch price while the RTX 4080s have large price increases compared with the RTX 3080 launch ($699) two years ago.

The GeForce RTX 4090 and 4080 GPUs will be available as custom boards while the RTX 4090 and RTX 4080 (16GB) are also produced directly by NVIDIA in limited Founders Editions for gamers wanting the in-house design. In addition, stock-clocked and factory-overclocked models will be available from top add-in card providers (AIBs) such as ASUS, Colorful, Gainward, Galaxy, GIGABYTE, Innovision 3D, MSI, Palit, PNY and Zotac. Unfortunately, EVGA has indicated they will no longer be producing new video cards.

All of the details from nvidia.com are here and here. One of the other really big announcements was about DLSS 3.0 which is evidently a complete reworking of DLSS to take advantage of the new fourth-generation Tensor Cores and a new Optical Flow Accelerator only available on the RTX 4000 series.

DLSS 3 Introduced With AI-Powered Frame Generation for up to 4x Performance

GeForce RTX 40 Series will support DLSS 3, an AI-powered performance multiplier building on AI-accelerated super-resolution techniques to deliver outstanding image quality and up to 4x the performance of brute-force rendering, plus low latency responsiveness for an improved gaming experience.

DLSS 3 is the latest iteration of NVIDIA’s Deep Learning Super Sampling technology which introduces a new capability called Optical Multi Frame Generation. Optical Multi Frame Generation generates entirely new frames, rather than just pixels, delivering large performance boosts. Because DLSS Frame Generation executes as a post-process on the GPU, it can boost frame rates even when the game is bottlenecked by the CPU. This is especially well-illustrated by MS Flight Simulator 20/20 which is notoriously CPU-bottlenecked.

We are really looking forward to benchmarking DLSS 3.0 when it eventually comes to VR. The technology is first coming to the most popular game engines, such as Unity and Unreal Engine, and DLSS 3 has also received support from leading game developers, with more than 35 games and applications announcing support. In addition, Valve’s Portal has been remastered with full ray tracing and DLSS 3.0

NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios has reimagined Valve’s iconic video game Portal, regarded as one of the best video games of all time. Advanced graphics features such as full ray tracing and DLSS 3 give the game a completely new look. Portal with RTX will be released as free official downloadable content with RTX graphics in November for Portal’s 15th anniversary.

Portal with RTX is made possible by the new NVIDIA RTX Remix modding platform that also debuted in today’s GeForce Beyond special broadcast at GTC. A “mod” (modification) is new in-game content that players create, not the developers. RTX Remix is an Omniverse-based modding platform to create RTX remasters of classic games. RTX Remix allows modders to easily capture game assets and automatically enhance materials with powerful AI tools as well as enable RTX with ray tracing and DLSS.

The special presentation also brought new announcements for NVIDIA Studio for accelerating content creation.

• 3D artists will get performance upgrades fromDLSS 3 technology using AI-powered fourth-generation RTX Tensor Cores, and a new Optical Flow Accelerator to improve smoothness and speed up movement in the viewport while working in 3D applications such as Omniverse, Unity and Unreal Engine 5.
• RTX Remix puts powerful new game modding tools in the hands of creators including ray tracing and DLSS for classic games, as well as collaboration in Omniverse-connected apps.
• New eighth-generation dual AV1 encoders use dedicated hardware on the new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs bringing significant boosts for both video editors and live streamers. Video editors may be able to cut their export times in half since the updated tensor cores will boost performance in AI Tools by a claimed 70%. Livestreamers may benefit from these new Broadcast effects. Using dual encoders, gamers can capture up to 8K60 footage using GeForce Experience.
• The new September Studio driver is also now available.
• OBS Studio and Discord will add AV1 support in their next software release.
• The top video editing apps – DaVinci Resolve, Adobe Premiere Pro via the Voukoder plugin, and Jianying – are adding support for AV1 and dual encoders.
• New features in the SDKs that power NVIDIA Broadcast will be available in OBS, VTube Studio, and more.

Racer RTX, a demo built in Omniverse, showcases the latest technologies possible with the new GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs. This special edition of ‘In The NVIDIA Studio’ demonstrates how a global team led by creative director Gabriele Leone created this stunning new Racer RTX demo with GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs and DLSS 3 in NVIDIA Omniverse.

There was much more including announcements of 360 FPS on 1440p 360Hz monitors arriving this fall with as low as 10ms of system latency in top esports titles. NVIDIA’s Reflex reduces system latency currently in over 40 games, including 8 of the top 10 competitive shooters and another 8 Reflex games were just announced, including Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Cyberpunk 2077, Destroy All Humans! 2 – Reprobed, Loopmancer, Overwatch 2, Scathe, SUPER PEOPLE, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, with more on the way. DLSS 3 integrations also incorporate NVIDIA Reflex, which synchronizes the GPU and CPU to ensure better responsiveness and low system latency.

We are really looking forward to bringing BTR’s readers the pancake and VR gaming benchmarks of these new cards – stay tuned!

Links to today’s RTX 4000 announcements and videos

GeForce RTX 40 Series News Release:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-40-series-graphics-cards-announcements

NVIDIA Ada Lovelace during GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast:

https://youtu.be/Uo8rs5YfIYY?t=309

GeForce RTX 40 Series announcement during GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast:

https://youtu.be/Uo8rs5YfIYY?t=1053

GeForce RTX 4090 video on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/fj245xMr-BM

RTX On trailer on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/mqiVYUAonoE

NVIDIA DLSS 3 News Release:

https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-introduces-dlss-3-with-breakthrough-ai-powered-frame-generation-for-up-to-4x-performance

DLSS 3 article on GeForce.com:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss3-ai-powered-neural-graphics-innovations

GeForce.com article on the 35+ DLSS 3 games and applications, including NVIDIA Racer RTX :

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss3-supports-over-35-games-apps

DLSS 3 announcement during GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast:

https://youtu.be/Uo8rs5YfIYY?t=602

NVIDIA Racer RTX during GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast:

https://youtu.be/Uo8rs5YfIYY?t=64

Cyberpunk 2077 and DLSS 3 during GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast:

https://youtu.be/Uo8rs5YfIYY?t=693

Microsoft Flight Simulator and DLSS 3 during GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast:

https://youtu.be/Uo8rs5YfIYY?t=753

NVIDIA Racer RTX trailer on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/AsykNkUMoNU

Cyberpunk 2077 DLSS 3 & Ray Tracing: Overdrive trailer on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/spq0jSWRCqI

Microsoft Flight Simulator DLSS 3 trailer on YouTube:

https://youtu.be/cJlo2I7CiD0

Portal with RTX article on GeForce.com:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/portal-with-rtx-ray-tracing

RTX Remix article on GeForce.com:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-remix-announcement

Portal with RTX announcement during GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast:

https://youtu.be/Uo8rs5YfIYY?t=821

RTX Remix announcement during GeForce Beyond: Special Broadcast:

https://youtu.be/Uo8rs5YfIYY?t=930

Portal with RTX trailer on Youtube:

https://youtu.be/AZHBl5yWqJk

NVIDIA Studio and GeForce 40 Series GPUs article on GeForce.com:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/rtx-40-series-and-studio-updates-for-content-creation/

‘In the NVIDIA Studio’ and GeForce 40 series GPU blog:https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2022/09/20/nvidia-studio-geforce-rtx-40-series/

GeForce RTX 40 Series and NVIDIA Reflex article on GeForce.com:

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/play-competitive-games-with-rtx-40-series-and-reflex

Happy Gaming!