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We measure real-world power consumption using Powenetics testing hardware and software. We capture in-line GPU power consumption by collecting data while looping Metro Exodus (the original, not the enhanced version) and while running the FurMark stress test. Our test PC remains the same old Core i9-9900K as we've used previously, to keep results consistent.
For the RTX 4090 cards, we've upped the quality setting to 4K extreme in order to tax the GPU as much as possible, and we run at 2560x1440 with FurMark. The following charts are intended to represent worst-case power consumption, temps, etc. and so we do check other settings to ensure we're pushing the GPUs as much as reasonably possible.
At stock, the Asus card shows somewhat interesting behavior. It uses less power than the other 4090 cards in the Metro Exodus test, but more power in the FurMark test. It also used the most power of any graphics card we've tested after overclocking, reaching 569W — which would mean about 632W at the outlet, after accounting for power supply inefficiencies. The MSI card meanwhile used slightly more power in its overclocked configuration, despite a theoretically lower power limit.
Moving on to the GPU core clocks, the reason for the high power draw in FurMark becomes immediately obvious. The Asus ROG Strix still averaged over 2.9 GHz in FurMark, compared to 2.98 GHz in Metro. The MSI card had lower clocks in both stock and overclocked configurations, at least in FurMark, but the Asus and MSI cards are basically tied for clock in Metro (we're not going to worry about an 8–12 MHz difference).
Moving on, fan speeds are also tied to temperatures, so don't worry too much about the lower temps in overclocked mode — the fans were running much faster! At stock settings, though, the Asus Strix card ended up a bit cooler than the MSI card in Metro Exodus, and both surpassed the Founders Edition by nearly 10C. With FurMark, the Asus card still ended up cooler than the Founders Edition, but MSI had the best overall result — thanks no doubt to the heavier throttling that occurred under that workload.
Fan speeds also favor the Asus ROG Strix, at least at stock when gaming. With Metro Exodus, the fans were only running at around 1100 RPM, give or take. FurMark bumped that up to nearly 1600 RPM, but it's not really a typical workload for most people. The aggressive fan speed curve with overclocking meanwhile nearly doubled the Asus card's RPMs.
For noise levels, we use an SPL (sound pressure level) meter, with the microphone 10cm from the center of the middle fan. This helps to minimize noise pollution from other sources like the CPU cooler fans. With no load on the PC, the noise floor measured less than 32 dB(A), which is more or less the limit of our SPL meter.
Running a game for 15 minutes or more resulted in fan speeds of 41% on the Asus card and a noise level of 41.5 dB(A). The Founders Edition was noticeably louder at 45.0 dB(A), while the MSI card was only a bit louder at 42.6 dB(A).
We also set all three cards to a static fan speed of 75%, which resulted in 58.1 dB(A) on the Asus card, 57.2 dB(A) for the Founders Edition, and 53.3 dB(A) on the MSI card. Overclocked, with a fan speed of 89% on the Asus card, we measured 60.5 dB(A) — rather noisy, to be frank. The MSI card couldn't overclock as far, so it 'only' had its fans at 81% with a noise level of 55.0 dB(A).
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