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4K Gaming Performance
Our gaming tests consist of a "standard" suite of eight games without ray tracing enabled (even if the game supports it), and a separate "ray tracing" suite of six games that all use multiple RT effects. We've already tested the RTX 4090 Founders Edition at 1080p, and our focus on AIB cards will be the 4K and 1440p performance.
The Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC ends up as the slowest 4090 card we've tested in our standard gaming suite, averaging 123.8 fps across the eight games compared to 125.2 fps with the Founders Edition. The fastest 4090 we've tested averaged 126.7 fps (Asus ROG Strix), so there's about a 2.3% spread between the four cards. Overclocking on the Founders Edition boosted performance by an additional 4.2%, and you should see similar results from any of the other cards.
Interestingly, while the Gigabyte was slightly slower (1.1%) than the reference model in our standard suite, it ended up being a hair faster (0.4%) in our ray tracing suite. There's about a 1% margin of error on our tests, so we wouldn't read too much into this. In general, performance should effectively tie the Founders Edition.
Overclocking shows similar results, despite slight differences in the actual values. The Gigabyte card ties the MSI liquid-cooled card across our test suite, while the Founders Edition ends up slightly faster and the Asus card takes the top spot. That could just be the usual silicon lottery effect, and the spread among the overclocked cards is only 3.3% overall, regardless.
1440p Gaming Performance
Moving on to our 1440p testing, frame rates improve by 29% compared to 4K ultra in our standard test suite, and by 86% in our DXR suite. What that tells us is even 4K ultra isn't enough to make things fully GPU limited in our standard suite, which matches up with the fact that overclocking did less to boost performance than in DXR.
Also note that with the RTX 3090 Ti, 1440p was 51% faster than 4K in our standard suite, while DXR performance improved by 95%. A faster Core i9-13900K might reduce the CPU bottleneck a bit, so that's something to keep in mind if you want to be sure you’re squeezing every frame possible out of your expensive GPU. CPU performance becomes less of a factor on slower GPUs, but with extreme options like the 4090, you'll want the fastest CPU you can get.
The 1440p tests also hint that perhaps something else is to blame for the slightly lower-than-reference 4K standard results. At 1440p ultra, Gigabyte does come out just a touch ahead of the Founders Edition in both test suites — not by any meaningful amount, but a tie with a minuscule lead does align with the 15 MHz factory overclock.
Test Setup for Gigabyte RTX 4090 Gaming OC
We updated our GPU test PC and gaming suite in early 2022, and we'll continue to use the same hardware for a while longer. AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X and the Core i9-13900K are a bit faster, and those would definitely make more of a difference at 1080p. Still, we're using XMP for a modest boost to performance and the GPU generally becomes the limiting factor at 4K.
Our CPU sits in an MSI Pro Z690-A DDR4 WiFi motherboard, with DDR4-3600 memory — a nod to sensibility rather than outright maximum performance. We also upgraded to Windows 11 and are now running the latest 22H2 version (with VBS and HVCI disabled) to ensure we get the most out of Alder Lake. You can see the rest of the hardware in the boxout.
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