Which RTX 4090 to BUY and AVOID?! | 35 Cards Compared! Asus, MSI, Galax, Gigabyte, PNY, Palit, Etc.

hi everyone welcome to the RTX 4090 buying guide the point is to inform people on which GPU models have better hardware and biases sure any RTX 4090 would perform similarly at default except for the more extreme cards when overclocked but there is really no reason not to pick the best models for your budget and in the case of the RTX 4090 where the budget is already so high why not just get the best one in the previous generation power limits were very important as that makes the biggest impact on GPU performance for the RTX 40 series gpus however this is no longer the case the rtx40 series cards are now made in tsmc's super efficient 5 nanometer process that's much more efficient than the previous Samsung 8 nanometer process all the while Nvidia is still increasing the power limits this means that these new gpus are much less restricted by the power consumption which means means they really just boost higher without constantly hitting the power limiter this also means that the manufacturers can't easily boost performance by just putting a higher power limit like any previous generation as there is really no point in increasing power limits if they aren't causing any throttling in the first place similar things can be said about the cooling solutions on these new gpus as it seems like the side effect of Nvidia specifying a high power limit by default meant that all the manufacturers design massive coolers really expecting the gpus to redline the power limit like in the previous generation while the reality is the rtx40 series gpus rarely max out their power limits yes even the RTX 4090 doesn't really consume the whole 450 watt TDP this means that there is practically no graphics card model out there that has a bad cooler in this generation because these new gpus are much more efficient they also don't need as powerful a vrm as the previous gpus but a powerful vrm is still important to enthusiasts that intend to overclock or undervolt not only because the stronger vrm can supply more power to an overclocked GPU but also because the weaker vrms are almost always a result of cost cutting which means that there are less capacitors being used that results in noisier voltage output that will result in less clock speed at the same voltage or other cost cutting measures that just results in worse power and voltage regulation for the graphics card the bottom line is there's no excuse for putting weak vrms on high-end graphics cards that cost more than ever before which is why we will start by looking at the vrms of the different cards in the RTX 4090 the minimum Nvidia reference specification is a 14 phase 50 amp vrm totaling 700 amp for the cord and 3 phase by 50 amp totaling 150 M for the memory these 770 amp cards are also the same except that they use power stages rated at a higher 55 amps this is perfectly adequate for any RTX 4090 running at their out-of-the-box speeds the GPU runs at 1.05 volts by default and if we assume it constantly maxes out its 450 watt power limit which it doesn't that is still only 430 amps of current at most there are also no large current spikes in this generation as the GPU is no longer an extremely power hungry chip that is being held backed by power limits so while there are many cards that adhere to this minimum vrm specification this is really not as catastrophic as it is in in the cheaper RTX 3090s that barely keep themselves from exploding these cars are fine at stock speeds but due to the nature of these being low-cost designs don't expect to sustain High clock speeds while overclocking or high undervolting potential which brings me to the palette cards that the gainward and the yesen cards are based on they only have a weak 16 phase 800 amp vrm for the core and even gone as far as putting only the minimum 150 amp vrm for the memory now to be fair the palette game Rock OC is the card that I got for review and I've actually shun modded my car to give it unlimited power without the vrms exploding even while overclocked so this is not really a problem of it exploding but the problem is that the game Brock models and its derivatives are the high-end offerings that they charge a premium on where in the previous generation they used to be competitive with the other high-end cards it seems like in this generation these cards are no longer worthy of being called high-end these are worse than quite a few RTX 4080 designs and even their own RTX 4080 only has one fewer vrm phase I think that's enough said of these cards next is the MSI gaming X Trio by itself at 900 amps which amazingly it uses the Supreme Max Customs VCB but with a few less vrm phases then I was pleasantly surprised that Galax has put a 990 amp vrm on their mainstream carts right under the gigabyte gaming cards which has 1 000 mvrms which is mighty impressive for the mainstream gigabyte cards the colorful Advanced card is next at 1100 amps only to be one up by the 1200 amp gigabyte aorus cards then the Asus Top Model has a really impressive 1260 amp VR Ram which is great to see for a card that historically has been one of the one tier cheaper than the flagship model cards the zotek amp extreme arrow and the colorful Neptune and Vulcan tops out at 1320 amps which is just shy of the Nvidia Founders Edition card at 1400 amps only beaten by cards with extreme Overkill vrms that seem to be made really just for the sake of beating the Nvidia Fe card they probably didn't want to look bad compared to the Fe these Overkill cards also have the digital mps2891 voltage controllers like the Fe card but with soldering pads that allow you to connect an external spy Square C interface and control the voltage manually using something like the Elmore EVC module these would be the best choice for anyone looking to do extreme overclocking on the RTX 4090 Max up are the power limiters on these graphics cards which I've mentioned earlier even at 450 watts is already plenty for the RTX 4090 to sustain their maximum boost clocks in most situations which means increased stock power limits are mostly Irrelevant in this generation this signed the maximum power limits are much more important as that allows enthusiasts who want to overclock these cards chase that final few points in benchmarks as if you overclock they really can suck up quite a lot more juice it can be observed that there is correlation with the weak theorem cards also having non-adjustable power limits which means they're not suitable for overclocking while the cards that have adjustable maximum power limits below 600 watts really make no sense to me their vrms are perfectly capable to support the 600 watts that is allowed through the new 12vh Power connector so there's absolutely no reason to limit these below 600 watts and I really don't understand the choices that these manufacturers make now for the cooling performance of the different cards it is impossible to find performance results on every model as not every one of them gets reviewed but I did gather the performance results measured by tech power up hardware unbox and kid Guru to combine them to a really large result that can be used to compare the cards I combine the results by correcting the temperatures to Tech powerup's results by calculating the average Delta temperature and noise measures on the same cards that tech power tested and applying a correction to any card that isn't tested by Tech PowerUp to be able to be added in the same graph the result is this combined graph which isn't completely accurate by any means but it is good enough to give an idea of how these cards stack up for the RTX 4090 we can see that there is no point in the liquid cooled cart the GPU may be high powered but it is so easy to cool probably due to the large die size that the MSI Supreme X liquid struggles to be any cooler than the other air-cooled cards this is while it also has a constantly running pump where the air cooled carts can just stop their fans at idle and be completely silent the gigabyte gaming OC is extremely impressive considering it's not gigabyte's Top Model although it is one of the noisier cards along with the colorful volcano C and Zotac amp even then these cards don't even cross the 40 decibels Mark which is incredibly quiet already especially for a card that consumes this much power here's an example sound clip of the pellet game Rock OC that I reviewed that performs similarly to the Nvidia Fe card in terms of noise levels it is already extremely quiet and their temperatures are more than fine which emphasizes the absolute master class that Asus tricks OC is as it is really the best performing air cooled cart period not just for the RTX 4090 but for any graphics card ever made because the RTX 4090 is the most power hungry card and this is the best RTX 1490 Air Cold card out there sure in the inner 3D x3oc colorful vulcanoc and the Asus tough OC have similar temperatures but the strix has a 50 watt higher power limit and higher clock speeds while being the quietest of them all so clearly it is the better air cooler the MSI Supreme Max is surprisingly not competing at the top this time as it seems to run a little bit hotter while only matching this tricks in noise then there is the Zotac amp extreme Aero which doesn't perform all that great when you consider the Nvidia Fe and the pellet game Rock are much smaller cards that run both cooler and quieter than the Zotac card lastly the MSI gaming X Trio has become a much less appealing card this generation as instead of being a good budget option that has a cooler that competes with the best this card just becomes a mediocre RTX 4090 this is because they did not Implement a vapor chamber like pretty much all the other rjx490 designs and that really causes much worse temperatures and noise levels compared to the other car designs I would say the Zotac amp and MSI gaming X are both inferior to the Nvidia Fe design which shows just how serious Nvidia has gotten in this generation to produce their own custom car design for the other cards that don't have reviews yet here's the tier list that I came up with as per usual this isn't 100 accurate as is really just my estimation from seeing the cards that were reviewed and comparing them to how the coolers of these other non-reviewed cards are built this should still be accurate enough that the cards in the same tier will perform similarly in terms of cooler performance there is no particular order inside the tiers themselves aside from alphabetical order either ways all the cards in the beat here and above should be better than the Nvidia Fe design while the C tier should be same or slightly worse than the Fe but there really shouldn't be any cards that perform so horribly that it should be avoided although there are cards that don't have Vapor Chambers which does seem to have much worse memory and core temperatures such as the MSI gaming X and also their lower Ventus series lastly here is the overall tier list of all the cards this is not in any particular order within the tiers again except for alphabetical order as there are more closely matched cards in this generation than ever before which makes it really difficult to put one card over the other for the whole stack of different models if any manufacturer disagrees with this list please contact me and convince me why your card should be hired by probably sending me a review sample so I can actually see it for myself otherwise I am very confident in the tiers that I place these cards at the point of this Theory list is to buy as high tiered cards as possible in the budget that you are spending buy a higher tier card if it's the same price as a lower tier card that you are looking at at the top are the Asus tricks colorful Neptune Galax Hall of Fame OC gigabyte errors cards and the MSI Supreme cards these are the flagships of each companies and they do deserve to be at the top of this list they have the most powerful vrms with the highest power limits as well as the most powerful coolers you can get the only thing I'll point out is that the MSI Supreme X does not have an air cooler that quite matches the strix or a power limit that can match districts either but the digital vrm that it has makes up for it as well as having the possibility to just flash the higher power Supreme X liquid bios the cards most appropriate for extreme overclocking are definitely the Asus tricks Galax Hall of Fame and probably also the MSI Supreme cards for having externally accessible is currency interface for their digital vrm controller which means you can use again the Elmore AVC or something of the light to control the voltages manually the next tier down is the S tier which should be as good as it gets for anyone just looking to use the RTX 4090 and overclock it normally the Asus tough has an impressive cooler and a digital vrm while also having the same 600 watt power limit as its bigger Brothers for its card it's probably only going to lose to the strikes card just because Asus will probably been the best GPU cores for this tricks card then the big surprises for me are the gigabyte gaming cards which also top out at a maximum 600 watt power limit and have a much more impressive vrm and cooler design than what I expected from a non-ears card from gigabyte the a tier cards are what I feel like are As Good As It Gets for someone that wants a plug and play experience for the best cards without any real interest in overclocking the Nvidia Fe is an outlier here as it really has a cooler that's more in line with the cards in the B tier but the cooler itself is probably the best build cooler out there and its PCB is very well engineered as per usual from nvidia's Founders edition cards on top of that it has a maxed out 600 watt power limit that's really awesome to see in an Fe card from Nvidia as it now competes with other classic cards on the other hand the colorful Vulcan really should be an S tier card but its power limit at just 495 watts is a joke for a flagship card it should really be just 600 watts there's no reason it couldn't do that although it is along with the colorful Advanced OC and Galaxy cards are perfectly fine options for those not overclocking then there are the b-tier cards which are made up of pallet game Rock cards and its derivatives as well as the MSI gaming X Trio and Zotac amp extreme Aero the palette cards are good in terms of cooling performance especially considering it is one of the smaller RTX 4090s but their low power limits of only 500 watts and it really disappointingly weak 800 amp vrm means they do not deserve being in the a tier or above while the MSI gaming x3o has an unfortunate case of cost cutting resulting in not having a vapor chamber and destroying its cooling performance this is despite the gaming X Trio amazingly using the a custom MSI supremex PCB with its digital vrm just minus a few phases while the Zotac app is the opposite in that it uses the Zotac Trinity's reference PCB design but with more phases populated and also somehow still manages to not have a good performing cooler despite its really huge size and it also has an extremely low power limit for its extremely strong vrm a really confusing card I don't get why they designed it this way lastly there are the C tier cards like I mentioned early on there aren't really any cards that should be avoided in the RTX 4090 series these cards are perfectly fine for anyone that just wants to plug in an RTX 4090 and forget about it they'll perform similarly to any other RTX 4090s but they all have the minimum reference vrm design as well as a non-adjustable power limit it's really not made for anyone that looks for overclocking or looking for the best cooling performance out of their RTX 4090 the real outliers here are just the Inno 3D cards they all have amazing coolers that are deserving of higher tiers especially the water cooled models however in typical Inno 3D fashion they slapped on the minimum worst possible vrm design as well as the same 450 watt bias on all their cards no matter what cooler they put on it what is even the point of a higher end water cooled model if they all have the same vrm and bioses I'm just tired of seeing this from inner 3D so I'm just gonna have to put these on the seat here it's just weird well that about wraps it up for this buying guide may you make the right purchasing decision and enjoy your arches 4090 before the RTX 1490 TI or RTX Titan Ada launches and makes you feel inadequate again but leave a comment down below if you're mad that your RTX 490 is in low tier leave a like if I made you feel good about your rjx490 purchase and as always subscribe if you don't want to miss more buying guides like this considering how inconsistent I am with these um yeah sorry about that thanks for watching

Channel: O!Technology

Views: 327,292

Keywords: otech, otechnology, Rtx4090, 4090, 4090buyingguide, rtx4090tierlist

Id: Qa4A12gQTHw

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 13 2023