Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 review: Fantastically, futuristically fast

Nvidia's monstrous GeForce RTX 4090 delivers luxuriously fast frame rates and futuristic features, but DLSS 3's AI speed boost may be the real star. It's a behemoth of a GPU that draws a lot of power, but Nvidia's sublime Founders Edition design remains cool, quiet, and eye-catching. Nvidia's $1,599 GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card sports a luxury price tag, but you get a truly luxurious gaming experience in return. The last-generation RTX 3090 was a speed demon, but the GeForce RTX 4090--thanks to Nvidia's new "Ada Lovelace" architecture--screams through traditional games up to 83 percent faster. Nvidia's 40-series flagship chews through futuristic ray-traced games too, propelled by more advanced 3rd-gen RT cores and a radical new "Frame Generation" DLSS 3 feature that doubles (or more) frame rates yet again with a heaping helping of AI. Creators will love the 24GB of blazing-fast GDDR6X memory when it comes to pixel-packed video renders, and Nvidia's inclusion of not one, but two AV1 video encoders means the RTX 4090 is suitably equipped to handle the future of streaming. No matter what you want to accomplish, the monstrous GeForce RTX 4090 Founders Edition can handle it without breaking a sweat--though your wallet and power supply might, as all this extra performance doesn't come free.