Enlarge / The Nvidia RTX 4090 founders edition. If you can't tell, those lines are drawn on, though the heft of this $1,599 mightiness person you that they're a reflection of real-world question blur upon opening this monolithic box.

Sam Machkovech

It's a engaged clip successful the Ars Technica GPU investigating brackish mines (not to beryllium confused with the mining that GPUs utilized to beryllium known for). After wrapping up our instrumentality connected the Intel Arc A700 series, we went close backmost to investigating a GPU that we've had for a fewer days now: the Nvidia RTX 4090.

This beast of a GPU, provided by Nvidia to Ars Technica for reappraisal purposes, is priced good retired of the mean user range, adjacent for a merchandise class wherever the mean terms keeps creeping upward. Though we're not allowed to disclose thing astir our investigating arsenic of property time, our upcoming sum volition bespeak this GPU's $1,599-and-up reality. In the meantime, we thought an unboxing of Nvidia's "founders edition" of the 4090 would statesman telling the communicative of precisely who this GPU might not be for.

On paper, the Nvidia RTX 4090 is poised to stroke past its Nvidia predecessors, with specs that handily surpass early 2022's overkill RTX 3090 Ti product. The 4090 comes packed with astir 50 percent much CUDA cores and betwixt 25 and 33 percent higher counts successful different important categories, peculiarly cores dedicated to tensor and ray-tracing calculations (which are also updated to caller specs for Nvidia's caller 5 nm process). However, 1 spec from the 3090 and 3090 Ti remains identical: its VRAM benignant and capableness (once again, 24GB of GDDR6X RAM).

Yet contempt surpassing the 3090 Ti successful galore performance-impacting specs, Nvidia is sticking to a powerfulness maximum of 450 W—still a power-hungry card, certainly, but the results whitethorn propulsion a caller level of ratio for specified a high-end product. Clearly, thing has to springiness if the powerfulness maximum isn't changing, and that comes successful the signifier of a monolithic caller chassis, present requiring 3 afloat PCI-e slots of abstraction successful your preferred gaming case, on with further length.

You tin estimation that further size successful your ain lawsuit by comparing its 12-inch (304 mm) magnitude and 5.4-inch (137 mm) extent with a much standard-sized GPU similar the caller Intel Arc A770 (pictured successful the supra last gallery). You'll besides request to marque country for astatine slightest 3 modular 8-pin powerfulness connector cables successful your lawsuit of choice, which volition enactment with yet different proprietary Nvidia powerfulness adapter (pictured successful the second-to-last gallery). Our size-comparison assemblage goes everywhere, from a integrative Yoshi artifact to a banana and from an Xbox controller to an full Xbox console.

If there's thing you're itching to cognize astir the RTX 4090, whether due to the fact that you privation to bargain it specifically oregon due to the fact that you wonderment however its motorboat volition impact different aboriginal GPU technologies, fto america cognize successful the comments section. This unboxing can't spell into show questions similar a caller DLSS strategy oregon cheaper models successful the Ada Lovelace GPU line, but our upcoming review, slated to tally adjacent week up of the GPU's October 12 motorboat date, volition spell overmuch further.

Listing representation by Sam Machkovech