About the GeForce RTX 4090 we have talked at length, what’s more, seas of ink have literally flowed to talk about the most powerful graphics card of the moment. However, this isn’t for everyone and if you’re thinking of buying it just because it’s the grossest of them all in terms of power let us tell you that there are other better options, especially if you don’t use a monitor to 4K.
We have reached the point where graphics hardware has far exceeded the needs of games, it is no longer necessary for years to have the most powerful card to play the most technically cutting-edge game. What’s more, it is happening that due to this differential between the performance that is needed and that provided by the hardware, games are optimized less and less. However, the case of NVIDIA‘s top-of-the-range graphics card is special.
Don’t buy a GeForce RTX 4090 if you don’t have a 4K monitor
NVIDIA recently updated the document for developers where it talks about its DLSS, specifically the tables where I know how long the different graphics card models need to be able to take the frame at a resolution in pixels and transform it into a prediction of it at a higher resolution. .
The surprise? Well, what is currently the GeForce RTX 4090 does not mark the times for certain resolutions. The reason behind them is due to the fact that it is powerful enough that it does not need the super-resolution technique to work at such resolutions, moreover, even to obtain a 4K image, the time required is very small, only 0.54 more per frame. In any case, we must clarify that this comes from the Performance mode.
Let’s not forget that the time it takes to generate each frame depends first of all on the time it takes the CPU to perform its task, send the screen list to the graphics card and the latter to execute all its tasks. That 0.54 ms is really a marginal figure and in the case of lower resolutions it is much lower. What really means that if you have a PC with a monitor with Full HD or Quad HD you will be wasting the power of your RTX 4090, that is, it is a card that today is only viable at 4K.
A graphics card for a minority
If we look at the Steam statistics we will find that 65% of users use monitors with Full HD resolution and only 2.7% of users play with a 4K screen. Which means that the GeForce RTX 4090 is aimed at a very small audience, to say the least. What’s more, even if we take said resolution into account, in most games nowadays, if not all, both the RTX 4080 and the RX 7900 XTX work without performance problems, which exemplifies a lot about whether the existence of the currently more powerful NVIDIA graphics card at present is really needed or not.
Rather, what it has achieved is that PC titles are optimized less and less. For example, Hogwarts Legacy manages to run at 30 FPS on next-gen consoles in graphical fidelity mode, but sits at 70 FPS on the RTX 4090. Considering the difference in raw power of the graphics card we’re dealing with talking. And no, at no time are we saying that it is a bad product, but that the fact of having a component with such a level of performance is making computer games increasingly optimized.
