According to new tests, Nvidia's RTX 4090 can significantly control its power consumption while delivering most of the performance you get at default levels.
Quasarzone(Opens in a new tab) ran tests (as reported by Hardware Times(Opens in a new tab)) to determine the frame rates the RTX 4090 managed in a selection of five games at 4K resolution ( maximum details) on your output. configurations out of the box, and a power consumption of 347 W, before comparing that to what the graphics card achieved with the manually adjusted power limit in steps.
Limiting power consumption to 326 W (an 80% power cap setting) kept frame rates at 99,1% from default, and lower at 305 W (70%), kept 97,8. 2% of the performance level. In all honesty, most people won't notice that it's only a XNUMX% difference.
So the bottom line here is that if you have an RTX 4090, it's very easy to adjust the power cap and bring it down to the 300W level without really making a noticeable difference to your overall fps (frames per second).
Even at the 60 percent power cap level, which consumes 268 W, frame rates were 93,9 percent, which still isn't too far off pace.
Keeping in mind that this is true at 4K for the games tested, and if you're wondering what those were, Quasarzone used the following titles: Cyberpunk 2077, Forza Horizon 5, Lost Ark, PUBG, and Spider-Man Remastered.
Analysis: Could anyone think of adapters?
Those who own an RTX 4090 - and there are quite a few avid buyers who have taken the plunge with this high-end GPU - are no doubt reading this with interest, especially given all the controversy surrounding Nvidia's Lovelace flagship and cases. fusion power adapters
If you're a little paranoid about this whole episode, and it's true that it only affects a very small number of GPUs according to Nvidia's statistics, even though there are way too many of them, power throttling might be a useful solution to consider. Reducing that power consumption a bit can help avoid any danger of things going wrong with an adapter.
Not only that, but if it means less power consumption for roughly the same performance (it won't make a noticeable difference to your gaming experience to drop 2% fps, realistically), then why not if you also has an eye on energy bills. After all, there's a cost-of-living crisis in full swing, with sky-high electricity bills for some people, so why not keep the energy consumption of Lovelace's flagship product to an acceptable minimum? While it certainly helps ensure that your gaming PC is easier to cool, by the way.
One interesting point that all of this raises is that the RTX 4090's TGP set to 450W certainly leaves a lot of leeway when you consider that the RTX 4090 can in fact run at 300W, two-thirds of that amount, without stop offering excellent levels of performance. Though comparing an overclocked RTX 4090, rather than one on default settings, to a power-limited flagship GPU will be somewhat different, naturally.
However, looking at these tests, you do wonder if it would have been wise for Nvidia to loosen up the default settings a bit more.
Quasarzone also discusses low voltage on the RTX 4090, which can deliver even better results than power capping, but it's a much more complicated beast to handle, while setting the power cap is a very simple task. . So for most people the convenience of being able to do this quickly and easily far outweighs the additional low voltage gains, and the difference isn't huge either, it should be noted, power capping always gives great results. .
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