PC enthusiasts are wondering if the Nvidia RTX 4090 will be worth the money. With a $1,599 MSRP, it’s $100 more than the RTX 3090 was at launch, and many are wondering who this card is made for. We’ll examine whether it’s worth it for gaming and what sort of applications it’ll excel at.
Is the Nvidia RTX 4090 the best GPU to buy for gaming?
While we haven’t seen benchmarks for the RTX 4090, it’s almost certainly going to be the most powerful GPU on the market when it releases in October. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the best card to buy for gaming.
As of writing, there’s a massive overstock of RTX 30 series cards. You can get an RTX 3090 Ti for around $1,000-1,200, which is enough to play the majority of games in 4K at 60+ FPS with maxed-out settings. You can also find RTX 3080s for around $750, and it’s an excellent card that also excels at 4K gaming.
There are only two reasons to purchase and RTX 40 card over an RTX 30 series card for gaming right now:
- DLSS 3 compatibility.
- 8K gaming.
Unfortunately, DLSS 3 is exclusive to RTX 40 cards at launch, so the 30 series will miss out on significant performance gains. This will likely make the RTX 4090 one of the first cards where 8K gaming at a reasonable framerate is feasible.
So, if you want to be on the cutting edge, the RTX 4090 is the card to get. Otherwise, grabbing a discounted RTX 30 series card is a better use of money.
