Rumor mill: Nvidia looks set to finally give the RTX 4000 series its official unveiling in 11 days. Adding to the hype train is yet another alleged leaked benchmark for what will be the flagship card of the expected three initial releases: the RTX 4090.
Screenshots of an unnamed card appeared on China’s Chiphell forums, so take them with the usual pinch of salt. They were shared on Twitter by user HXL (via VideoCardz). The 3DMark Time Spy Extreme score is a massive 20,192, suggesting this is the RTX 4090, which scored 19,000 in another leaked 3D Mark Time Spy Extreme graphics test in July.
Assuming the screenshots are the real deal, the score makes the RTX 4090 90% faster than the Ampere equivalent, the RTX 3090. That lines up with previous reports of the Lovelace card being around twice as fast as its predecessor. It also makes the RTX 4090 78% faster than the current-gen RTX 3090 Ti flagship. Of course, synthetic benchmarks don’t always totally reflect real-world performance, but the numbers are still promising.
RTX 4090？
GPU: 3.0Ghz+
VRAM: 21Gbpshttps://t.co/5KusSaerKJ pic.twitter.com/kPdkF4qzwW— HXL (@9550pro) September 9, 2022
The leak also shows the card reaching a 3,015 MHz frequency. For comparison, the RTX 3090 Founders Edition boosts to 1,695 MHz. According to the leaker, it has a default TDP of 450W, though it is designed for 600W to 800W. That lines up with a rumor in June claiming the RTX 4090 could have a power limit of 800W but a lower default TDP.
The card’s overall Time Spy Extreme score is lower than expected, but that’s down the PC the RTX 4090 is being tested in, which includes a Core i5-12400F processor.
The leaker also mentions that the card is air-cooled and very large, too big to fit into a mid-sized tower. That’s something we expected, given the RTX 4090’s reported performance and power consumption.
Nvidia’s GeForce Twitter account yesterday announced ProjectBeyond. We don’t know any details yet, though it seems almost certainly related to an RTX 4000 announcement coming at GTC on September 20.