KitGuru KitGuru.net – Tech News | Hardware News | Hardware Reviews | IOS | Mobile | Gaming | Graphics Cards
With graphics card power draw increasing generation-on-generation, Nvidia's flagship RTX 4090 can often pull more than 450W. That's a lot of heat to deal with, which is why the graphics cards themselves are bigger than ever. MSI, however, is taking a different approach with the Suprim Liquid X. The card itself is relatively compact as it makes use of a 240mm all-in-one liquid cooler. What benefit does this provide for thermals and noise levels? We find out today…
Alongside the 240mm AIO cooler, the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X ticks a lot of boxes that we'd expect from a top-tier graphics card. A custom PCB design is used, dual-BIOS is present, there's an aggressive 105MHz factory overclock plus all the usual RGB bells and whistles.
There's no denying that such a bevy of features for a watercooled GPU comes at a price. Rather eye-wateringly, the Suprim Liquid X has an MSRP of £2179.99 here in the UK. Today we find out exactly what sort of performance is on offer for the money.
| RTX 4090 | RTX 3090 Ti | RTX 3090 | RTX 3080 Ti | RTX 3080 | |
| Process | TSMC 4N | Samsung 8N | Samsung 8N | Samsung 8N | Samsung 8N |
| SMs | 128 | 84 | 82 | 80 | 68 |
| CUDA Cores | 16384 | 10752 | 10496 | 10240 | 8704 |
| Tensor Cores | 512 | 336 | 328 | 320 | 272 |
| RT Cores | 128 | 84 | 82 | 80 | 68 |
| Texture Units | 512 | 336 | 328 | 320 | 272 |
| ROPs | 176 | 112 | 112 | 112 | 96 |
| GPU Boost Clock | 2520 MHz | 1860 MHz | 1695 MHz | 1665 MHz | 1710 MHz |
| Memory Data Rate | 21 Gbps | 21 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19 Gbps |
| L2 Cache | 73729 KB | 6144 KB | 6144 KB | 6144 KB | 5120 KB |
| Total Video Memory | 24GB GDDR6X | 24GB GDDR6X | 24GB GDDR6X | 12GB GDDR6X | 10GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Interface | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 384-bit | 320-bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 1008 GB/Sec | 1008 GB/Sec | 936 GB/Sec | 912 GB/Sec | 760 GB/Sec |
| TGP | 450W | 450W | 350W | 350W | 320W |
First, for a quick spec recap. Using TSMC's 4nm node has allowed Nvidia to vastly increase transistor count, up from 28.3 billion with GA102, to a staggering 76.3 billion with the largest Ada GPU, AD102. Accordingly, core count has gone through the roof, with the RTX 4090 home to 16384 CUDA cores, with 512 Tensor cores and 128 RT cores, with a sizeable increase to the ROP count too, up to 176.
Such a leap forward in process node has also allowed Nvidia to crank the clock speed significantly, with the RTX 4090 now sporting a 2520MHz rated boost clock. The MSI Suprim Liquid X we are reviewing today has tweaked that further, adding an extra 105MHz out of the box.
Memory configuration is almost identical to the RTX 3090 Ti, with 24GB GDDR6X running at 21Gbps, operating over a 384-bit interface, totalling memory bandwidth of just over 1TB/s. That said, there has been a substantial upgrade to the L2 cache with the Ada architecture, with the RTX 4090 now offering 73MB, compared to 6MB for GA102.
Power draw also remains at 450W, as per the RTX 3090 Ti, though MSI has increased this further to 480W out of the box, and it can reach up to 530W when overclocking.
Be sure to check out our sponsors store EKWB here
