Skip to main content

This GPU just beat the RTX 4090 — and Nvidia didn’t make it

The board of the RTX 4090 Super graphics card.
Teclab

Modders are doing what Nvidia won’t. The team at Teclab put together a Frankenstein graphics card, which it calls the RTX 4090 Super, that was able to beat the RTX 4090 by 13% in benchmarks.

You can’t buy this graphics card, of course, but it’s an interesting look into how splicing together the best components can deliver big performance gains. The heart of the RTX 4090 Super is the RTX 4090 GPU, which is Nvidia’s AD102 die. Teclab changed everything else about the graphics card, though.

Recommended Videos

For starters, it borrowed the memory modules from an RTX 4080 Super. The RTX 4080 Super actually has faster memory than the stock RTX 4090, which allowed the team at Teclab to reach 26 Gbps speeds on the GDDR6X modules. The stock RTX 4090 uses 21 Gbps modules. This change alone accounted for the 13% jump in performance without any additional overclocking.

O "monstro" em detalhes! 4090 "SUPER"

That’s just the start, though. Teclab took the AD102 die and placed it on the board of a Galax RTX 3090 Ti HOF OC Lab Edition. The board of this card is not only capable of handling high voltages thanks to to its 28 power stages, but it also comes with dual 16-pin connectors to feed the GPU with more power. Combine that with a high-end water block, and Teclab was able to overclock the GPU and optimize level of detail in the Superposition benchmark, leading to a 40% lead over the stock RTX 4090 in the benchmark.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

Although Teclab achieved a score worthy of a top placement on the Superposition leaderboards, you won’t see the result online. With a new board, custom memory, and only the GPU tied back to the RTX 4090, it’s hard to call this an RTX 4090 at all.

The RTX 4090 Super installed in a motherboard.
Teclab

It’s an interesting showcase of what Nvidia could have achieved with an RTX 4090 Super, however. At the time when Nvidia introduced its RTX 40-series Super cards, the RTX 4090 was selling for around $2,000. A Super refresh of the RTX 409o running upwards of 13% faster would surely inflate the price even more, which is exactly what we saw with the RTX 4080 Super when it released.

The RTX 4090 Super experiment shows some promise for the next generation of Nvidia GPUs as well. Nvidia’s upcoming RTX 50-series cards are said to come with GDDR7 memory. Micron, the manufacturer of these memory modules, says that they’ll offer up to a 30% performance improvement in games. Even if that 30% number is optimistic, Teclab’s monster RTX 4090 Super shows that memory speed can have a big impact on performance.

Jacob Roach
Lead Reporter, PC Hardware
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
If you want to buy an RTX 4090, now might be your last chance
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU.

There's no disputing that the RTX 4090 is one of the best graphics cards you can buy, but now might be your last chance to buy it. According to members of the Board Channels forum (via VideoCardz), Nvidia has discontinued the graphics card and will stop fulfilling new orders this month.

We saw this coming. Last month, members of the Board Channels forums signaled that Nvidia was getting ready to discontinue the RTX 4090 to make way for next-gen RTX 50-series GPUs. Nvidia hasn't said it's discontinuing the card, and it likely won't, but some regions are already experiencing shortages and increased prices. The German outlet PC Games Hardware writes: "It is now becoming increasingly clear that the GeForce RTX 4090 ... will soon have reached its end of lifetime," following high prices and "increasingly poor availability" in the region.

Read more
Nearly two years later, AMD’s RX 7000 GPUs don’t even make up 1% of Steam players
RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT on a pink background.

AMD's latest RX 7000 GPUs may be some of the best graphics cards you can buy, but they aren't popular among gamers, at least according to the latest Steam hardware survey. Only one of AMD's RDNA 3 graphics cards even shows up on the survey, with the RX 7900 XTX occupying just 0.37% -- down by 0.03% compared to last month.

It's worth noting that Steam doesn't list every GPU represented in the hardware survey each month, but it at least lists every GPU that represents a decent chunk of players. For context, the lowest-ranking GPU on the list is AMD's RX 5500 XT at just 0.16% of players. Other RX 7000 GPUs like the excellent RX 7900 GRE are likely represented further down, though with a share of only one-tenth of 1% or less.

Read more
The Nvidia app just added a feature I’ve wanted for years
A screenshot of the Nvidia app.

Nvidia just released a big update for its Nvidia app. If you're unfamiliar, Nvidia has been slowly integrating features and settings from GeForce Experience, the Nvidia Control Panel, and other apps like FrameView and ICAT into a single application, aptly named the Nvidia app, making it easier to manage your graphics card. And the latest update includes a feature that I've been wanting for years -- driver rollback.

It's a good idea to keep your GPU drivers up to date. New drivers come with performance improvements, as well as specific optimizations for new game releases. Still, driver releases aren't perfect. You can almost guarantee that some drivers on some configurations will run into strange bugs or performance issues. Here's just one example from a Steam user who saw crashes in Ghost of Tsushima after a driver update, and another who saw crashes in Farming Simulator 22. These issues are almost never widespread, but they're bound to happen to some gamers. Driver rollback gets around the problem.

Read more