MSI RTX 4090 Suprim X Review

Conclusion

The three RTX 4090 cards that we’ve tested cover the whole range of price points and target audiences. The Nvidia RTX 4090 Founders Edition is for those who can’t see the need for a particular brand in their system, or perhaps feel that Nvidia’s own design is more than good enough. The Gigabyte RTX 4090 Windforce 24G is their baseline model, for those who want a card which does the job without any needless frippery. The MSI RTX 4090 Suprim X, on the other hand, is aimed squarely at those for whom nothing but the best will do. If the RTX 4090 is the flagship Nvidia card, the Suprim X is MSIs flagship take upon the new Ada Lovelace architecture.

Visually it is very close to the Suprim X that was so successful with the Ampere range of graphics cards. Multiple shades of silver are used on the backplate and the shroud to give your eye plenty to concentrate upon. It’s not a card which has a flat, featureless design but instead embraces texture. Just look at the backplate, with a Suprim logo and carefully designed holes for the airflow to pass through and on to the rest of your system. It’s even got plain metal on one half and brushed metal on the other. This design is continued on the fan surround with a strong geometric theme. Circular fans have an octagonal surround, and triangular accents.

Indeed the major way in which the RTX 4090 Suprim X differs from the 3000 series Suprim X cards is the thickness. It is, like all the Ada Lovelace cards we’ve looked at in the past 24 hours, a triple slot design that uses every bit of the space that affords to squeeze a thick heatsink that bristles with heat pipes beneath those large fans. Those with tiny cases need not apply.

Performance at this end of the Nvidia range is nothing short of spectacular. All three cards have very similar performance across every test we uses. However, with a small factory overclock out of the box and the serious cooling capacity of the MSI cooler, if there ever was a small performance boost to be found it was usually found on the Suprim X. It’s not a massive step beyond the other two cards, but given how eye-poppingly capable all the RTX 4090s are, we weren’t expecting anything revolutionary. What is does show is that if you truly want the absolute best performance from a card which will already smash anything you’ve seen before, then the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim X is the way to go.

As always with a flagship model of a range-topping GPU, there is a price premium to pay for the RGB lighting and higher clock speeds the Suprim X can bring to the party, but when the vanilla card is already a big chunk of change, why not go all in and get the best? For its insane average boost clocks and mind bending performance, the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim X wins our OC3D Enthusiast Award.

   

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Head To Head Comparison Video

If you fancy a look at the Founders Edition Review and so you can compare the 4090 to a wide range of other graphics cards you can watch the video below or head over to tour full written review – Nvidia RTX 4090 Review