ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 ROG Strix 24GB GDDR6X

The ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC Edition is a flagship graphics card that still delivers best-in-class 4K gaming and ray tracing performance. Its 24GB of VRAM and excellent cooling make it a standout, but current pricing of $3,500 to $4,999 is hard to justify. Buy it if you find one near MSRP and have a big case with a 1000W power supply.

The numbers here are genuinely absurd. PassMark G3D comes in at 38,098, which puts this card in the 97th percentile for raster performance. That's the absolute best right now, or at least it was until the RTX 50 series started shipping. In practice, you're looking at 4K ultra settings with ray tracing enabled and still hitting triple-digit frame rates in most titles. The 24GB of VRAM means you won't hit memory limits even with high-resolution texture packs and heavy modding.

Compute performance is equally strong at 32.98 TFLOPS of FP32, landing in the 96th percentile. That makes this card viable for AI workloads, video editing, and 3D rendering, though the workstation score of 79.4/100 is the weakest area. The 450W TDP is no joke, and efficiency sits at a mediocre 47th percentile. You'll want a 1000W power supply and a case with serious airflow. The triple-fan Axial-tech design with the vapor chamber keeps temps in check, earning a 92nd percentile thermal score, but this thing still dumps a lot of heat into your room.

Compared to the newer RTX 5080 cards like the Gigabyte AERO OC, ZOTAC APOCALYPSE OC, PNY ARGB OC, MSI GAMING TRIO, and the ASUS ProArt RTX 5080, the ROG Strix 4090 still holds its own in raw performance. The 4090's 24GB of VRAM beats the 16GB on all those 5080 variants, which matters for 4K gaming with heavy textures and for AI workloads. The 5080 cards are more efficient and support newer features, but the 4090's sheer CUDA core count of 16,384 gives it an edge in pure compute.

The Gigabyte AERO GV-N5080AERO OC-16GD is another 5080 variant that has entered the top 5, and it follows the same pattern: 16GB of VRAM, better efficiency, and newer architecture, but less raw memory headroom than the 4090. The MSI Ventus RTX 5070 Ti 16G VENTUS 3X PZ OC is the more interesting newcomer. It's a 5070 Ti, so it sits a tier below the 5080 in NVIDIA's stack, yet it has cracked the top 5 in our database. That says a lot about how competitive the current market is. The 5070 Ti can't match the 4090's raw raster performance or its 24GB of VRAM, but it offers a much more modern feature set at a lower price point, assuming you can find one at MSRP.

The Sapphire NITRO+ is an AMD card, so it's a different beast entirely. It trades blows in rasterization but falls behind in ray tracing and lacks DLSS support. If you're deep in the NVIDIA ecosystem with G-Sync monitors and DLSS-dependent games, the 4090 is the safer bet. The real question is whether you can find any of these cards at reasonable prices. The 5080 and 5070 Ti cards are newer but often just as hard to find at MSRP, which makes the 4090's inflated pricing slightly less painful in context.

Value is where this card gets complicated. At its original $1,999 MSRP, the ROG Strix RTX 4090 was expensive but defensible for enthusiasts. At current US prices ranging from $3,500 to $4,999, it's a much harder sell. The best deal in our database is the renewed unit on Amazon, which comes in at the lower end of that range. But even that is a lot of money for a card that's now a generation behind. If you can find one closer to $2,000, it's still a monster. At $4,000 plus, you're better off looking at RTX 5080 or 5090 options, assuming you can find those in stock. The EUR 8,664 French listing is frankly absurd, and GBP 6,024 in the UK isn't much better. This is a card for people who need the absolute best right now and don't care about price-to-performance ratios.

The ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 OC Edition sits at the absolute top of the consumer graphics card food chain. This is the card you buy when you want 4K gaming with ray tracing maxed out and don't care that it costs as much as a used Honda Civic. With 24GB of GDDR6X memory, 16,384 CUDA cores, and a boost clock of 2,640MHz, it's built to crush anything you throw at it. The 3.5-slot design means it's massive, so make sure your case has room for a 358mm long card that eats up nearly four expansion slots.

Is the ROG Strix RTX 4090 good for 4K gaming? That's like asking if a rocket is good for going up. Our database puts it in the 97th percentile for raw rasterization performance and 92nd percentile for 4K gaming specifically. It's one of the best on the market, period. The Ada Lovelace architecture brings DLSS 3 frame generation, which pushes frame rates even higher in supported titles. Ray tracing performance lands in the 90th percentile, which is still excellent but slightly less dominant than its raw raster chops.

Pricing has climbed even higher. US listings now range from $3,500 to $4,999 depending on the vendor, with renewed units popping up on Amazon. European buyers are looking at EUR 8,664 in France and GBP 6,024 in the UK. This card launched at $1,999, so current pricing reflects scarcity and the fact that NVIDIA has moved on to newer generations. You're paying a collector's premium at this point.

Skip this card if you're gaming at 1080p or 1440p, because you're leaving most of its performance on the table. A mid-range card will max out those resolutions for a fraction of the price. Also skip it if your case can't accommodate a 3.5-slot, 358mm long card, or if your power supply is under 1000W. If you're primarily doing workstation tasks like video editing or 3D rendering, the 79.4/100 workstation score suggests there are better value options out there, especially from the RTX 50 series or AMD's latest offerings. And if you're on a budget, this card's current inflated pricing makes it a poor choice compared to waiting for newer cards at MSRP.

Should you buy the ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090 in 2025? If you can find one at or near its original $1,999 price, absolutely. It's still one of the fastest gaming GPUs ever made, and the 24GB of VRAM gives it legs that newer 16GB cards don't have. The cooling solution is excellent, the build quality is top-notch, and it runs quieter than most cards in its class.

But at current market prices of $3,500 to $4,999, it's hard to recommend over waiting for RTX 50 series stock to stabilize. You're paying a scarcity premium for a card that's technically a generation old. If money is no object and you need the best 4K gaming experience available right now, this card delivers. For everyone else, patience is the better play.