Nvidia RTX 4090 leak points to killer performance and plenty of stock

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 promo image
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Nvidia’s RTX 4090 graphics cards will hit shelves on Wednesday, October 12, and the GPU leaker Moore’s Law is Dead (MLID) has good news for those fretting about whether they’ll manage to get their hands on stock on day one. 

In his latest video, MLID quotes four different retailer sources who all echo the same thing: finding stock won’t be a problem. “In North America, Nvidia is shopping 4-5x more 4090s for launch compared to what Ampere had shipped”, said one. 

Another retailer, after showing MLID a storeroom full of boxed graphics cards, said: “We have hundreds of RTX 409s at this location already, and more trucks arriving on launch day. Forget Ampere, this is just a big launch in general considering the GPU tier.”

And MLID suggests that it should be a good upgrade from the previous generation, promising a boost of around 80% on the 3090 for standard graphics, and about double the ray-traced performance. 

There’s also good news on the power front: it’s apparently a lot more stable than the 3090, and less likely to trigger sudden power spikes. Indeed, MLID indicates that if you don’t push it past stock power levels, you’ll be able to sub it in for a 3090 without upgrading your PSU first.

“It was so big that we usually mounted the motherboard to the side of the card instead of seating the card in a motherboard,” the tipster added.

That’s not to say that something with 4090 Ti branding won’t appear at some point, but it doesn’t sound like it will be anything as ambitious as this, and will likely emerge at a much later date too.

For now, the 4090 is the best you’ll get, then, but for those not wanting to break the bank, stock of the RTX 30-series is now plentiful and increasingly available below MSRP. After a tricky couple of years, it’s finally a good time to be a PC gamer again.

TOPICS

Freelance contributor Alan has been writing about tech for over a decade, covering phones, drones and everything in between. Previously Deputy Editor of tech site Alphr, his words are found all over the web and in the occasional magazine too. When not weighing up the pros and cons of the latest smartwatch, you'll probably find him tackling his ever-growing games backlog. He also handles all the Wordle coverage on Tom's Guide and has been playing the addictive NYT game for the last several years in an effort to keep his streak forever intact.