Here's a custom-built RTX 4090 "Super" that Nvidia won't sell, and it's an absolute monster

In context: While Nvidia was widely tipped to launch an RTX 4090 Super or Titan, it is now becoming increasingly clear that such a card might never see the light of day. However, that hasn't stopped a group of modders from taking matters into their own hands and forging a super-fast graphics card using parts from other high-end Nvidia GPUs.

Showcased by Brazilian YouTube channel TecLab, the custom-built card is dubbed the "GeForce RTX 4090 Super" and is powered by the AD102 GPU found in an RTX 4090. Everything else, however, is sourced from other Nvidia cards. The PCB and the VRAM are from a Galax RTX 3090 Ti HOF OC Lab Edition, which actually has faster memory than the stock RTX 4090.

The changes helped make the Frankencard faster than the original RTX 4090 in two ways. Firstly, the new PCB can handle high voltages better than the stock board, and its dual 16-pin connectors can supply additional power to the GPU when needed. Secondly, the faster GDDR6X memory modules allow the custom 4090's VRAM to reach speeds of up to 25.8 Gbps, which is higher than the stock RTX 4090's 21 Gbps max memory speed.

According to benchmark figures provided by the modders, the custom RTX 4090 Super proved to be 40 percent faster than the original RTX 4090 in Unigine Superposition tests at 8K. While a stock RTX 4090 managed to score 12,479 in the tests, the 4090 Super notched up an even more impressive 17,454 points.

It is worth noting here that the astronomical performance gains were achieved through driver LoD (Level of Detail) adjustments, which artificially improves benchmark scores by reducing graphical fidelity. Without these tweaks, the performance gain is only around 16 percent, which, although impressive, is nowhere close to the massive gains that the test results seem to indicate at first.

While the custom RTX 4090 Super is a nice DIY project for experienced modders, Nvidia is unlikely to officially release a new flagship Ada Lovelace card. Instead, the company is prepping its RTX 50-series "Blackwell" graphics cards that are expected to hit the market in time for the upcoming Holiday shopping season. While the top-end RTX 5090 and 5080 are expected to be released this year, the more mainstream SKUs could come in 2025.