Hacker News Reader

Comment by anonylizard | Hacker News Reader

Cyberpunk path tracing is the first time I felt there was a true graphical leap since Crysis from 15 years ago. Its obvious, even from youtube videos, how drastic the difference is. In contrast, the previous ray tracing comparison videos of Cyberpunk did not move me at all.

I bought a 4090 based PC last week, this is the future for video games. It also helps 4090 is dual use for AI, its like 20x faster for stable diffusion than a RTX2000s card.

View on HN

To be honest, I'm not a fan of the path tracing in Cyberpunk. It might be more technically accurate, but it feels less artistically accurate because artists didn't make the original game with path tracing in mind. Maybe a future update can blend the tech and artistry better. That was my first impression when I was testing various settings with my new 4090.

I just got (as a trade from a client) a NiB 3090Ti. I haven't opened it yet. Is the 4090 really that much better? Honest question.

Although I do game, I'm mostly interested in AI work. My current baseline 3080 has been just fine, although to be fair I haven't yet experienced path tracing.

For AI training 4090 is more efficient by quite a lot. Trade for a 4090 if you have the money for it and a good enough rig. Otherwise the 24GB VRAM of a 3090 is good and having more system RAM/disk helps more instead of a 4090.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/hpc/nvidia-rtx4090-ml-ai-a...

https://lambdalabs.com/blog/nvidia-rtx-4090-vs-rtx-3090-deep...

You would be best to look up reviews comparing them for your needs. For my needs the 4090 cuts ray tracing rendering times in half for what I do in Blender compared to the 3090 I have right now. I can't justify buying a 4090 right now so I will get the speed upgrade in a couple years.

Something others haven't mentioned is the power consumption. On one hand, the stock 450W TDP is even higher than 3090's 350W. On the other, the 4090 barely loses any performance when you limit it to 70% (315W)

For something like CP77 with path tracing: yes.

The extra horsepower + DLSS frame generation will give you around double the FPS.

The big upside to the 40 series is DLSS 3 with frame generation. It is a wild tech that makes it possible to do things like path tracing in 4k. Not because the GPU is faster but because the AI adds smoothness.

None of that has real meaning for AI. But the 4090 is just straight up 40% faster as well.

In my opinion. No. Watch comparison videos as well, you can barely tell the difference.

For me that was the new SW Battlefront, which already used PBR. The game's demo blew me away. I haven't seen this Cyberpunk update but I can't imagine it being another huge step like that.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com