One person’s trash is another person’s treasure, but that treasure doesn’t usually include an unreleased Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Ti graphics card. A Redditor claims to have found the prototype of this long-rumored GPU in a computer junk bin, and while it hasn’t been tested, it could very well be an important piece of PC hardware lore – if it’s legit, of course.
With the RTX 5000 series launch soon approaching, Nvidia is extremely unlikely to release an RTX 4090 Ti now. If it had launched, however, it would have jumped ahead of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 as the best graphics card you could buy. While there were plenty of rumors, the GPU maker never announced that it was considering a 4090 Ti, let alone creating a prototype.
In a Reddit post, first spotted by Videocardz, a user called The_Explanation_514 shared that the prototype Nvidia card was found inside a computer junk pile. The first factor to note is the size: it’s huge, stretching over four PCIe slots. The Redditor doesn’t share much detail, showing just a few shots of the card, the card’s PCB, and what could be its support bracket slots to tease us.
It’s a year since the last 4090 Ti rumors surfaced, which demonstrated a rather complete-looking graphics card with a visible PCIe bracket beneath. At the time, we noted with some skepticism that there were some visual anomalies with the image that made it suspect. Looking at this prototype, our concerns could well have been justified.
These latest 4090 Ti images show a right-angled PCIe slot – an unusual design feature for a graphics card. This would mean that the PCB was positioned horizontally, rather than vertically as the last rumors showed. Unfortunately, there just isn’t enough information to tell one way or another if this is real, and the OP confirms that they’ve not tested it out themselves.
What we can say about this alleged 4090 Ti prototype, however, is that it certainly looks the part. If it is real, then it confirms that Nvidia really did plan for an even better RTX 40-series GPU, even building a prototype for it, but decided against it. The RTX 4090 is already miles ahead of its competition, and with a high enough cost, it’s likely that Nvidia decided that it simply didn’t need it.
Times are changing, however. This sample card, powerful as it could well be, might already be out of date, thanks to the Nvidia RTX 50-series that we expect to launch in the new year. Check out our RTX 5090 guide to read everything we know about what we expect will be Nvidia’s next flagship GPU.