Last year, images began leaking out of a rumored Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Ti prototype that sported a colossal four-slot-wide cooler. At first, the images just showed the cooler but now, all this time later, fresh images of the mystery card have appeared online and it has now been shown actually working.
The original four-slot RTX 4090 leak suggested it could have been either a prototype for the eventual RTX 4090 or for an even more powerful variant that might have come to market as the RTX 4090 Ti. That would’ve made it the best graphics card around, but for whatever reason, Nvidia decided not to release this variant of the card. Today’s benchmark leak, though, suggests that whatever the original plans for this strange card, the prototype here was more likely a variant of the RTX 4090, but a wild and wonderful one we’d have love to see come to market.
The images of this latest possible RTX 4090 Ti prototype leak first appeared a few days ago on Reddit, after the card was apparently found in a junk pile by a user named This_Explanation_514. They show the card sporting a cooler that is four PCIe slots wide, using a completely different configuration to other graphics cards.
Instead of the card’s PCB standing vertically and slotting straight into your motherboard’s PCIe slot, this card has the main PCB sitting horizontally with a short section of extra board dedicated to sliding into the PCIe slot.
As we discuss in our Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 review, the Nvidia Founders Edition of that card that was eventually released is still an enormous unit but this leaked card would’ve been even bigger, as shown in the comparison of this card and other high-end cards in the image below.
The entire rest of the height of the card is dedicated to the cooler. A large array of heatpipes and cooling fins stretches out above the PCB and is surrounded by the cooler shroud that incorporates three fans. Two are exposed in a configuration much like most other RTX 4000 Founders Edition cards but then there’s a 3rd fan hidden inside the heatsink, as shown in the image below from a previous leak of this card’s cooler.
It’s a fascinating design that has some real potential in teams of making cooling of these cards more efficient. However, it does make for a ludicrously wide card and the PCB covering the slots below does create some concerns about airflow over M.2 SSDs mounted below the GPU.
Following these initial image leaks, the person that originally posted the leaked images added more images and information to the Reddit comments, showing the card’s specs captured using GPU-Z. That’s exciting to see, as it shows this really is a working prototype, although it’s odd the user hasn’t posted some screenshots of the card running games or shown a quick video clip of it working.
What’s more, the GPU-Z data reveals, or at least suggests, that this is indeed just an RTX 4090, not an RTX 4090 Ti or even an RTX 5090. The screenshots clearly show GPU-Z measuring the number of shaders in this card as 16,384, which is the same as an RTX 4090. The card also sports the same 24GB of VRAM. However, the clock speeds are slightly different but not in this card’s favor, as they’re actually slower than the final RTX 4090, with base and boost clock figures of 2,115MHz and 2,355MHz. In comparison, the RTX 4090 runs at a 2,235MHz base clock and 2,625MHz boost clock.
Whatever this card actually is, we should hopefully find out as much as we ever can soon enough, as the finder of this card has revealed they’ll be sending the card to tech YouTube channel GamersNexus for them to test. Odds are it will just be an early prototype for the RTX 4090 but you never know.
Meanwhile, if you’re actually in the market to buy a graphics card right now, the RTX 4090 isn’t an option we necessarily recommend, as prices are inflated right now. The actual Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 Founder Edition has an MSRP of $1,599 but you’ll struggle to find a card under $2,000. Instead, we’d recommend seeking out an RTX 4080 Super – and reading our RTX 4080 Super review – as they cost half that while delivering close to 4090 performance.