The Colorful RTX 4090 NB EV-X is the first third-party RTX 4090 (open in new tab) graphics card we've introduced to our test rig, and to be honest, it's even bigger than the massive Founders Edition that has already impressed us! I was surprised. But that surprise only lasted until the MSI RTX 4090 Suprim X landed with a thud in the PC Gamer office.

There is a reason that third-party versions of the first Ada Lovelace generation GPUs appear to be shipping with graphics card support. Attempting to mount this GPU vertically in the chassis without support could result in a bent motherboard or stripped PCI Express slots.

However, the Colorful RTX 4090 (opens in new tab) is a $1,600 card that is mostly reference-clocked, as opposed to the MSI, which is actually overclocked. 3.5 slot design is really necessary to push the power But we can't decide what to call this card. The retail box says "Battle Ax" and the product page says RTX 4090 NB EX-V, but it also mentions the Battle Axe cooling array. It's an axe, with an "e". Interesting.

But there's still a tremendously tangible sense of value when you get your hands on this chomboy graphics card: the amount of aluminum in the heatsink array sticking out from under the triple fan shroud shows the power lurking inside.

And with Colorful's fairly restrained design, it's actually not that colorful. Sure, you can change the RGB logo at the top with the iGame software, but that's about it. The last Colorful card we checked out was the RTX 3080 iGame Advanced OC (opens in new tab). It was quite unstable at launch, not only because of its angular RGB light shroud, but also because of its push for aggressive overclocking of the GPU, which is its heart.

However, the RTX 4090 Battle Ax is solid, square, and so far as reliable as the Nvidia Founders Edition.

I say "almost reference clocked" because its boost clock is 2,565 MHz versus the Founders Edition card's 2,520 MHz. However, I know that some manufacturers call this "overclocking," so kudos to Colorful for not uttering such a line in their marketing regarding this card.

That said, I'm not going to let the "menacing luxury" line pass without comment when the product description talks about a "diamond-cut design." When it comes to luxury, the last thing you want is to be menacing. It's like a restaurant advertising that it offers "caustic gastronomy."

That aside, the AD102 GPU gets the same treatment as the RTX 4090 Founders Edition. That is, it has a staggering number of CUDA cores, all 3rd generation RT cores and 4th generation Tensor cores, additional cache, and 24GB of GDDR6X memory.

In short, it is still an absolute monster graphics card. If you want to learn more about this new technology, you can read more about the Ada Lovelace architecture (opens in new tab) in FE's review.

On the power side, however, things seem a bit different: Colorful, like other manufacturers, recommends a 1000W power supply for the RTX 4090 (although MSI still states that an 850W PSU is the minimum requirement), as well as a 450W like Nvidia's own card rather than 480W as on Nvidia's own cards, and refers to the TGP as 480W.

Again, the 480W figure is MSI's recommendation for an overclocked RTX 4090 Suprim in "gaming mode.

Synthetic Performance

From all these specs, one would expect the Colorful card to outperform the RTX 4090 Founders Edition in benchmarks. However, that would be a mistake. It is probably due to the actual design of Nvidia's own board; Nvidia's engineers designed the AD102 to handle the enormous amount of power passing through the AD102's 4N transistors and were able to achieve an average of 2,716 MHz in our tests.

And part of that is due to the PCB's 20-phase power supply design, which provides a steady stream of clean energy to the GPU. However, this Colorful board uses a 14+3 power phase design, which may be why the test rig only shows an average of 2,577 MHz.

4K Gaming Performance

We were able to overclock the chip to run at a steady 2,865 MHz by raising the power limit in the iGame software and manually adjusting the clock speed, but it took some doing. Nevertheless, the power design still proved sufficient to get a lot of performance out of the Colorful card; it is still a bit disappointing that 3 GHz was not easily achieved, but we have not yet attempted a full-scale overclock on the RTX 4090.

This drop in clockspeed indicates an overall performance drop for the Colorful RTX 4090. However, it is only a small difference and is still monumentally faster than the RTX 3090 that came before it.

Power Consumption and Thermal

Power consumption and thermal demand of third-party cards are always important factors in deciding which RTX 4090 to purchase. However, between the Founders Edition and the two AIB cards we have tested so far, they are all rather on the same level with respect to these metrics: the Colorful runs the coolest, but is the slowest; the AIB card is the most powerful, but is also the slowest.

It is worth noting that the MSI card in the above benchmarks runs at about the same speed as the Founders Edition, sometimes offering higher performance, but actually seems a bit cuter in terms of what it demands in terms of power.

Benchmark numbers aside, the Colorful RTX 4090 remains the perfect vehicle for the majesty of DLSS 3 with Frame Generation. This is one of the Ada GPU's standout features and may be what saves the RTX 4080 from looking so weak in comparison. Frame generation is amazing AI-based wizardry, and even CPU-limited games like MS flight sims can be played without any problems at all, pardon the pun.

And it looks great too. With its frame generation capabilities, DLSS 3 looks noticeably better than the games we tested running natively in 4K, even with the performance settings set to 4K.

In short, the Colorful RTX 4090 Battle Ax is essentially an RTX 4090 and remains a very powerful graphics card. However, Nvidia has designed another great Founders Edition version that sets it apart from its partner cards. Whether it is third-party, overclocked, water-cooled, or whatever, I will always choose this one.