# NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090

38 Hacker News commenters recommended NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 12 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** Recommended for fast local AI and gaming performance; people cite its speed and value on the used market. Caveat: its VRAM limits large models and it draws lots of power.

## Why people recommend it

- Very fast for local models (5 comments): "RedHatAI/gemma-4-26B-A4B-it-FP8-dynamic on the dual rtx4090 machine under vLLM absolutely slays at token speed." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49014411)) "performance wise it's there at 90-100 t/s on 2x4090, great intelligence" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49365457)) "the RTX 4090 is an entirely different experience (~170 token/sec)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48806806))
- Strong gaming performance (3 comments): "I haven't had a single issue with any of these games." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46197737)) "you can get a long way with a high-end gaming rig" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45820756)) "a decent gaming GPU (RTX 4090 in my case)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48558110))
- Good value on used market (4 comments): "Go at ebay and search for RTX 4090 48GBs. There's plenty of them with prices around $3.5k" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544051)) "3090 and 4090 are amazing value for the money on the second hand market" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49944062)) "Get a second hand 3090/4090 or buy a new Intel Arc Pro B70." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47740368))
- Hard to beat for AI (3 comments): "I don't think there's any reasonable upgrade path right nor or in the near future which would have been better than just buying that." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49221109)) "If you need speed, I think most people wind up with something like a gaming PC with a couple 3090 or 4090s in it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47471261)) "I think you will be much better with a couple of RTX 5090,4090 or 3090." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46363942))

## What people warn about

- Limited VRAM for large models (2 comments): "only has enough vram to load weights and about 6K context" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47097564)) "rather than having its own walled-off maybe 16 GB VRAM in mainstream gaming GPUs or 24 GB in RTX 4090" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48625979))
- High power draw (2 comments): "Why isn't the RTX 4090 or 5090 half the TDP?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46077701)) "They consume a lot of power" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48360738))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3090.md): 116 recommend
- [NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090.md): 102 recommend
- [NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-rtx-pro-6000.md): 77 recommend
- [Nvidia GPUs](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-gpus.md): 67 recommend
- [AMD Radeon GPU](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amd-gpus.md): 48 recommend

## Where to get it

- [See price on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/s?k=NVIDIA+GeForce+RTX+4090+graphics+card&tag=hackerapprove-20) (affiliate link)
- [Official site](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/graphics-cards/40-series/rtx-4090/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-geforce-rtx-4090/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).