Review GeForce RTX 3090

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Chipset GeForce RTX 3090

Video Memory 24GB GDDR6

Memory Interface 384-bit

Core clock 1395 MHz

Output HDMI, 3 x DisplayPort

Bus PCI-Express x16

Product Dimensions 13.9 x 2.2 x 5.5 inches

The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio comes with a relatively large overclock out of the box and the power cap has also been increased, which is important. Averaged over our entire suite of 4K benchmarks, the RTX 3090 Gaming X beats the RTX 3080 by 16% - not bad. MSI has reasonably raised the power cap to 370W. It seems Ampere's performance now scales mostly at the power cap rather than clocks or shader.

Even so, the performance offered by the RTX 3090 is impressive, with these performance figures the RTX 3090 definitely lends itself to 4K gaming. Many games will run at over 90 FPS; with the highest details in 4K, almost all are over 60.

With the RTX 3090, NVIDIA introduces "playable 8K" that rests on several pillars. Before you could connect an 8K display, you had to use multiple cables. Now you can only use one HDMI 2.1 cable. With a higher resolution, VRAM consumption increases, but the RTX 3090 keeps you protected by offering 24GB of memory, which is more than twice the 10GB of RTX 3080. Finally, on the software side, they added the ability to capture 8K gameplay with Shadow Play. To improve the frame rate (remember, 8K processes 16x more pixels than Full HD), NVIDIA has created an 8K DLSS that renders the game at native 1440p resolution and scales x3 performance in every direction thanks to machine learning. All of these technologies are still in their infancy; game support is limited and displays are expensive, we'll look at that in more detail in the future.

The card is very quiet for what it offers. The current fan settings are the optimal balance between reasonable temperatures and low noise levels. Some gamers would prefer lower temperatures with more noise, so MSI also made a "low temperature" BIOS available on their website for free download. When flashed into it, the RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio will run at 67 ° C, 10 ° C cooler than with the default BIOS, albeit with 37 dBA of output noise (compared to the default of 33 dBA). Good settings here as well, not overkill, just an additional option to consider. Like all other GeForce 30 cards, Gaming X comes with an idle fan stop feature that completely turns off the fans when idle, productive, browsing and playing videos - the perfect noise-free experience.

24 GB VRAM is definitely future-proof, but I doubt you'll ever really need that much memory. Sure, more is always better, but unless you're running professional apps, you'll have a hard time finding the notable performance difference between 10GB and 24GB. Games won't be a problem as you will run out of shading power long before your VRAM is depleted, as with older cards that don't support 4K no matter how much VRAM they have. Next-gen consoles don't have that much VRAM either, so it's hard to imagine you'll miss out on any meaningful gaming experience if you have less than 24GB of VRAM. NVIDIA has outlined a few use cases in its reviewer's guide: OctaneRender, DaVinci Resolve, and Blender can certainly take advantage of more memory, as can GPU computing applications, but these are very niche use cases. I don't know any creators who got stuck and couldn't create because they ran out of VRAM.

Even at the higher power limit, overclocking is still paused. MSI allows you to manually adjust the power limit to 385W - a 3% increase over the default 370W, which is not good enough. This card has a 3x 8-pin socket and a socket power of 75W, which means that it is physically possible to deliver 525W of power. The VRM can certainly take more than 385W, so getting us well over 400W shouldn't be a big deal. As with Turing, the NVIDIA Boost algorithm complicates overclocking as specific frequencies can no longer be selected. On the RTX 3090, the effect is amplified as the difference between the power limit during normal games and increasing a small load is much greater than on other cards. Despite this, it will manage to achieve a 4.8% increase in performance thanks to overclocking.

The price of the RTX 3090 is very high. At around $ 3,500, it's more than twice as expensive as the RTX 3080, but not nearly twice as fast. On the other hand, the card is far superior to the RTX 2080 Ti in all respects. Part of the price disappointment is that the RTX 3080 is so impressive at such a breakthrough price. Either way, Turing showed us that people are willing to pay to have the best, and I have no doubt that all RTX 3090 cards will sell out today, just as they did with the RTX 3080.

Of course the RTX 3090 is not intended for the average gamer.

PROS

Great workmanship and style

Uncompromising 4K performance

Cooling system with passive mode

Great temperatures under load

Surprisingly good work culture

Lots of very fast GDDR6X memory

Improved ray-tracing and DLSS support

CONS

An abstract price against the RTX 3080

High power consumption, especially after OC

Low overclocking potential

See this product here: https://amzn.to/3l0huvi