Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 delivers exhilarating graphics prowess–the quickest doable gaming body charges at excessive resolutions, and excellent efficiency in skilled purposes. But it’s not for everybody. At $1,500, it’s both a tough go or a no brainer, relying on how you propose to make use of it.
You can learn each nitty-gritty element in our comprehensive review of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition. But if you happen to don’t really feel like sifting via 1000’s of phrases of technical and testing particulars, listed here are the 5 key issues that you must know.
1. Most players shouldn’t purchase it
Yes, the GeForce RTX 3090 affords the “ultimate gaming experience” that Nvidia promised. Most players shouldn’t purchase it, although.
Why? It’s easy: The $700 GeForce RTX 3080 affords 85 to 90 % of the gaming efficiency of the GeForce RTX 3090 for properly below half of the RTX 3090’s price. It’s even nearer at 1440p decision, the place CPU and non-shading components of the Ampere GPU structure develop into efficiency bottlenecks. The GeForce RTX 3090’s 24GB of GDDR6X reminiscence can be overkill for gaming.
Brad Chacos/IDGRainbow Six Siege benchmarks
The GeForce RTX 3080 is an excellent 4K and 1440p graphics card in its personal proper, toppling its RTX 2080 predecessor by as much as 80 % in video games, and the previous $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti flagship by about 30 %. It smokes. If you’re a pure gamer with deep pockets and a thirst for the absolute best efficiency, price be damned, then positive—purchase an RTX 3090 if you need. Most players shouldn’t, although.
2. 8K gaming? Kinda-sorta
Nvidia claims the GeForce RTX 3090 is the world’s first graphics card able to 8K gaming. That’s solely type of true.
NvidiaNvidia-supplied benchmarks of 8K gaming at High presets. I confirmed a number of of those are certainly playable.
Yes, you’ll be able to positively hit the hallowed 60 frames per second barrier at 8K decision in some video games, if you happen to don’t thoughts bumping graphics settings down from Ultra to High. But you’ll be able to solely accomplish that in less-strenuous video games—principally esports-class titles like Destiny 2, Grand Theft Auto V, Rocket League, and Rainbow Six Siege.
You also can hit 60 fps in video games that assist Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) 2.1 know-how. DLSS provides an “ultra performance mode” that runs the sport at 2560×1440 in your graphics card’s shaders, then makes use of its AI tensor cores to intelligently upscale the picture 9X, to 8K. DLSS works fantastically, however it’s out there in solely a handful of video games, together with Death Stranding, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Control. Those work simply nice, too.
Brad Chacos/IDGMost of the triple-A video games in our testing suite, nonetheless, battle to hit 30 fps at 8K decision, a lot much less clear 60 fps. If you’re the type of gamer that likes to choose up scorching new video games once they’re launched, 8K will most likely be a pipe dream most of the time, even with the RTX 3090. Is it the world’s first 8K gaming GPU? Sure. Sometimes. But nowhere close to universally. Temper your expectations.
HDMI 2.1 and AV1 decoding assist are good further options for folks with 8K shows, however they’re additionally out there with the cheaper RTX 3080.
3. A steal for professionals
Who can buy this card? Prosumers. If you’ll be able to put the RTX 3090 to work and take the excellent gaming efficiency as a compelling cherry on prime, it’s an absolute monster—and a killer worth.
Brad Chacos/IDGLuxMark benchmarks
Brad Chacos/IDGBlender benchmarks. OptiX on the RTX playing cards is magic.
No, critically. Last era, the RTX Titan price $2,500 for barely extra efficiency than the $1,200 GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, however with a large 24GB of reminiscence capability. The new GeForce RTX 3090 blows away the RTX Titan in uncooked efficiency and comes with 24GB of (even quicker) GDDR6X reminiscence. But it prices a whopping $1,000 lower than the Titan did. We put the cardboard via its paces in a wide range of rendering workloads that use OpenCL, CUDA, and Nvidia’s RTX-accelerated OptiX API alike in our important overview, as skilled efficiency tends to be extremely workload-dependent, in contrast to video games. (Spoiler: Nvidia’s CUDA and OptiX stay as much as the hype.)
If your skilled workloads want plenty of GPU energy and your duties demand extra reminiscence than typical client graphics playing cards provide—enhancing 8K media, say—then the GeForce RTX 3090 is an excellent buy. Other good productiveness perks embrace an NVLink connection lacking on different RTX 30-series GPUs, upgraded RT cores that velocity up the method of rendering movement blur in ray traced scenes, and quicker AI tensor cores that may now be used to assist speed up viewport and remaining render efficiency in choose purposes.
Brad Chacos/IDGOnly the GeForce RTX 3090 affords NVLink on this new era. You have to pry off a canopy to get to it.
The uncooked efficiency of the beastly GA102 “Ampere” GPU and that 24GB VRAM buffer are the important thing attracts, although, adopted by NVLink assist. You already know if you happen to want it. Just bear in mind that the RTX 3090 doesn’t provide entry to the professionally optimized drivers created for Quadro GPUs, although devoted Nvidia Studio drivers revolve round artistic purposes.
4. Playing with energy
That degree of energy doesn’t come from nowhere. The GeForce RTX 3090 calls for rather more vitality than the RTX Titan. The last-gen Titan had a thermal design energy of 280 watts, and Nvidia beneficial pairing it with a 650W energy provide. The whole board energy of the RX 3090 is 350W, and you’ll want at least a 750W power supply to run it. Upgrading your PSU could be very worthwhile if you happen to want the RTX 3090’s fearsome efficiency, although.
Taming that energy takes heavy steel too, it appears. While the RTX 3080 Founders Edition caught to an ordinary 2-slot design, the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition expands to take up three full slots. It’s an inch longer too. Most of the customized playing cards we’ve seen are simply as gargantuan. You can solely squeeze two into an ordinary midtower PC case.
Brad Chacos/IDGRTX 3090 FE subsequent to RTX 3080 FE. Look at that ugly adapter within the RTX 3080.
If you’re a prosumer who desires to cram a number of GeForce RTX 3090 playing cards into your system, it may take a specialised motherboard and case, liquid-cooling, or each to make it work, relying in your setup. Options are positively out there if you happen to want them. It’s value noting that we’ve noticed a Gigabyte RTX 3090 with a standard 2-slot, blower-style cooler design that absolutely exhausts warmth out of your case. That may make it compelling for stuffing three or 4 RTX 3090s right into a typical PC case, however it stays to be seen how proscribing the cooling resolution a lot doubtlessly impacts efficiency.
5. One nice Founders Edition
That stated, until you’ve acquired specialised setup wants, you may want a third-party customized model of the RTX 3090. The bigger 3-slot Founders Edition cooler delivers spectacular outcomes. It maxes out at an impressively chill 68 levels Celsius below full prolonged load. That’s a whopping 11 levels cooler than the RTX 3080 Founders Edition, and on a par with one of the best customized air coolers we’ve ever seen—and its rivals had been plopped atop a lot much less potent GPUs.
Brad Chacos/IDGBetter but, you’ll by no means hear it make a noise. Some graphics playing cards are loud. Some are whisper-quiet. The Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition is completely silent. It’s a black gap for sound.
Nvidia’s full-fat Founders Edition cooler is so distinctive, it’s onerous to check customized options by third-party corporations outperforming it in thermals and acoustics with out some severe effort, in contrast to with the RTX 3080. We’re testing a customized RTX 3090 sporting a typical gamer-centric 3-slot cooler, and it isn’t as spectacular. Between the killer design and its adherence to Nvidia’s $1,499 MSRP, the Founders Edition simply may wind up being the RTX 3090 to get—if shares maintain up, that’s.
Read the total GeForce RTX 3090 overview
Brad Chacos/IDGThat’s all that you must know for a high-level overview of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090. Succinctly put: Pure players ought to most likely take a look at the GeForce RTX 3080, however the 3090 is a killer worth for prosumers with huge reminiscence wants. If you’re nonetheless itching for more information, you’ll want to take a look at our comprehensive review of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition, the place we dig into deep element on each facet we breezed via above—and extra. We’ve examined the cardboard with our common array of gaming benchmarks, poked and prodded the 8K gaming claims, and benchmarked an array of content material creation workloads.
We’ve additionally revealed loads of different details about Nvidia’s RTX 30-series GPUs. Hit any of the hyperlinks beneath to examine them out:
Related Nvidia RTX 30-series tales: