Read our, Learn more about PCWorld's Digital Editions, comprehensive review of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition, [ Further reading: Best graphics cards for PC gaming ], Gigabyte RTX 3090 with a standard 2-slot, blower-style cooler design, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition review: Staggeringly powerful, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 tested: 5 key things you need to know, MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio review: A silent, face-melting behemoth, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080: 3440x1440 ultrawide benchmarks, Nvidia GeForce RTX 30-series vs GeForce RTX 20-series: Full spec comparison, How Microsoft and Nvidia plan to kill game-loading times on PCs, Nvidia’s $500 GeForce RTX 3070 gets an October 15 release date. A true powerhouse, the GeForce RTX 3090 will run even the most demanding game system requirements released today. The GeForce RTX 3080 is an outstanding 4K and 1440p graphics card in its own right, toppling its RTX 2080 predecessor by up to 80 percent in games, and the former $1,200 RTX 2080 Ti flagship by about 30 percent. No, seriously. To give you a little bit of idea what that means in terms of hardware dollars, you can pick up a Ryzen 7 3800 XT, 32GB of DDR4-3200 memory, an EVGA RTX 3080 XC3 – if you can find one of course – and still have some money left for some storage or maybe even a really nice dinner. I confirmed several of these are indeed playable. It smokes. Look at that ugly adapter in the RTX 3080. It certainly has a price tag to match at $2429. We benchmark using Windows 10 64-bit Pro Edition at 1920×1080, 2560×1440 and at 3840×2160 using Intel’s Core i9-10900K at 5.1/5.0 GHz and 32GB of T-FORCE DARK Z 3600MHz DDR4. We noticed a few odd things with this GPU. Professional users, such as game developers, that can make use of 24 GB of memory, may find value in the 3090. However, this also brings up a pretty good point about comparisons in this review, since this GIGABYTE model will make the RTX 3090 look a bit better than it would have at stock speeds. Hi guys, Just upgraded to an RTX 3090 and was noticing poor FPS in game, ran a couple benchmarks with 3DMark and my scores … I want you to keep that in mind as I go through this review, because it really puts everything into perspective. If you’re still itching for more info, be sure to check out our comprehensive review of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition, where we dig into deep detail on every aspect we breezed through above—and more. Nvidia claims the GeForce RTX 3090 is the world’s first graphics card capable of 8K gaming. However, the devil is often in the detail and that appears to be the case here as well, with the tests not necessarily as revealing as some suggest. But nowhere near universally. You can play almost any game ono the GTX 3090! That is a pretty big deal for people using creative, compute, or technical applications that are VRAM limited right now. These custom RTX 3000 series cards are big, bulky, and heavy. Between the killer design and its adherence to Nvidia’s $1,499 MSRP, the Founders Edition just might wind up being the RTX 3090 to get—if stocks hold up, that is. Where the RTX 3090 slots into this discussion is a good question since it costs more than double what the RTX 3080 does while offering at the most 14% higher frame rates at 4K. A few days ago we wrote that the GeForce RTX 3090 is slightly more efficient in games than the RTX 3080. Some are whisper-quiet. PCWorld helps you navigate the PC ecosystem to find the products you want and the advice you need to get the job done. Prosumers. Another thing you will need to be aware of is the potential for GPU sag. That said, unless you’ve got specialized setup needs, you might want a third-party custom version of the RTX 3090. You need to pry off a cover to get to it. OptiX on the RTX cards is magic. This is a card that costs $1,500 USD and it’s supposed to give you the best that Ampere can offer right now. While the RTX 3080 Founders Edition stuck to a standard 2-slot design, the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition expands to take up three full slots. It didn’t offer the best bang for the buck, but it was still a great GPU for gamers who had the money to burn on bragging rights. Benchmarks for Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3090 have leaked online and the results may strike some as disappointing. So we expect you are likely to consider running the game in 4K or 1440p. Yes, the GeForce RTX 3090 offers the “ultimate gaming experience” that Nvidia promised. Temper your expectations. With all of that done, I think it’s time to wrap this up. But it costs a whopping $1,000 less than the Titan did. Now obviously we know that the RTX 3090 isn’t designed to be a pure gaming GPU since it offers huge benefits in compute workloads, but it’s still being flogged to gamers with deep pockets. Everything seems to be pointing towards that direction because it comes bundled with a free copy of Watch Dogs: Legion and NVIDIA popped it into their GeForce gaming lineup rather than giving it a Titan branding. Is anyone actually going to play at that resolution? Just when you think we're getting to a … I know EVGA is offering anti-sag brackets with some of their cards, but GIGABYTE doesn’t. HDMI 2.1 and AV1 decoding support are nice extra features for people with 8K displays, but they’re also available with the cheaper RTX 3080. Who should buy this card? Senior Editor, The simple fact is that even at 4K and the highest detail settings games become limited by GPU processing long before they need more than 10GB of RAM or the memory bandwidth provided by the RTX 3090. Moving up to 1440P brings everything even closer together, but the 5.3GHz i9-10900K positively affects the 99 percentile frame rates more than averages. RTX 3090 in game benchmark 4k ultra/maxed settings (Vulkan and DX12) Discussion/Question. If you can put the RTX 3090 to work and take the outstanding gaming performance as a compelling cherry on top, it’s an absolute monster—and a killer value. Ray tracing is the holy grail of gaming graphics, simulating the physical behavior of light to bring real-time, cinematic-quality rendering to even the most visually intense games. As a matter of fact, we are close to running up against some memory limitations in DaVinci Resolve ourselves, so I totally back up NVIDIA’s claim in this respect. It’s an inch longer too. The RTX 3090… That level of power doesn’t come from nowhere. Hit any of the links below to check them out: Senior editor Brad Chacos covers gaming and graphics for PCWorld, and runs the morning news desk for PCWorld, Macworld, Greenbot, and TechHive. I guess that’s the conclusion, from a creator standpoint I’m pretty excited about the RTX 3090 and what it can bring to the table. I can’t argue with that at all, since it is going to be a critical component in my own editing workflow going forward. One thing I do want to mention is that Jedi Fallen Order and Overwatch have built-in frame rate limiters that can’t be overridden, and it looks like the RTX 3090 hit those a few times so it’s performance has been capped a bit. That’s only kind of true. You need to be really aware of how big it is, not just the triple slot height or the length, but the width as well. Flagship GPUs are always pretty low on the value for money scale and there is no denying it. Why? Options are definitely available if you need them. Let’s get started with specs, because there is a bit of a reality check right away. NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090: DirectX and Vulkan Game Benchmarks Metro Exodus is based on author Dmitry Glukhovsky's series of Metro novels … So we went off to do more benchmarks, and this time instead of the i9-10900K running at the usual 4.8GHz to 4.9GHz in games we overclocked it to a constant 5.3GHz. That said, the 3090 also comes with a hefty $1,500 price tag. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 delivers exhilarating graphics prowess--the fastest possible gaming frame rates at extreme resolutions, and outstanding performance in professional applications. Most of the triple-A games in our testing suite, however, struggle to hit 30 fps at 8K resolution, much less clear 60 fps. The raw performance of the beastly GA102 “Ampere” GPU and that 24GB VRAM buffer are the key draws, though, followed by NVLink support. Either way, other than a few exceptions, the RTX 3090 wasn’t bottlenecked by the CPU at 1080P and it certainly isn’t at 1440P either. My configuration is: I9 10900K set in stock Maximus XII Extreme Custom Loop EK cpu only 32 Gb Ram Gskill Trident Z ROG Strix 3090 OC Case Obsidian 1000D ROG Swift 25 "240hz Gsync monitor Strix 3090 OC - Micro stutter in all benchmarks and all games and benchmarks ! That was pretty much expected since 4K puts all the emphasis on the GPU, even in more basic DX9 titles. That said, the 3090 also comes with a hefty $1,500 price tag. ! In games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the SLI setup makes it possible to play comfortably in 8K resolution. You can only squeeze two into a standard midtower PC case. Those are connected to the PCB extension wires. DLSS works fantastically, but it’s available in only a handful of games, including Death Stranding, Wolfenstein: Youngblood, and Control. VR Wars: Ampere’s RTX 3080 vs. the RTX 3090 – Enhanced Performance benchmarked Using FCAT-VR & the Vive Pro. The GeForce RTX 3090’s 24GB of GDDR6X memory is also overkill for gaming. It might start off slim, but there is a huge overhang that juts out past the PCB. By the way, Overwatch’s new patch increases the frame cap to 400FPS, so we needed to re-benchmark all the cards here. All other settings have been turned to their highest allowable setting or turned on. But it’s not for everyone. In games that support DirectX 12 multi-GPU, adding a second RTX 3090 can make the difference between playable and unplayable. Ryzen 5 5600X vs. Ryzen 7 5800X vs. Ryzen 9 5900X vs. 5950X: GPU Scaling Benchmark. The 3090 offers more than double the memory and beats the previous generation’s flagship RTX 2080 Ti significantly in terms of effective speed. Not only that, but we are adding 1080P results here too since those could really tell us if there is a processor bottleneck somewhere. Well here we are again with another NVIDIA GPU launch and this time it’s the GeForce RTX 3090. Kicking things off with CS:GO, and this game was obviously CPU limited in a big way since even the RTX 3080 with an overclocked CPU can actually beat the RTX 3090 in a stock system. However, like I said in the intro, there are plenty of reasons why this video was done from a gaming perspective and I’m hoping it helps some people hit the brakes before giving into the hyped up consumerism and making a really poor buying decision. The new GeForce RTX 3090 blows away the RTX Titan in raw performance and comes with 24GB of (even faster) GDDR6X memory. Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc. Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3090 delivers exhilarating graphics prowess--the fastest possible gaming frame rates at extreme resolutions, and outstanding performance in … And I’m also looking forward to popping this thing into one of my new editing workstations, but for gamers the real question is how much are you willing to pay for just 14% better FPS? Like I said at the beginning, these super close results got us wondering if the RTX 3090 was being bottlenecked by the Core i9-10900K. That is regrettable because this video is going to be a warning against gamers actually buying the RTX 3090. All Rights Reserved. RDR2 is playable with my oced 2080 Ti I get 46-48fps maxed in the benchmark 4K but I get your point, future games will be more demanding so SLI can help. The last-gen Titan had a thermal design power of 280 watts, and Nvidia recommended pairing it with a 650W power supply. Now in 2020 the RTX 3080 is an amazing value – provided you can actually find one for $700 – maybe it’s price is even too low, but that’s a conversation for another time. Succinctly put: Pure gamers should probably look at the GeForce RTX 3080, but the 3090 is a killer value for prosumers with massive memory needs. Yes, you can definitely hit the hallowed 60 frames per second barrier at 8K resolution in some games, if you don’t mind bumping graphics settings down from Ultra to High. Something like this GIGABYTE RTX 3090 Gaming OC is supposed to hit $1,580 USD, but some other versions like the ASUS ROG STRIX or the AORUS XTREME will be above $1,700 USD. He tweets too. The total board power of the RX 3090 is 350W, and you’ll want at least a 750W power supply to run it. Either way, we weren’t sampled the Founders Edition of this GPU, so instead we have this GIGABYTE RTX 3090 that just showed up a few days before launch. Most gamers shouldn’t buy it, though. Nvidia's RTX 3090 comes with the promise of being "the world's first to connect, play, capture, and watch games at 8K HDR". Upgrading your PSU is very worthwhile if you need the RTX 3090’s fearsome performance, though. 8K HDR Gaming Connect, play, capture, and watch in brilliant HDR at resolutions up to 8K with GeForce RTX 3090. And let me repeat that: The RTX 3090 is not meant to beat the RTX 3080 by a substantial margin, but it’s more than double the price. The interesting thing is the Gaming OC is able to hit a constant 1980MHz while running at under 70°C. That could make it compelling for stuffing three or four RTX 3090s into a typical PC case, but it remains to be seen how restricting the cooling solution so much potentially affects performance. The next step is to see if the RTX 3090 is being CPU limited by re-running all the benchmarks with an overclocked processor at 4K, 1440P, and 1080P as well.