NVIDIA
GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition
AUTHOR:Onie T.
TESTED BY:James L.
Published:

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition is designed for gaming at maximum settings in 1080p and 1440p resolutions, and it can handle 4K gaming, albeit at lower quality settings or with DLSS enabled. This graphics card delivers performance comparable to the RTX 4070 SUPER, though it requires significantly higher power consumption. 

As the flagship model of the 30-series, the RTX 3090 Ti stands out in our testing, offering top-tier performance across gaming, ray tracing, productivity, and synthetic benchmarks, with only a slight dip in the 1% lows during 4K gaming. 

Another limitation is its price. Labs tested the NVIDIA reference card, which, as of the publication date, is available online for an average price of $1,785 USD, with partner manufacturers ASUS and MSI offering versions that cost well over $1,299 USD. Initially launched with a starting MSRP of $1,999 USD, the RTX 3090 Ti is a steep investment. When considering price-to-performance, the newer RTX 4070 SUPER may be a more suitable choice, offering better performance at a much lower price point.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

THE GOOD

  • Performance

    The RTX 3090 Ti is truly the monster GPU that it was supposed to be. It dominated the productivity and synthetic charts in all of the testing.

THE BAD

  • Price

    The reference card sells for a high average of $1785 USD. In the majority of applications, the new 40-SUPER line provides a better price-to-performance ratio.

THE REST

  • Overall

    The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti performed admirably in our tests. It does, in fact, rank first within the 30-series lineup. However, it is a costly and big card that consumes an astounding 450W of power.

LINKS
Where to buy*
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Hardware
HardwareNotes

The RTX 3090 Ti utilizes 8nm technology and is built on NVIDIA’s Ampere architecture. The card is based on the GA102 graphics processor, which has 28,300 million transistors within a 628 mm² die. It features 112 Render Output Units (ROPs), 336 texture mapping units, 10752 shading units, and 84 ray tracing acceleration cores. With a typical board power of 450W, the card tested by Labs is manufactured by NVIDIA and has a triple slot, dual fan design that is rather large but fits in most computer cases. It has the standard RTX 30-series 3 x DisplayPort v1.4 output, and 1 x HDMI v2.1 ports.

In the Box

1 of 4

Front of the box.

Graphics Processor

1 of 3

Architecture
Processor Release Date
GPU Chip
Technology
Transistors
Die Size
Interface
L1 Cache
L2 Cache
L3 Cache
Board Design

1 of 5

Front of the card.

Length
Width
Height
Weight
Slot Width
TDP
Fan Size
Number of Fans
HDMI
Display Port
USB-C
Cores & Clocks
Rasterization Cores
Ray Tracing Cores
AI Acceleration Cores
Base Clock
Game Clock
Boost Clock
Memory Type
Memory Size
Memory Data Rate
Memory Bandwidth
Memory Bus
Features & Software
Features & SoftwareNotes

The RTX 3090 Ti supports DirectX 12 Ultimate and NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience and G-SYNC features. As well as NVIDIA’s full suite of DLSS 3 and ray tracing technologies. 

It features NVIDIA’s 7th Generation Encoder, and 5th Generation Decoder, with full support for H264 Encode/Decode, H265/HEVC Encode/Decode, but only AV1 Decode.

Supported Features
Adaptive Sync
DirectX
OpenGL
Vulkan
Ray Tracing
DirectML
OpenCL
CUDA
ReBar
Encode / Decode
H.264
H.265 (HEVC)
AV1
VP9
Performance
PerformanceNotes

The RTX 3090 Ti graphics card provides smooth gaming experiences at 1080p and higher resolutions. In our testing, it performed consistently across different resolutions, ranking above most of the 30-series cards at 1440p and 2160p. 

The RTX 3090 Ti is indeed the powerhouse GPU that it was designed as. It topped the productivity and synthetic charts across all of the tests.

Gaming Performance
Ray Tracing Performance
Productivity & Efficiency
Productivity
Synthetics
Test Configuration
Test ConfigurationNotes

We will periodically retest graphics cards with updated drivers. We continuously monitor and update our results for accuracy. Stay tuned for the latest test results and insights on this product and others as we aim to provide up-to-date information on a consistent basis. 

We actively address test bench variance in our evaluation process. Our methodology involves validation and calibration procedures to ensure consistency and reliability across all tests. The verified testbed variance for benchmarks in this product page is +/- 0.25%.

By monitoring and controlling variables such as hardware configurations, ambient temperatures, and system settings, we minimize potential sources of variance that could affect our results. This detailed approach enables us to deliver the most objective and accurate assessments.

Tested Settings
Drivers

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