The Card

EVGA has revamped the visual theme of their cards for the RTX 20-series. They now use a transparent see-through fan cover; the general color theme is black and gray. A high-quality, matte-black backplate is installed on the back of the card. Dimensions of the card are 30.0 x 14.0 cm.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include three standard DisplayPort 1.4a, one HDMI 2.0b, and a VirtualLink connector, which is basically USB-C with DisplayPort routing and USB-PD, so a single cable can power, display, and take input from your VR HMD.

NVIDIA has updated their display engine with the Turing microarchitecture, which now supports DisplayPort 1.4a with support for VESA's nearly lossless Display Stream Compression (DSC). Combined, this enables support for 8K@30Hz using a single cable, or 8K@60Hz when DSC is turned on. For context, DisplayPort 1.4a is the latest version of the standard that was published in April, 2018.


The board uses two 8-pin power connectors. This input configuration is specified for up to 375 watts of power draw.


With Turing, NVIDIA is using NVLink as a physical layer for its next-generation SLI technology. NVLink provides sufficient bandwidth for multi-GPU rendering at 8K 60 Hz, 4K 120 Hz, and other such bandwidth-heavy display resolutions. It's a point-to-point link between your GPUs, and so, latencies will be lower compared to pushing data through the PCI-Express bus.


We shine the light from a self-leveling line laser on to the card, which shows no sagging.


Near the back of the card, EVGA has installed a 4-pin fan connector into which you can plug one of your case fans. This fan will now run at a speed that matches the GPU's fan speed: off in idle and ramping up as the graphics card gets hot. This is a great feature if the main source for heat in your case is the graphics card as it will lower overall noise levels.


EVGA is using a dual-BIOS feature on the FTW3. You can toggle between a "normal" and an "OC" BIOS. Somewhat surprisingly, both BIOSes run the same clocks and power limits. The only difference is that the OC BIOS has a more aggressive fan curve.


This RGB header lets you connect additional RGB components to the graphics card, and their color will match that of the FTW3's RGB lighting.

Disassembly

EVGA is using six heatpipes, most of which are extra-wide, to keep the GPU cool.


Once the main heatsink is removed, a black baseplate becomes visible, which provides cooling for the memory chips and VRM circuitry.


Please note the use of thermal paste on the VRM chokes, which is quite uncommon. We talked to EVGA about this, and they responded that they chose this approach to improve heat transfer despite height tolerances due to component height and soldering. They confirmed that changing this thermal paste does not affect the warranty.


The backplate is made from metal and protects the card against damage during handling and installation. Several thermal pads ensure that heat can flow from the PCB to the backplate.

On the next page, we dive deep into the PCB layout and VRM configuration.