Introduction

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition is the green team signing off on another successful graphics architecture, the RTX 30-series "Ampere." This isn't our first RTX 3090 Ti review. We've tested custom-design cards from ASUS, MSI, EVGA, and ZOTAC on launch day, and each of those is factory-overclocked, leading the series for their respective brands at the time. At the time, NVIDIA didn't sample out the Founders Edition at all, so everybody was wondering about its performance, thermals, and acoustics. That's why we went the extra mile and purchased one of these $2000 cards to answer those questions.

A quick rundown of the RTX 3090 Ti first. This SKU maxes out the "GA102" silicon, the largest one based on the "Ampere" architecture. The GA102 was already nearly maxed out by the RTX 3090, which remained the fastest Ampere you could buy for over 18 months, since the series launched in September 2020. The RTX 3090 used 82 out of 84 streaming multiprocessors (SM) physically present on the silicon, and two additional SMs probably wouldn't have made a big difference for the new RTX 3090 Ti. NVIDIA hence gave this SKU two enhancements besides maxing out the silicon. First, the company upgraded memory speeds from 19.5 Gbps (GDDR6X-effective) on the RTX 3090 to 21 Gbps. This results in a memory bandwidth of over 1 TB/s compared to the 940 GB/s on the RTX 3090. Second, the company significantly increased the power limits, with the typical board power now 450 W, compared to 350 W for the RTX 3090 (at reference specs). This increase in power limits has the RTX 3090 Ti sustain a higher GPU clock speed.



450 W typical graphics power also means it's no longer possible to build an RTX 3090 Ti graphics card with just two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. NVIDIA confronted this problem with even the RTX 3090 Founders Edition, and chose the exotic 12-pin Molex microFIT connector. Over the past two years, Intel finalized the ATX 3.0 system specification and introduced the new 16-pin AIC power connector standard capable of delivering up to 600 W power with a single connector. NVIDIA is the first to market with this connector, with all its board partners implementing it in their custom-design RTX 3090 Ti cards. The Founders Edition card has one, too. Unlike the 12-pin connector that's placed perpendicular to the PCB on the RTX 3090, the 16-pin connector is along its plane. An adapter that converts three 8-pin PCIe power connectors to one 16-pin connector is included.

The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition graphics card looks nearly identical to the RTX 3090 Founders Edition except for that 16-pin power connector in place of the 12-pin one. We checked, and even the cooler design looks identical. NVIDIA commented that some tweaks were made to the vapor chamber. 24 GB remains the standard memory amount for this SKU, same as with the RTX 3090. The difference on the Ti is that each memory chip has twice the capacity, so there's only half as many required, which means no more memory chips on the back side of the card and helps with memory temperatures. The GPU is clocked at 1860 MHz boost, compared to 1700 MHz of the RTX 3090. The memory ticks at 21 Gbps. NVIDIA is pricing the RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition at $1,999, a $500 premium over the MSRP of the RTX 3090.

Benefits of 24 GB in Productivity

One of the key features setting the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti apart from any other consumer graphics card in the market is its incredible 24 GB dedicated memory. NVIDIA achieved this much memory without compromising on performance, with the highest 21 Gbps data rates, widest 384-bit bus widths, and highest 1 TB/s memory bandwidth on tap. This is NVIDIA's fastest graphics memory solution in the Ampere series. The professional A6000 GPU has up to 48 GB of memory, but it is conventional 16 Gbps GDDR6 for the sake of ECC support. The GDDR6X memory found in NVIDIA Ampere GPUs is an innovation co-developed by NVIDIA and Micron Technology.


So what does one really do with 24 GB of memory? If you've read our GeForce RTX 3080 Ti review, you'll know that despite just 12 GB of memory, the GPU is almost as fast as the RTX 3090. The RTX 3090 Ti does not just have faster memory than the RTX 3090, but also more shaders, higher clock-speeds, and significantly higher power limits to sustain boost frequencies. Even NVIDIA believes that one doesn't really need 24 GB of memory for gaming, and hence mooted the original RTX 3080 as its flagship for this generation.

NVIDIA considers the RTX 3090 Ti to be more than just a gaming graphics card. The incredible 24 GB memory and NVIDIA GeForce Studio drivers combination is designed to give the RTX 3090 Ti some serious professional visualization chops, especially when working on 3D content-creation projects with large data sets.


OTOY OctaneRender is able to utilize the 24 GB memory to draw large 3D scenes, including with RTX ray tracing acceleration. The advantage of 24 GB is in storing the entire scene data on the video memory to minimize or cut out out-of-core data, which has to be fetched from main memory or disk storage, making the process an order of magnitude slower.

Blender is one of the most popular 3D authoring and render software, and the Blender Cycles path-tracing renderer utilizes NVIDIA OptiX to accelerate interactive and final frame rendering with incredible lighting effects over multiple instances of Blender. Something like this would fail if attempted on the RTX 3080 Ti with its 12 GB video memory since you would run out of memory.

Video editing software DaVinci Resolve will particularly benefit from the 24 GB memory of the RTX 3090 Ti, especially in 8K Redcode RAW projects, where you're dealing with 8K uncompressed video frames that take up enormous amounts of memory. NVIDIA assesses that it takes 24 GB to smoothly work with 8K editing, color-correction, VFX, and post-production, and that the 12 GB or 10 GB solutions on the RTX 3080 Ti and RTX 3080 will run into out-of-memory errors.

Packaging

The Card

Just like their other GeForce 30 cards, the NVIDIA RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition looks amazing—it's such a fantastic design that's more "iPhone" than "graphics card." NVIDIA paid lots of attention to creating an industrial design that goes beyond just "pretty cooler front + RGB" and created a great-looking product that looks like a single piece from all sides instead of a combination of PCB, cooler, backplate, etc.


Dimensions of the card are 31.5 x 13.5 cm, and it weighs 2223 g.


The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti is enormous in size. From left to top right: RTX 3060 Ti, RTX 3080, RTX 3090, and RTX 3090 Ti.


Installation requires three slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include one HDMI 2.1 and three DisplayPort 1.4a ports.


The RTX 3090 Ti introduces the new 16-pin power connector—note the four small pins above the larger 12 pins. This connector is specified for up to 600 W power delivery. All RTX 3090 Ti cards come bundled with a 3x 8-pin to 12-pin adapter (the four small sense pins aren't used). While the ATX specification states that the card should limit itself to 150 W if the four small sense pins aren't connected, NVIDIA made sure even the 3x 8-pin adapter scenario capable of up to 525 W (3x 150 W + 75 W from the slot) runs the card at optimal settings.


The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti supports SLI, but know that NVIDIA isn't supporting SLI as implicit multi-GPU (SLI as you know it), but explicit multi-GPU that's developed and supported by game and application developers. With multi-GPU game support pretty much non-existent, this basically means SLI is dead.

Teardown

I'll spare you all the details of disassembly as they are pretty much the same as for the RTX 3080 due to the memory on one side. Find our detailed step-by-step guide here.


NVIDIA's cooler uses a large vapor chamber base paired with four heatpipes. The cooler looks identical to the RTX 3090 for all but no more memory chips on the back that have to be cooled. We asked NVIDIA, and they confirmed that the vapor chamber has received some tweaks.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling. Unlike the GeForce RTX 3090 non-Ti, there are no memory chips to cool on this side, which simplifies the cooling requirements and helps avoid the high memory temperatures seen on RTX 3090 FE.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.



High-res versions are also available (front, back).