Introduction

The Zotac GeForce RTX 3090 Ti Amp Extreme Holo is a slick new graphics card from the house of Zotac Gaming, powered by the apex RTX 30-series GPU being debuted today. The RTX 3090 is the pinnacle of the NVIDIA "Ampere" graphics architecture, and not just maxes out all shaders physically present on the largest "GA102" silicon, but also boosts memory bandwidth and clock speeds with the idea of making this a double-digit percentage faster than the RTX 3090, the company's de facto flagship GPU until now. Its target audience is anyone who wants to play the latest games at 4K native resolution with ray tracing and maxed out details, as well as PC enthusiasts wanting to be at the top of benchmark leaderboards.



All 84 streaming multiprocessors (SM) of the GA102 silicon are enabled on the RTX 3090 Ti. This works out to 10,752 CUDA cores, 84 RT cores, and 336 Tensor cores. The memory subsystem sees an upgrade, too, with the introduction of 21 Gbps-rated GDDR6X memory chips in place of the 19.5 Gbps ones on the RTX 3090. The new chips enable a memory bandwidth of over 1 TB/s, up from the 954 GB/s on the RTX 3090. Memory size remains the same, at 24 GB. NVIDIA had gone with such a large memory amount for the original RTX 3090 because it positioned the SKU as a halo-segment product, since there's no TITAN product this generation and the large memory amount enables certain creator use-cases with large data sets.

The RTX 3090 Ti is also the first graphics card to debut the new ATX 16-pin power connector, and not just on the NVIDIA Founders Edition card, but also custom-design cards, across the board. The connector is technically capable of up to 600 W power delivery, and NVIDIA rated the typical board power of the reference RTX 3090 Ti at 450 W, which is a whole 100 W higher than the RTX 3090 and means that overclocked custom-design cards such as the Zotac Amp Extreme we're reviewing today could approach or even cross the 450 W-mark. The 16-pin connector is still very new for the PSU industry, so all board partners are required to include an NVIDIA-designed adapter that converts three 8-pin PCIe power connectors to a 16-pin connector.

The Zotac RTX 3090 Ti Amp Extreme Holo is the company's flagship air-cooled custom-design product and features an updated variant of the IceStorm 2.0 cooling solution we've seen on the likes of the RTX 3090 Amp Extreme. It features a meaty triple-slot heatsink that's ventilated by a trio of fans. There's an unmistakably large RGB lighting element along the top of the card. Underneath is a brand-new PCB with a significantly different power design built around that 16-pin connector. The PCB also features a large cutout for airflow from the cooler to pass right through. Zotac's factory-overclock for the RTX 3090 Ti is 1890 MHz boost, while the NVIDIA reference runs 1860 MHz.

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

The card follows Zotac's GeForce 30 AMP Holo design theme almost exactly. The colors on the card are black with various shades of gray. Running along the top edge is a Spectra RGB lighting element, which creates amazing RGB effects. On the back, you'll find a high-quality metal backplate that curves into the sides.


Dimensions of the card are 36.5 x 15.0 cm, and it weighs 2085 g.


These GeForce RTX 3090 Ti cards are enormous in size. From top left to top right: EVGA RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra, Zotac RTX 3090 Ti AMP Extreme, MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X, and ASUS RTX 3090 Ti STRIX Liquid Cooled.

See the small AMD card in the bottom left? That's the Radeon RX 6900 XT, the fastest card the red team currently offers. Also included is the GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition in the bottom right.$10,000 in graphics cards right there!


Installation requires three slots in your system.


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


Zotac has placed several voltage measurement points on the PCB, but they are impossible to reach without disassembling the card.


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 technically states that if the four small sense pins aren't connected, the card should limit itself to 150 W, NVIDIA made sure even the 3x 8-pin adapter scenario, which can provide 525 W total (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 being pretty much non-existent, this basically means SLI is dead.


As you can see, a lot of space is wasted near the end of the card for a plastic cooler shroud that really doesn't add anything except to make the card longer, which complicates installation in some cases.

Teardown

Zotac's thermal solution uses eight heatpipes. The main heatsink not only cools the GPU, but also provides cooling for memory chips and VRM circuitry. The thermal pads on the VRM are 2.3 mm thick, and those on the memory are 2.0 mm thick.


The backplate is made out of metal and protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

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).