Keeping their tradition alive of launching a new GeForce graphics architecture every two years, this year, NVIDIA introduces its Ampere GPU. The Ampere GPU is built upon the foundation set by Turing. Termed as its biggest generational leap, the NVIDIA Ampere GPUs excel previous generations at everything.
The Ampere GPU architecture has a lot to be talked about in this review, but so does the new RTX lineup. The Ampere lineup offers faster shader performance, faster ray tracing performance, and faster AI performance. Built on a brand new process node and featuring an architecture designed from the ground up, Ampere is a killer product with lots of numbers to talk about.
The fundamental of Ampere was to take everything NVIDIA learned with its Turing architecture and not only refine it but to use its DNA to form a product in a completely new performance category. Tall claims were made by NVIDIA when they introduced its Ampere lineup earlier this month & we will be finding out whether NVIDIA hit all the ticks with its Ampere architecture as this review will be your guiding path to see what makes Ampere and how it performs against its predecessors.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Gaming Graphics Cards - The Biggest GPU Performance Leap in Recent History
Turing wasn't just any graphics core, it was the graphics core that was to become the foundation of future GPUs. The future is realized now with next-generation consoles going deep in talks about ray tracing and AI-assisted super-sampling techniques. NVIDIA had a head start with Turing and its Ampere generation will only do things infinitely times better.
The Ampere GPU does many traditional things which we would expect from a GPU, but at the same time, also breaks the barrier when it comes to untraditional GPU operations. Just to sum up some features:
- New Streaming Multiprocessor (SM)
- New Turing Tensor Cores
- New Real-Time Ray Tracing Acceleration
- New Shading Enhancements
- New Deep Learning Features For Graphics & Inference
- New GDDR6X High-Performance Memory Subsystem
- New 2nd Generation NVLINK Interconnect
- New HDMI 2.1 Display Engine & Next-Gen NVENC/NVDEC
The technologies mentioned above are some of the main building blocks of the Ampere GPU, but there's more within the graphics core itself which we will talk about in detail so let's get started.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series Pricing Per Segment
NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 30 series is made up of a diverse portfolio of graphics cards. Currently, you will only be limited to the higher-end configurations starting at $499 US for the GeForce RTX 3070, $699 US for the GeForce RTX 3080, and $1499 US for the GeForce RTX 3090. NVIDIA themselves call the GeForce RTX 3080 as the flagship graphics card and not the GeForce RTX 3090.
The RTX 3080 & RTX 3070 are both priced well and in-line with their predecessors but the GeForce RTX 3090 goes all out with a price of $1499 US. NVIDIA calls the GeForce RTX 3090 as the "BFGPU" and as per the terminology, it seems like this is a new marketing name for the Titan graphics card. It is likely that we could see a Titan based card under the Quadro branding with faster specs out of the box but the GeForce RTX 3090 is purely a gaming graphics card first with all the horsepower for intense professional and workstation workloads.
With that said, the GeForce RTX 3080 replaces the RTX 2080 SUPER at the same price point and the GeForce RTX 3070 replaces the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER at the same price point. Given this trend, we might see the more mainstream variants cost just as much as their RTX 20 SUPER series cards but with a higher performance out of the box.
NVIDIA GeForce GPU Segment/Tier Prices
| Graphics Segment | 2014-2016 | 2016-2017 | 2017-2018 | 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Titan Tier | Titan X (Maxwell) | Titan X (Pascal) | Titan Xp (Pascal) | Titan V (Volta) | Titan RTX (Turing) | TBA |
| Price | $999 US | $1199 US | $1199 US | $2999 US | $2499 US | TBA |
| Ultra Enthusiast Tier | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 980 Ti | GeForce GTX 1080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 2080 Ti | GeForce RTX 3090 |
| Price | $649 US | $649 US | $699 US | $999 US | $999 US | $1499 US |
| Enthusiast Tier | GeForce GTX 980 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce GTX 1080 | GeForce RTX 2080 | GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3080 |
| Price | $549 US | $549 US | $549 US | $699 US | $699 US | $699 US |
| High-End Tier | GeForce GTX 970 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce GTX 1070 | GeForce RTX 2070 | GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER | GeForce RTX 3070 |
| Price | $329 US | $379 US | $379 US | $499 US | $499 US | $499 |
| Mainstream Tier | GeForce GTX 960 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce GTX 1060 | GeForce RTX 2060 SUPER GeForce RTX 2060 GeForce GTX 1660 Ti GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER GeForce GTX 1660 |
TBA |
| Price | $199 US | $249 US | $249 US | $249 US | $399 US $349 US $279 US $229 US $219 US |
TBA |
| Entry Tier | GTX 750 Ti GTX 750 |
GTX 950 | GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
GTX 1050 Ti GTX 1050 |
GTX 1650 SUPER GTX 1650 |
TBA |
| Price | $149 US $119 US |
$149 US | $139 US $109 US |
$139 US $109 US |
$159 US $149 US |
TBA |
In addition to the specs/price update, NVIDIA's RTX technologies are being widely adopted major game engines and APIs such as Microsft DirectX (DXR), Vulkan, Unreal Engine, Unity, and Frostbite. While there were only three RTX titles around the launch of the RTX 20 series cards, NVIDIA now has at least 28 titles that utilize their RTX feature set to offer real-time ray tracing with more coming soon.
In addition to that, with the upcoming consoles confirmed to feature ray tracing, developers can also make use of the RTX technology to fine-tune future games for the GeForce RTX hardware. Currently, NVIDIA has 13 game engines that are leveraging their RTX technologies for use in their upcoming and existing games while both Vulkan and DirectX 12 Ultimate APIs are part of the RTX ecosystem on the PC platform.
So for this review, I will be taking a look at the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio. The Gaming X Trio comes in at a $100 US premium over the reference MSRP with a price of $1599 US. At this price, you get a triple-fan cooling solution and a factory overclock out of the box. Let's find out how well the GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio performs compared to the last-generation Gaming X Trio RTX 2080.
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Graphics Card
The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 is a force to be reckoned with. It takes the throne of the fastest PC gaming graphics card with nothing coming even close to it. It's surprisingly much faster than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti which is its Turing based predecessor but just being fast isn't enough for a card of this scale or price. The GeForce RTX 3090 carries more cores, more than 2x the memory, higher performance efficiency, and also carries next-generation ray-tracing and tensor cores that make this a truly next-generation graphics card.
NVIDIA designed the GeForce RTX 3090 not just for any gamer but all gamers who want to have the best graphics performance at hand to power the next-generation of AAA gaming titles with superb visuals and insane fluidity. It's not just the FPS that matters these days, its visuals, and a smoother frame rate too and this is exactly what the GeForce RTX 30 series is made to excel at. There's a lot to talk about regarding NVIDIA's flagship Ampere gaming graphics cards so let's start off with the specifications.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Graphics Card Specifications - GA102 GPU & 10 GB GDDR6X Memory
At the heart of the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card lies the GA102 GPU. The GA102 is one of the many Ampere GPUs that we will be getting on the gaming segment. The GA102 GPU is the fastest gaming GPU that NVIDIA has produced. The GPU is based on Samsung's 8nm custom process node designed specifically for NVIDIA and features a total of 28 Billion transistors. It measures at 628mm2 which makes it the 2nd biggest gaming GPU ever produced right below the Turing TU102 GPU.
The new shader core on the NVIDIA Ampere architecture is 2.7x faster, the new RT cores are 1.7x faster while the new Tensor cores are up to 2.7x faster than the previous generation Turing GPUs. The 2nd Generation RT core delivers dedicated hardware-accelerated ray-tracing performance & features twice the ray/triangles intersection with concurrent RT graphics and compute operations.
For the GeForce RTX 3090, NVIDIA has enabled a total of 82 SM units on its flagship which results in a total of 10496 CUDA cores. In addition to the CUDA cores, NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 3090 also comes packed with next-generation RT (Ray-Tracing) cores, Tensor cores, and brand new SM or streaming multi-processor units.
In terms of memory, the GeForce RTX 3090 takes a big step ahead, featuring more than twice the memory than the RTX 2080 Ti. The flagship comes packed with 24 GB of memory and that too the next-generation GDDR6X design. With Micron's latest and greatest graphics memory dies, the RTX 3090 can deliver a bandwidth that almost hits 1 TB/s. The GeForce RTX 3090 comes with 24 GB of GDDR6X memory at speeds of 19.5 Gbps. That along with a full uncut bus interface of 384-bit will deliver a cumulative bandwidth of 936 Gbps.
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 Series 'Ampere' Graphics Card Specifications:
| Graphics Card Name | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 Ti | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPU Name | Ampere GA104-200 | Ampere GA104-300 | Ampere GA102-200 | Ampere GA102-300 |
| Process Node | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm | Samsung 8nm |
| Die Size | 395.2mm2 | 395.2mm2 | 628.4mm2 | 628.4mm2 |
| Transistors | 17.4 Billion | 17.4 Billion | 28 Billion | 28 Billion |
| CUDA Cores | 4864 | 5888 | 8704 | 10496 |
| TMUs / ROPs | TBA | TBA | 272 / 96 | TBA |
| Tensor / RT Cores | 152 / 38 | 184 / 46 | 272 / 68 | 328 / 82 |
| Base Clock | TBA | 1500 MHz | 1440 MHz | 1400 MHz |
| Boost Clock | TBA | 1730 MHz | 1710 MHz | 1700 MHz |
| FP32 Compute | TBA | 20 TFLOPs | 30 TFLOPs | 36 TFLOPs |
| RT TFLOPs | TBA | 40 TFLOPs | 58 TFLOPs | 69 TFLOPs |
| Tensor-TOPs | TBA | 163 TOPs | 238 TOPs | 285 TOPs |
| Memory Capacity | 8 GB GDDR6 | 8/16 GB GDDR6 | 10/20 GB GDDR6X | 24 GB GDDR6X |
| Memory Bus | 256-bit | 256-bit | 320-bit | 384-bit |
| Memory Speed | 14 Gbps | 14 Gbps | 19 Gbps | 19.5 Gbps |
| Bandwidth | 448 Gbps | 448 Gbps | 760 Gbps | 936 Gbps |
| TDP | 180W? | 220W | 320W | 350W |
| Price (MSRP / FE) | $399 US? | $499 US | $699 US | $1499 US |
| Launch (Availability) | October 2020 | 15th October | 17th September | 24th September |
In case you want to read our full NVIDIA Ampere GPU architecture deep dive and GeForce RTX 3090 Founders Edition review, head over to this link.
The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPER Gaming X Trio is the flagship variant in the RTX 3090 family. It is a very powerful graphics card, rocking the 2nd generation Tri-Frozr cooling for MSI's Gaming graphics cards. In overall size and weight, this thing is just tons of massive performance packed in one triple slot form factor.
In addition to the custom design, the RTX 3090 SUPER Gaming X Trio comes with a non-reference PCB, featuring a 14+4 phase design that features higher quality components than the reference variant which is already a really good design by itself. In terms of clock speeds, the graphics card features the same base frequency of 1440 MHz but the boost clock is rated at 1785 MHz over the Founders boost of 1700 MHz. The card features a TDP of 370W which is 20W higher than the FE variant and comes with a maximum power limit of 380W.
Following are some of the features of the MSI GeForce RTX 3080 SUPER Gaming X Trio before we go in detail:
Boost Clock / Memory Speed
- 1785 MHz / 19.5 Gbps
- 24GB GDDR6X
- DisplayPort x 3 (v1.4a) / HDMI 2.1 x 1
TRI FROZR 2 Thermal Design
- TORX Fan 4.0: A masterpiece of teamwork, fan blades work in pairs to create unprecedented levels of focused air pressure.
- Core Pipe: Precision-crafted heat pipes ensure max contact to the GPU and spread heat along the full length of the heatsink.
- Airflow Control: Don't sweat it, Airflow Control guides the air to exactly where it needs to be for maximum cooling.
RGB Mystic Light
- Mystic Light gives you complete control of the RGB lighting for MSI devices and compatible RGB products.
Dragon Center
- MSI's exclusive Dragon Center software lets you monitor, tweak, and optimize MSI products in real-time.
MSI GeForce RTX 3090 SUPER Gaming X Trio Graphics Card Gallery:
The MSI Gaming X Trio Graphics Cards With 2nd Tri-Frozr Cooling
With the differences out of the way, now let's talk about the similarities and the main highlights of the Gaming X Trio design. The Gaming X Trio is a toned-down variant of the much higher-end card, the MSI Lightning. Both cards use advanced Tri-Frozr coolers which are the replacement of the MSI Twin Frozr series which have been widely used in current and last generation graphics cards from MSI.
The latest iteration of MSI’s iconic GAMING series once again brings performance, low-noise efficiency, and aesthetics that hardcore gamers have come to recognize and trust. Now you too can enjoy all your favorite games with a powerful graphics card that stays cool and silent. Just the way you like it.
MSI has incorporated and refined a couple of things in the new Tri-Frozr design for Gaming X Trio graphics cards. First is the TORX fan 4.0 which uses a ring design that connects two fan-blades with each other to increase airflow towards the internal heatsink assembly. These fans are made up of a double ball bearing design which ensures silent functionality in heavy loads.
The fans are fully compliant with the Zero Frozr Technology and are actually comprised of three areas. All of these would stay at 0 RPM (idle state) if the temperatures don't exceed 60C. When it does exceed 60C, all fans would start spinning. You can change that through the MSI configuration panel if you want more cooling performance over noise load but it's a nifty feature that I do like.
In addition to the cooling fans, the heatsink has been designed to be denser by using the brand new wave curved 2.0 fin design. The new heatsink makes use of deflectors to allow more air to pass through the fins smoothly, without causing any turbulence that would result in unwanted noise. MSI estimates a 2 degrees (C) drop in temperatures with the updated design versus the previous generation cooling system.
Talking about the heatsink, the massive block is comprised of seven copper squared shaped heat pipes with a more concentrated design to transfer heat from the copper base to the heatsink more effectively. The base itself is a solid nickel-plated base plate, transferring heat to the heat pipes in a very effective manner. To top it all off, MSI uses their exclusive Thermal Compound X which is said to offer higher thermal interface and heat transfer compared to traditional TIM applications.
Rocking a classy brushed look, the backplate on the GAMING TRIO series provides a nice visual finish to the card. It also strengthens the card and thanks to some cleverly placed thermal pads even help to keep temperatures low.
The MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio graphics card comes inside a standard cardboard box. The front of both packages has a large "GeForce RTX" brand logo along with the "MSI" logo on the top left corner and the "Gaming X Trio" series branding on the lower-left corner. A large picture of the graphics card itself is depicted on the front which gives a nice preview of the Gaming X Trio design.
The packaging has put a large emphasis on the RTX side of things as the first feature enlisted by AIBs will be NVIDIA Ampere architecture, Ray Tracing & DLSS support. NVIDIA has bet the future of their gaming GPUs on Ray Tracing support as these are the first cards to offer support for the new feature.
The back of the box is very typical, highlighting the main features and specifications of the cards. The three key aspects of MSI's top tier custom cards are its blazing performance which is achieved by fully custom design, the new Tri-Frozr cooling system, and a new wave-curved 2.0 heatsink which will offer better cooling performance compared to the traditional flat-surfaced fin heatsinks.
There's also a focus towards GeForce.com on each AIB card through which users can download the latest drivers and GeForce Experience application which are a must for gamers to access all feature sets of the new cards.
The sides of the box once again greet us with the large GeForce RTX branding. There's also the mention of 24 GB GDDR6 (RTX 3090) memory available on the card. The higher memory bandwidth delivered through the new GDDR6X interface would help improve performance in gaming titles at higher resolution over GDDR6 and GDDR5X based graphics cards.
Outside of the box, the graphics card and the accessory package are held firmly by foam packaging. The graphics card comes with a few accessories and manuals which might not be of much use for hardcore enthusiasts but can be useful for the mainstream gaming audience.
The card is nicely wrapped within an anti-static cover which is useful to prevent any unwanted static discharges on various surfaces that might harm the graphics card. The card accessories include a Molex power connector which isn't of much use in high-end systems since the PSUs already have the required cables.
The most interesting accessory that I found in the package was a graphics card support bracket. This bracket connects the graphics card to the casing, offering better durability and prevents any sort of bending that may occur due to the heavyweight of the Gaming X Trio series graphics cards.
Useful manuals and installation guides are packed within an MSI labeled letter case. There is an MSI Quick Users Guide, a Support bracket installation guide, a sticker letter, the MSI DIY comic, and a single driver's disk. It's best to ignore the driver disk and install the latest software and graphics drivers directly from the NVIDIA and MSI official web pages as the ones shipped in the disks could be older versions and not deliver optimal performance for your graphics cards.
After the package is taken care of, I can finally start talking about the card itself. This thing is a beast and I can't wait to test it out to find what kind of performance improvement I get over current-gen cards.
MSI’s Tri Frozr heat sinks are some of the biggest heatsink cooling solutions that I have ever tested. I first tested the Gaming X Trio when MSI released the 1080 Ti variant back in 2017 and that was a very aggressive design in its own right. With the RTX 30 series cards, MSI has further refined the Gaming X Trio design. The card measures the same at 335 x 140 x 56 mm and weighs in at 1565 grams. The card is also slightly taller at 2.7 slots height compared to 2.5 slots height of the previous model.
You would have to keep in mind the height when going for a dual card solution as your case or motherboard PCIe slot combination may not allow such setup. The cooling shroud extends all the way to the back of the PCB and it requires a casing with good interior space for proper installation.
The back of the card features a solid backplate which looks stunning. The backplate offers a lot more functionality than just looks which I will get back to in a bit.
In terms of design, we are looking at an updated version of the Tri Frozr heatsink which is now in its sixth variation while for the Gaming X series, this is the 2nd iteration. The first variation started off with the GTX 780 Ti Lightning, the second was the 980 Ti Lightning, then came the 1080 Ti Gaming X Trio, the 1080 Ti Lightning, and then the RTX 20 and RTX SUPER Gaming X Trio graphics cards.
The new heatsink looks like a beefed-up version of the Gaming X Trio with the main changes being the shroud and heatsink design that feature an aggressive shroud design on the front, absorbing the black and silver color platelets while featuring the RGB emitting acrylic cutouts at the front. The sides also come with a large RGB accent bar which lits up when the card is powered on.
Coming to the fans, the card actually features two different fan designs based on the Torx 4.0 system. All three fans feature a ring-based design to allow for higher airflow to be channeled within the main heatsink. All fans deploy double ball bearing design and can last a long time while operating silently.
MSI also features their Zero Frozr technology on the Tri Frozr heatsink. This feature won’t spin the fans on the card unless they reach a certain threshold.
In the case of the Tri Frozr heatsink, that limit is set to 60C. If the card is operating under 60C, the fans won’t spin which means no extra noise would be generated.
I am back at talking about the full-coverage, full metal-based backplate which the card uses. The whole plate is made of solid metal with rounded edges that add to the durability of this card. The brushed matte-black finish on the backplate gives a unique aesthetic.
There are cutouts in screw placements to easily reach the points on the graphics card. We can also see the MSI Dragon logo on the back which looks stunning. MSI is also using heat pads beneath the backplate which offer more cooling to the electrical circuitry on the PCB. The most interesting thing to spot on the back aside from the backplate is the large retention metal bracket which adds more mounting pressure to effectively disperse heat from the GPU to the heatsink.
With the outsides of the card done, I will now start taking a glance at what's beneath the hood of these monster graphics cards. The first thing to catch my eye is the humungous fin stack that's part of the beefy heatsink which the cards utilize.
The large fin stack runs all the way from the front and to the back of the PCB and is so thick that you can barely see through it. It also comes with the wave-curved 2.0 fin stack design which I want to shed some light on as it is a turn away from traditional fin design and one that may actually offer better cooling on such power-hungry graphics cards such as the RTX 3080 and RTX 3090.
The heatsink has been designed to be denser by using a wave curved fin design. It allows more air to pass through the fins smoothly, without causing any turbulence that would result in unwanted noise. Airflow Control Technology guides the airflow directly onto the heat pipes, while simultaneously creating more surface area for the air to absorb more heat before leaving the heatsink.
Talking about the heatsink, the massive block is comprised of seven copper squared shaped heat pipes with a more concentrated design to transfer heat from the copper base to the heatsink more effectively. The base itself is a solid nickel-plated base plate, transferring heat to the heat pipes in a very effective manner. To top it all off, MSI uses their exclusive Thermal Compound X which is said to offer higher thermal interface and heat transfer compared to traditional TIM applications.
MSI adds extra protection to its impressive PCB by including a rugged anti-bending plate. This also acts as a memory and MOSFET cooling plate while the PWM heatsink with micro fins keeps the VRM cool under stressful conditions.
I/O on the graphics card sticks with the reference scheme which includes three Display Port 1.4a & a single HDMI 2.1 port.
MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio Teardown:
MSI makes use of a 14+3 phase PWM design that includes its Military Class components such as Hi-C Caps, Super Ferrite Chokes, and Japanese Solid Caps. The main VRM controller is a combination of UPI's iP9512R and OnSemi's NCP81611. For VRAM, the controller is a UPI made uS5650Q while the MOSFETs are made up of OnSemi NCP302150's rated at 50A.
The card also uses the GDDR6X memory from Micron that operates at 19 Gbps alongside a 320-bit wide memory interface.
The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio is a very power-hungry graphics card as showcased by its custom design. Being so, it uses a very power-intensive connector configuration which comprises triple 8 pin connectors. The card is rated at a TDP of 380W officially by MSI.
MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio Series RGB Lighting Gallery:
MSI Gaming X Trio series cards utilize their Mystic Light RGB technology to offer you a visually pleasing lighting experience on your graphics cards. There are a total of 8 different RGB effects which you can choose from and the cards have 3 RGB accent points, 2 on the front, and one lightbar surrounding the side of the card which looks really good. You can fully customize the RGB lights to your preference using the MSI Mystic Light application from MSI's web page.
Following is what the graphics card looks like when lit up.
We used the following test system for comparison between the different graphics cards. The latest drivers that were available at the time of testing were used from AMD and NVIDIA on an updated version of Windows 10. All games that were tested were patched to the latest version for better performance optimization for NVIDIA and AMD GPUs.
MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio Test Setup:
| CPU | Intel Core i9-9900K @ 4.70 GHz |
|---|---|
| Motherboard | AORUS Z390 Master |
| Video Cards | MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Lightning Z MSI GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER Gaming X Trio MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Gaming X Trio MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT Gaming X MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Ti Lightning X |
| Memory | G.SKILL Trident Z RGB Series 32GB (4 X 8GB) CL16 3600 MHz |
| Storage | Samsung SSD 960 EVO M.2 (512 GB) |
| Power Supply | ASUS ROG THOR 1200W PSU |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit |
| Drivers | AMD Radeon Adrenalin Edition 20.7.2 NVIDIA GeForce 456.38 WHQL |
- All games were tested on 2560×1440 (2K) and 3840×2160 (4K) resolutions.
- Image Quality and graphics configurations have been provided in the screenshots below.
- The “reference” cards are the stock configs while the “overclock” cards are factory overclocked configs provided to us by various AIB partners.
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Doom Eternal
DOOM Eternal brings hell to earth with the Vulkan powered idTech 7. We test this game using the Ultra Nightmare Preset and follow our in-game benchmarking to stay as consistent as possible.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Developed by Rockstar San Diego, Red Dead Redemption II is one of the most visually stunning open-world games I've played to date that is backed up by a rich story set around the protagonist, Arthur Morgan. The game is based on the RAGE engine which features an insane amount of graphics fidelity but also requires a lot of power to run maxed out. For the purpose of this test, we set the graphics settings to Ultra with AA turned disabled.
Wolfenstein: Youngblood
Wolfenstein is back in The New Colossus and features the most fast-paced, gory, and brutal FPS action ever! The game once again puts us back in the Nazi-controlled world as BJ Blazkowicz. Set during an alternate future where Nazis won the World War, the game shows that it can be fun and can be brutal to the player and to the enemy too. Powering the new title is once again, id Tech 6 which is much acclaimed after the success that DOOM has become. In a way, ID has regained their glorious FPS roots and are slaying with every new title.
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Ashes of The Singularity: Escalation
NVIDIA and AMD have been tweaking the performance of their cards for Ashes of the Singularity since the title released. It was the first to make use of the DirectX 12 API and the first to leverage from the new Async compute technology that makes use of the DX12 renderer to improve performance.
Battlefield V
Battlefield V brings back the action of the World War 2 shooter genre. Using the latest Frostbite tech, the game does a good job of looking gorgeous in all ways possible. From the open-world environments to the intense and gun-blazing action, this multiplayer and single-player FPS title is one of the best looking Battlefields to date.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Humanity is at war with itself and divided into factions. On one end, we have the pure and on the other, we have the augmented. That is the world where Adam Jensen lives in and this is the world of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. The game uses the next generation Dawn Engine that was made by IO interactive on the foundation of their Glacier 2 engine. The game features the support of DirectX 12 API and is one of the most visually intensive titles that taxes the GPU really hard.
Death Stranding
Sam Porter Bridges has delivered one of PS4's most anticipated games to the PC community and opened a whole new world of possibilities. This was the first game to feature the Decima Engine on PC and unarguably did it the best. Death Stranding may not feature ray tracing effects but it does showcase that DLSS can be used effectively even when RT isn't around. We tested this one just like we did in our launch coverage with DLSS enabled.
Forza Horizon 4
Forza Horizon 4 carries on the open-world racing tradition of the Horizon series. The latest DX12 powered entry is beautifully crafted and amazingly well executed and is a great showcase of DX12 games. We use the benchmark run while having all of the settings set to non-dynamic with an uncapped framerate to gather these results.
Hitman 2 (DX12 Highest Settings)
Hitman 2 is the highly acclaimed sequel to 2016 Hitman which was a redesign and reimaging of the game from the ground up. With a focus on stealth gameplay through various missions, the game once again lets you play as Agent 47 who embarks on a mission to hunt down the mysterious Shadow Client. The game runs on IO’s Interactive’s Glacier 2 engine which has been updated to deliver amazing visuals and environments on each level while making use of DirectX 12 API.
Shadow of The Tomb Raider
Sequel to The Rise of the Tomb Raider, Shadow of The Tomb Raider is visually enhanced with an updated Foundation Engine that delivers realistic facial animations and the most gorgeous environments ever seen in a Tomb Raider Game. The game is a technical marvel and really shows the power of its graphics engine in the latest title.
Metro Exodus
Metro Exodus continues the journey of Artyom through the nuclear wasteland of Russia and its surroundings. This time, you are set over the Metro, going through various regions and different environments. The game is one of the premier titles to feature NVIDIA’s RTX technology and does well in showcasing the ray-tracing effects in all corners.
Assassins Creed: Origins
Assassins Creed Origins is built by the same team that made Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag. They are known for reinventing the design and game philosophy of the Assassins Creed saga and their latest title shows that. Based in Egypt, the open-world action RPG shows its graphics strength in all corners. It uses the AnvilNext 2.0 engine which boosts the draw distance range and delivers a very impressive graphics display.
We tested the game at maxed settings with TAA enabled and 16x AF. Do note that the game is one of the most demanding titles out in the market and as such tweaks and performance issues are being patched out.
Borderlands 3
Borderlands 3 has made its way into the test lineup thanks to strong demand by gamers and simply delivering MORE Borderlands. The game was tested with max settings under the DX11 preset since the DX12 preset doesn't deliver any visible improvement in either frame rate or graphics at the moment.
Far Cry 5
Far Cry 5 is a standalone successor to its predecessor and takes place in Hope County, a fictional region of Montana. The main story revolves around doomsday cult the Project at Eden’s Gate and its charismatic leader Joseph Seed. It uses a beefed-up Dunia Engine which itself is a modified version of CryEngine from Crytek.
Final Fantasy XV
Grand Theft Auto V
GTA V is the most optimized gaming title that has been made for the PC. It’s so optimized, it even runs on my crap GT 840M based laptop with a smooth FPS on a mix of medium/low settings. I mean what???
Aside from being optimized, GTA V is a great game. It was the Game of The Year for 2013. At 1440p Ultra quality, the game gave us smooth frames on all cards tested.
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No graphics card review is complete without evaluating its temperatures and thermal load. The MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio graphics card comes with a triple-fan cooler with 0db fan technology, a massive heatsink that is composed of several aluminum fins and heat pipes and an extended backplate which covers the entire PCB.
Note – We tested load with Kombuster which is known as a ‘power virus’ and can permanently damage the hardware. Use such software at your own risk!
I compiled the power consumption results by testing each card under idle and full stress when the card was running games. Each graphics card manufacturer sets a default TDP for the card which can vary from vendor to vendor depending on the extra clocks or board features they plugin on their custom cards. Default TDP for the RTX 3090 is set at 350W while the MSI custom model has a TDP of 370W.
Also, it's worth noting that the 8nm process from Samsung increases the density by around 2x versus the previous generation. NVIDIA is cramping even larger amounts of transistors and more cores than their previous cards, making it one of the densest chips built to date. It's likely to consume a lot of power and the results are reflective of that.
Lo and behold, the fastest GeForce RTX 30 series graphics card is finally here and it's a beast that would remain the undisputed graphics performance, king, for a long time. The GeForce RTX 3090 clearly is a card within its very own segment and that's the ultra-enthusiast prosumer market. The card might be branded under the GeForce branding but it shares a lot of fundamentals with a Titan class product.
To start it off, we are looking at over 10,000 CUDA cores and a massive 24 GB GDDR6X memory size which screams Titan. In a way, the GeForce RTX 3090 is more of a successor to NVIDIA's Titan RTX than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti. The GeForce RTX 3080 already offers up to 35-40% better graphics performance than the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti at less than half the price but for users who want the best and even more performance, the 3090 is the card designed for them.
The sample I received was able to run way past its rated boost clocks of 1785 MHz and average around 1940 MHz while gaming. The most interesting part about the Gaming X Trio is that within Afterburner, you could increase the power limit by just 2% and that raises the total board power to 380W while the factory configured card runs at 350W. There's so little you can do with this amount of power and hence MSI has stated that they will be releasing higher-binned Ampere variants in the near future so expect Lightning to really push Ampere to its limits.
As for the cooling solution, the new Gaming X Trio design is built for the power-hungry Ampere chips and does a pretty good job keeping the card under 75C even in stress tests. For gaming, the average temperatures were around 70C while pushing the fan speeds to 100% led to around 53-54C temps which are quite impressive at the cost of more noise output. The power consumption of the card is a metric that might be a cause of concern for many as the card can definitely increase your power input by a large factor. I saw power figures hit around 500 Watts during gaming while peak consumption in stress tests was over 600 Watts. To run this card, you'd require a high-quality Power Supply which is a must for any flagship graphics card these days. Also, make sure that your supply is outfitted with three PCIe connectors, each on an individual rail to supply this beast with its tremendous power requirements.
The card isn't that bulky and should fit inside most cases with relative ease and the triple-fan solution comes with 0db fan technology which unless or until you're touching 60C won't spin at all. This allows lower noise levels when you're not doing any graphics-intensive tasks. MSI went all the way by including a full metal backplate on the card which comes with dual copper heat pipes to effectively transfer heat from the back. The back of the card is also important considering there are 12 memory modules featured on the other side of the PCB which need to be cooled.
The RGB is not overdone and the Mystic Light cuts on the front and sides provide really good aesthetics of the card itself. MSI is charging a $100 US premium for its GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio graphics card. This price is in-line with other variants that were listed yesterday however, we don't know if anyone can get hands-on the cards considering the entire situation that took place yesterday.
To conclude, the MSI GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio is an insanely fast graphics card, reaching performance levels that no other card can reach at the moment. The card can even handle games at 8K resolution which is something that I couldn't test myself out right now due to the unavailability of an 8K monitor in my test environment but I am pretty sure that you can get a taste of that from other prominent tech outlets who will be sharing those numbers. The GeForce RTX 3090 offers a Titan class experience at a far lower price point. The Titan RTX was priced at $2999 US so the GeForce RTX 3090 delivers 50% and sometimes even higher performance with the same amount of memory (albeit with much faster GDDR6X specs) than the Titan RTX at half the price.
At $1599 US, the GeForce RTX 3090 Gaming X Trio is an insanely fast graphics card, and it's designed to do more than just gaming as you can see in the professional application performance metrics we tested here. For gamers, the GeForce RTX 3080 carries the best value but the GeForce RTX 3090 is specifically designed for those who want the best right now and the card is indeed the fastest graphics solution in the market right now!
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