Introduction

The ASUS ROG Strix LC GeForce RTX 3090 Ti "Ampere" is being launched today, as a finale for the Ampere graphics architecture and the fastest graphics card from ASUS. The RTX 3090 Ti is designed to be a double-digit percentage faster than even the RTX 3090, and improves in several areas we didn't even think NVIDIA could tap into. It enables all shaders physically present on the GA102, the largest graphics silicon based on Ampere, and pairs it with even faster memory than the one powering the RTX 3090, along with higher clocks and power limits. The RTX 3090 Ti targets those who want to play any of today's games at 4K native resolution with maxed out details, including ray tracing, and even explore higher resolutions such as 8K with the help of the DLSS 8K feature NVIDIA debuted with Ampere.



The GeForce RTX 3090 Ti enables all 10,752 CUDA cores physically present on the "GA102" silicon that powers five GeForce SKUs. Maxing out the GA102 also gives it 84 RT cores, 336 Tensor cores, many TMUs, 112 ROPs, and of course the full 384-bit wide GDDR6X memory interface. Speaking of which, NVIDIA is introducing new 21 Gbps-rated GDDR6X memory chips with the RTX 3090 Ti that are over 7.5% faster than the 19.5 Gbps chips on the RTX 3090. This gives it a whopping 1008 GB/s bandwidth, compared to 940 GB/s on the RTX 3090. The memory size is 24 GB on both cards, and NVIDIA calculates that the large memory amount should come in handy with certain creator use-cases dealing with large data sets.

The RTX 3090 Ti is also the first graphics card to introduce the new ATX 16-pin power connector recently announced by Intel, which should become standard with the next generation of graphics cards. The connector is capable of delivering up to 600 W of power through a single set of cables. The need for this connector arose on the RTX 3090 Ti, as its typical board power for the reference spec is rated at 450 W, which takes a spaghetti of three 8-pin PCIe power connectors. The 16-pin connector is still new to the market, and PSUs with with it can be counted on your fingers, which is why board partners are required to include an NVIDIA-designed adapter cable that converts three 8-pin to a 16-pin.

The ASUS ROG Strix LC pushes the RTX 3090 Ti to its design limits with its factory overclock that's sustained by its over-the-top VRM design, and a liquid cooling solution that keeps the GPU away from the thermal limits. The pre-built liquid cooler consists of an AIO closed-loop solution pulling heat from the GPU and memory, while a set of heatsinks and a lateral blower provide additional cooling to the VRM and memory. The AIO relies on a 240 mm x 120 mm radiator with a pair of included 120 mm ARGB fans. The illumination is also splashed all over the slick-looking cooler shroud. The ROG Strix LC offers a massive factory overclock to 1950 MHz, 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—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 for 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

Visually, the ASUS STRIX uses a mix of black and various shades of gray; nice shininess there indeed. The front of the cooler shroud is made out of plastic, while the backplate is metal.


Dimensions of the card are 29.5 x 14.5 cm, and it weighs 1747 g.


These GeForce RTX 3090 Ti cards are enormous in size. From top left to top right: the 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.


The dual BIOS switch lets you toggle between the default "Performance" BIOS and the "Quiet" BIOS that runs the fans at lower speeds.


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


This looks like an area that overclockers and voltmodders will want to play with—a shame the labels aren't more self-explanatory.


The card puts out two 4-pin PWM case fan headers, which are running at a synchronized speed with the graphics card fan. This makes it extremely easy to build a low-noise case. When not gaming and heat is low, the case fans will be stopped. Once your gaming sessions starts and the card heats up, the case fans will start spinning to exhaust hot air from the graphics card out of the case.


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 be warned 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 only. With multi-GPU game support being pretty much non-existent, this basically means SLI is dead.

Teardown

The main liquid-cooling component is a Gen 7 Asetek AIO pump block that pulls heat from the GPU and memory chips through a large, square copper base, which also touches the memory chips. A secondary aluminium heatsink ventilated by a lateral-blower cools other components, such as the VRM.


A high-quality aluminium backplate finishes things off. This is one of the best backplate designs I've ever encountered—massive, thick, and with some surface structure.


The 240 mm radiator is of standard thickness and includes a pair of 25 mm-thick 120 mm fans.

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).