NVIDIA announced the GeForce RTX 3090 Ti at CES in January this year, but then it was mysteriously absent for a while and finally launches today. We have four GeForce RTX 3090 Ti reviews for you: The ASUS RTX 3090 Ti STRIX Liquid Cooled, EVGA RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra, MSI RTX 3090 Ti Suprim X, and RTX 3090 Ti AMP Extreme.

Architecturally, the RTX 3090 Ti is based on the same GA102 GPU as the RTX 3090 non-Ti, but with more GPU cores enabled (10,752 vs. 10,496), and more tensor and RT cores. NVIDIA also upgraded the memory from 19.5 Gbps to 21 Gbps using the same 384-bit memory interface. Thanks to a large power limit increase across the board, the GPU clocks are also increased, to 1920 MHz rated boost for the EVGA FTW3 Ultra, which is a medium-sized overclock—the FE ticks at 1860 MHz. Compared to other RTX 3090 Ti cards we tested today, performance differences are slim, a few percent here and there.

Averaged over our brand-new 25 game test suite at 4K resolution, we find the EVGA RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra is a whopping 11% faster than the RTX 3090—very impressive. This makes the card 15% faster than RTX 3080 Ti, and 25% faster than the RTX 3080. Against AMD's offerings, the RTX 3090 Ti is 20% faster than the Radeon RX 6900 XT; it will be interesting to see if the upcoming Radeon RX 6950 XT will be able to beat that. Against the Radeon RX 6800 XT, the RTX 3090 Ti is almost 30% faster. 4K is pretty much the only resolution that makes sense for the RTX 3090 Ti. Maybe 1440p if you have a high-refresh-rate monitor and really want the FPS, but you've got to make sure you pair the card with a strong CPU that can feed frames to the GPU quickly enough. At lower resolutions, the RTX 3090 Ti is just too CPU limited; you can see this in our benchmark results where all cards are bunched up against an invisible wall.

NVIDIA is betting big on ray tracing. The RTX 3090 Ti uses the same second-generation Ampere RT architecture as the other GeForce 30 cards, but owing to its enormous rendering power, it achieve higher FPS with ray tracing, too. Compared to AMD Radeon, the Ampere architecture executes more ray tracing operations in hardware, so they run faster, which gives the RTX 3090 Ti a large advantage over the RX 6900 XT, especially in 1st-generation ray tracing titles. Recent game releases come with toned down ray tracing effects, so they run well on the AMD-powered consoles, too. Here, the gap shrinks, but NVIDIA still has the upper hand.

Just like the RTX 3090, the RTX 3090 Ti comes with 24 GB of VRAM, which is more than any other consumer card on the market. AMD's high-end Radeon cards come with 16 GB, and the RTX 3080 Ti has 12 GB and RTX 3080 offers 10 GB. While 10 GB is starting to become a bottleneck in a few specific games with RT enabled, more than 16 GB doesn't help in any game so far. There are several professional application scenarios, like rendering huge scenes, that benefit from 24 GB. Nearly all GPU render software requires that the whole scene fits into GPU memory—if it doesn't fit, you won't get any output or the app will crash. 24 GB offers additional headroom, so you can tackle bigger problems, but optimizing the textures or geometry of your scene is always an option to reduce the VRAM requirement. Rendering on the CPU as a last resort is also possible, but it will take considerably longer compared to when the GPU is accelerating the workloads, of course. The vast majority of our readers are gamers. If you are a professional needing that much memory, do let us know. I'm curious what you are working on.

EVGA has engineered an impressive card with the RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra—four slots, three fans, over two kilos in weight. Temperatures are good, but noise levels are high, too. Compared to other cards tested today, this is the weakest cooler and the balance between thermals and noise isn't optimized well enough to make up for it. EVGA does offer a triple BIOS feature with their card. In addition to the default BIOS, you get a lower-noise option and an OC mode that turns off the idle-fan stop capability. I'm not sure if these have been tested thoroughly as the differences between them seem very slim, hardly making a difference. Personally, I'd pick the "normal" BIOS setting, which is actually the "quiet" BIOS. Noise is much improved with 40 dBA (still not "quiet"), and temperatures are fine with 78°C. Just like on other high-end cards, EVGA is including their iCX sensors on the card, which provide nine additional temperature sensors that are placed in strategically important locations on the card. What's also in a different location is the 16-pin power input. While all other cards have it in the classic power connector position at the end of the long side of the card, EVGA placed it on the short side. Their claim is that this makes it easier to hide the cables, so they are not right "in your face" on cases with windows. While that argument is certainly valid, it does limit case selection further because the stiff 3x 8-pin adapter cable adds 3–4 cm to the total length of the card, bringing the total to around 35 cm.

With the RTX 3090 Ti, EVGA is introducing "eLeash," a suspension device that helps avoid GPU sag. While various previous attempts have been made at supporting heavy cards from below, eLeash is a suspension cable that tackles the problem from the opposite direction. It is extremely well thought out and cost-effective. I wish all new cards had it. More details on page three of this review.

Keep in mind that you need decent case ventilation for the RTX 3090 Ti. Heat output of around 450 W needs to be exhausted, or the heat build-up will make your card throttle. Assuming future graphics card generations will use just as much power, this will be an interesting challenge for case designers. EVGA is using the NVIDIA FE power limit of 450 W, which is slightly lower than the 480 W setting used on other cards. Of course, a higher power-limit increases power consumption, but also yields a tiny bit of extra performance. The adjustment range goes up to 480 W, a little bit lower than the top cards, but the differences are small enough not to matter. As expected, power consumption is very high, but when taking the achieved performance into account, it roughly matches the RTX 3090. Compared to other Ampere cards, this means efficiency is 10% reduced, which is 25% worse than AMD's RDNA 2 offerings. The whole 12-pin/16-pin power connector drama leading up to this launch turned out to be for nothing as the card runs perfectly fine with the bundled 3x 8-pin adapter; NVIDIA made sure the card performs its best even when the four sense pins on the new connector are not connected.

NVIDIA is quoting an MSRP of $2,000 for the RTX 3090 Ti Founders Edition, and according to EVGA, the RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 Ultra will sell for $2,200. This is A LOT of money, and most people won't be able to afford such a graphics card. But just like the RTX 3090, I'm sure the RTX 3090 Ti will sell. Considering the +10% performance increase over the RTX 3090, which sells for $1,900 right now, that price difference doesn't seem outrageous. On the other hand, graphics card prices have been coming down a lot in recent weeks, and I suspect they will keep dropping. This puts the RTX 3090 Ti in a tight spot—just a year ago, people would have lined up to buy these cards at $2,000. Today, I don't scalpers will be snatching up these cards, and supply should end up being sufficient for the few people able to afford the RTX 3090 Ti. This product cycle is also quite late. The next GPU generation is already starting to appear on the horizon, so a lot of people might be waiting for those cards. In terms of alternatives, the RTX 3090 non-Ti is difficult to recommend at this time; rather, consider the slightly more affordable RTX 3080 Ti that's nearly as fast, but lacks the 24 GB VRAM option, which might actually be a good thing unless you're a professional who really needs that much memory. The Radeon RX 6900 XT is a noteworthy alternative, too. While it's considerably slower, you can find it for around $1,250 these days—still a lot, it is much closer to the $1,000 mark than the RTX 3090 Ti.